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21 Days of Posts – Day 16 – The Church as a Body

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

Day 16 – Only a few days left of this fast. I hope it is progressing well for everyone.

Today’s post concerns my thoughts about the church as a body. Many of us are familiar with the passage in 1st Corinthians, chapter 12, where the church is described as a body. The main point of that passage is that the church must be in unity to be effective, and the diversity of the church members and their spiritual gifts is what makes the church strong and effective.

The comparison starts at verse 12, but the specifics start at verse 15. The absurdity of disparate body parts assuming they are not useful to, or even a part of the body highlights the various roles congregation members play in the work of the church. The cleaning crew is as important as the worship team, which is as important as the various group leaders, who are as important as the deacons and elders. Each one contributes to the body of the church to spread the Gospel of Christ to everyone around them.

Each and every part is important and just as God created our human bodies with many parts that each contribute to our continuing to live, so are the different parts of the church body so very important. Without eyes, the body can’t see; with no teachers, the church can’t teach. With no foot, the physical body is handicapped; with no cleaning crew, the church is rendered uninviting and unable to minister to the community, therefore, handicapped. Everyone can’t be up on stage leading worship to empty seats. Well, they could, but that would be weird…

The church body needs all of its parts to function effectively and in the words of our current study, have a maximum impact on the world around it. This assumes that all parts of the body are healthy, and performing their jobs to the best of their ability. This places some responsibility on the members of the church to find where they fit into the diverse body of the church and to contribute effectively.

I think this analogy is perfect, which is probably why it is included in our current Bible. It’s not the only message Paul had for the Corinthians, but it was an important one. The Corinthians were dealing with the conflict between the temporary “now” and the eternal. They were unsure how to deal with the current “now” and were unsure of their purpose, to some extent. Paul assured them that the work they were doing was important and was of eternal significance.

The passage about the body is preceded in chapter 12 by an explanation of spiritual gifts, and a reminding that not all are gifted the same way. Each person is gifted by God to be able to contribute to the body of the church in different ways, which leads right into the explanation about unity and diversity in the church body. This simple, but powerful analogy is still referenced today as a way to maintain unity in the church and make it effective. It is intimately connected to the first part of the next chapter, Paul’s exposition on love and how necessary it is. That is a blog post for another day…

Thanks for reading to the end! Tomorrow’s post will continue in this thread and talk about contributing talents to the church.

 

Photo Credit – Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash

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21 Days of Posts – Day 15 – Why I Write About Impossible Decisions

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

Day 15! Woot! We’re moving along in this 21 days of posts.

First, I want to thank you for reading these. It’s fun writing them and I hope they are fun to read.

Today’s post expounds on why I write about impossible decisions. This is another one of those times, dear reader, where you may say “duh!” because lots of stories, particularly ones we cherish, are all about impossible decisions. We encounter self-sacrifice, heart-rending choices, and “no way out” situations all the time in books, movies and TV shows.

We are teased by these moments, because they invariably occur at the end of a chapter, or at the end of a movie in a series, or at the end of the current episode of our favorite show. We’re then made to wait, either long enough to turn the page, or for a whole year (or two) for the next movie to come out, or just a week or so before the next episode. The whole time we are debating in our head “how would I choose?” and wondering how our hero or heroine is going to choose.

Sometimes, a third party intervenes, and the impossible situation or choice is taken out of the hands of the lead character. We’re generally let down by such deus ex machina moments, unless it’s in an action movie, because that’s pretty much their bread and butter. We expect it then. Other times, and these are the ones we actually like more (usually), there is no sudden rescue and the choice, once made, results in loss, heartbreak, or other bad things happening that have to be cleaned up later (or not).

One of the best examples of dealing with impossible decisions is found in the CW show The 100. The show is loosely based on a YA series of books by Kass Morgan. The show runs right past the books in the first season and thank goodness for that. I can’t really recommend the books unless you just want to see the differences. With that said, I can’t really recommend the show to the age group the books were targeted for. There are themes and situations in the TV episodes which take place after the events of the books that are very adult, not “young adult”, defined as 12-18 year olds in the literary category. But back to impossible choices…

The lead protagonist Clarke Griffin, is quickly thrown into a leadership position she really doesn’t want. Time after time during the first season, and even more in later seasons, she must make decisions that not only affect her and the people she considers family and friends, but the entire human race. Your head and your heart ache for her as she is repeatedly forced to make decision after decision, none of which have good choices. I highly recommend binging on the first six seasons before the seventh, and probably final, season starts in April 2020.

Enough promoting a favorite show. The point of all that was to say that it really only takes a few of these gut-wrenching decisions to make a book, a movie, or a show your favorite. We vicariously participate in the decision process, weighing the options, seeing no good one, then trying to find that slim chance to escape the choice altogether. This is why I write these into my books. I want to drag the reader along on a journey with the characters and make them feel what the character is feeling. Done right, this is some of the best entertainment available. I hope someday you all will get a chance to read about the impossible decisions my characters will face.

But that means I have to finish, really finish, a book and as I have stated before, I hope these 21 days of posts help to jumpstart me on that journey.

One last list before this post concludes. If you are looking for books or movies that involve impossible decisions, without resorting to Nicholas Sparks style fiction, I recommend the following items:

The Divergent series by Veronica Roth. You have to read all three books to get the full effect.

A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. There’s a lot of words to slog through, but the choices and decisions made by multiple characters are intimidating and difficult. I don’t recommend taking the shortcut and watching Game of Thrones as so much detail is left out there, even with all of its adult content.

Rogue One, the best of the Star Wars side story movies, is an excellent example of impossible decisions (and sacrifice).

I hope you enjoyed this post and hope that you maybe found a new favorite show or book. Come back tomorrow as I expound on my thoughts on the church as a body.

Thanks for reading to the end!

 

Photo Credit – Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash

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21 Days of Posts – Day 14 – Why I Listen to Marshmello

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

It’s Day 14 and I’ve decided to NOT change my topic, or artist.

Before we get started, I again want to thank you for reading these posts. They are short and many times have no point whatsoever, but I enjoy writing them. I hope they get me fired up and ready to finish a book this year, and I hope you get some amount of pleasure from reading them.

Marshmello. Nope, that is not a misspelling. The EDM artist and DJ, Marshmello, who wanders around in a marshmallow-shaped mask/bucket all the time, much like Daft Punk and Deadmau5 do with their headwear, is kind of a big deal on the music scene. His real name is Christopher Comstock. Ever since 2015, when he released an original track on the music website Soundcloud, he’s been making waves, and not just musical ones, everywhere he goes.

Marshmello has collaborated with musicians across the spectrum, from pop queens like Selena Gomez, to R&B and rap artists, like Khalid and Crankdat to rock bands like A Day to Remember. His music ranges from extremely chilled to wildly chaotic, and the lyricists and lyrics range from the syrupy sweet to the downright vulgar.

Yes, there are a number of tracks of his I don’t listen to, as they glorify the same kinds of terrible ideas that some rap and rock music do – drugs, misogyny, “ghetto life”, gangs, promiscuity, and crudeness of all kinds. But the tracks that these thorny issues are absent from are almost all incredibly enjoyable.

Before I dive into recommended tracks, I feel obligated to explain exactly why I like Marshmello. That’s kind of the point of the post. I like listening to Marshmello for at least three main reasons.

First, I don’t just sing bass, I love to listen to bass, and Marshmello never disappoints when it comes to quality, deep, bass lines. Even in the songs I don’t listen to, the bass lines are awesome. Maybe I can find instrumental versions of those. (Ha ha)

Second, almost all of his work is multi-layered synths and electronic loops over which talented lyricists sing their songs. I grew up fiddling with music on early home computers and that electronic sound is a huge part of my musical psyche. I love the ragged waveforms and thick mixes that Marshmello puts together.

Third, I respect the wide collaborative arc that he has pursued. I’ve already mentioned some of the artists he has worked with and the number is growing. Being able to work with such a wide range of styles is a tribute to his skills as a music producer.

So, what’s safe to listen to from Marshmello?

I highly recommend Sad Songs, Room To Fall, and Rescue Me, all from Joytime III. There are other gems on that same album like Falling to Pieces, Run It Up and Down. The singles Alone, Happier, and Wolves are all excellent choices. That’s a good start, and further exploration I leave to you.

As I mentioned already, you have to be selective about which tracks to listen to, but the talent and the great music are worth the time to curate some lyrics. Google makes it easy to do this, and most of the time, if you know anything about the collaborating artist, you’ll have some idea what kind of lyrics will accompany the music.

So there it is, another look into my musical playlist. I hope it didn’t convince you I was crazy…

Thanks for reading to the end! Tomorrow we’ll circle back to an exposition on one of my recurring writing themes and the day after that, I’ll post about the concept of the church as a body.

 

Photo Credit – Q1q2q3qwertz  –  CC BY-SA 4.0

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21 Days of Posts – Day 11 – The Christian Life – Contentment

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

Day 11 brings us back to the topic of the Christian life and specifically, the idea of contentment.

What does that word mean? It’s not happiness, because it is possible to be happy, but not content. If the thought that whatever is causing your happiness will eventually stop is always in the back of your head, then you do not have contentment, just happiness.

It’s not peace, by the world’s definition. It is possible to be content, but not be at peace, although these two fit together better than contentment and happiness. If we are truly at peace, in a Godly sense, then yes, we can probably consider ourselves content.

Paul talks a lot about contentment. Philippians 4:11 & 12 are common verses cited here for those looking to understand contentment, in the face of any circumstances.

11 – I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 – I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

Paul went through a LOT. Shipwrecked, arrested, hungry, rejected, you name it, Paul experienced it, but in it all he was content, regardless of the chaos swirling around him.

In the first epistle to Timothy, we are warned against thinking that godliness is a means to financial gain (6:5). There was much controversy and many false teachers surrounding the believers. The oft misquoted verse of 6:10 follows shortly after this warning, attempting to explain why contentment in financial matters is important, whether wealthy, poor, or even enslaved.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Hebrews says this even more plainly in chapter 13, verse 5 –

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

The bottom line is this – contentment is a choice. We choose to be content, once we learn how to be. Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually come immediately as part of the “welcome to salvation” package. It must be learned and it starts with trusting that God’s plans are better than our plans (as mentioned on Day 9 of this series) and that he has us where he wants us, and how he wants us, for a reason.

Do we always see and understand His reasons? No, absolutely not, but as we learn to trust in him, we will eventually (and correctly) conclude that is doesn’t matter if we understand, just that we learn to be content and always be listening for what God wants us to do.

That’s it, short and to the point. Thanks for reading to the end!

Tomorrow’s topic is hurt – specifically why do we have to experience it, if God loves us so much?

 

Photo Credit – Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

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21 Days of Posts – Day 8 – Why I Write About Relationships

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

Day 8! Wasn’t sure it was going to happen, given the storms we had around here. Our power was out overnight and estimated to not be back until late tonight. Thankfully, it appears that Georgia Power was fairly conservative with their estimates, so this post will go out on time, which you know already, because your reading it now…aren’t you?

If I was brave enough to include anyone else besides my wife as a beta reader for my books, you would see a common pattern in my writing, whether it is my science fiction stories, my action/thrillers, my fantasy novel, or the others I have started. You would see that regardless of the background circumstances, one of the key elements of my works is relationships.

Duh, you say…all books are fundamentally about relationships. Without relationships, books are dull and characters are uninteresting. Why would I read a fiction book that did not include relationships of some kind? Relationships define characters, determine how characters react to circumstances, and become motivation for the main plot of the story. You can safely argue they are essential to any good story.

For me, as the author, there is more to it than that. I get to explore, in my head at least, and sometimes on the page, relationships that I’ve never experienced. I can write about brothers (I only have a sister). I can write about terrible parents (my parents are/were wonderful). I can write about love triangles, sacrificial relationships, codependent couples, lost spouses, whatever strikes my fancy and contributes to the story.

It’s not a requirement that I experience these things for real, just that I can dive into them in my head, and, thankfully, remove myself from them when I’m done writing about them. It’s another method of experiencing things I’ve never experienced, and frankly, probably don’t want to experience, in most cases.

Who would want to be the man or woman who loses a spouse, or the person whose parents were terrible, or that person stuck in a love triangle, codependent, or otherwise abusive relationship? But how much do eager readers gobble up those experiences in the form of fiction? We can look at the astonishing sales statistics for everything from the Twilight series to the Fifty Shades of Grey series and see how popular these pursuits of broken relationships are. Why?

We can ask fifty different people and get close to fifty different answers, but the bottom line is escape. Escape from this day-to-day life, which for most may not have a lot of excitement in it. This life may not be exactly what they envisioned and they are looking for…excitement? Catharsis? Escape? Romance? A redemption story? A happy ending? Something else?

As with all human pursuits that disregard God, some of the things these readers hope for are only ever fiction. They’re not becoming a vampire to love and live forever, or attracting the attention of a ludicrously rich love interest. However, within the will of God, we can get both of these things, if not exactly the same form as the rest of the world expects.

Our Christian life, lived within the will of God, will result in eternal life (thankfully, not as a vampire), and will connect us to the God to whom everything belongs, because he made it all. We might not gain access to all of that here in this life, but there are far better riches we inherit.

Am I saying that reading fiction is wrong? No, no, no no! There are great stories out there that will enrich our lives if we take the time to read them (or watch the movie), but realizing that the greatest story ever told, that of God and his redeeming love for us, is actually true should remain foremost in our minds as we enjoy the fruits of man’s writing labors.

Thanks for reading to the end! Tomorrow’s post returns to the Christian life, as i mentioned previously, diving into the differences in our plans and God’s plans.

 

Photo Credit – Photo by The HK Photo Company on Unsplash

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21 Days of Posts – Day 7 – Disappointment

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

If you read the title, you’ll know that today’s topic is, as I mentioned at the end of Day 6’s article, definitely something we all experience from time to time – disappointment. It is as certain as the sign in the picture above.

Other people will disappoint us. That is frustrating. We will disappoint ourselves. That is even more frustrating. At least in the former instance, we had no real control over what the other person did, but we had complete control over what we did, so disappointing ourselves almost always is the more frustrating and infuriating feeling.

What do we do to disappoint ourselves? I can only really speak for myself, so here are some of my most disappointing actions, or inactions (mostly inactions).

  • Getting frustrated too easily with other drivers while driving. I truly over-react to other people’s driving. My family can attest. I’m always disappointed with both the other drivers’ actions or inactions, and my negative reaction.
  • Not posting regularly to my blog sites (this one and my other one). I am hoping to stop disappointing myself at the conclusion of this 21-day fast.
  • Not saying the right thing in my daily conversations. or not saying anything at all, thereby allowing the inclinations of others to dictate what divergent path our conversation takes.
  • Not immediately following the gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit in my daily conversations and actions.
  • Not finishing a book…a HUGE, continuous disappointment.
  • Not “taking care of business” in relation to all the things that need done in our (still new to us) house.

It’s a short list, but chock full of typical ways I disappoint myself. You may relate to some of these examples, you may not. The best that I can do is get up the next day, promise myself I’ll do better, and move on.

But what does scripture say about disappointment?

There are a number of verses, particularly in Proverbs where the righteous are NOT disappointed, but the wicked are (10:28 and 11:23 in particular). Job also has some references to this same idea (11:20 and 20:18), but these are very situational.

Jeremiah ran into disappointment with his people over their sin (Jeremiah 8:15)

However…

In Psalms we see where there is assurance and declaration that God will not disappoint us (62:5) and in the New Testament, Peter tells us to cast all our anxiety on Him because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7) and we will not be disappointed by Him. In Romans we see the declaration that God works for the good of those who love him (8:28), so it is inferred that we should not expect to be disappointed.

But we might be…and bear with me on this point as I believe it is very important. For us humans, down here in the Lower Story, circumstances may occur which do not seem favorable to us (and very well may not be, by all practical measure) and we will want to be disappointed that God did not do for us what we believe he promised. But our definition of “good for us” and God’s definition of “good for us” tend to be very different things.

We have to keep that difference in mind as we move through this life. Yes, others will disappoint us, we will disappoint ourselves, but God will never disappoint us as long as we understand that his plans for us are better than our plans for us.

We’ll dive deeper into this idea two days from now, on Day 13. Tomorrow’s post will provide some insight into my writing process and style, but will unlikely be tied to an obvious spiritual point, but we’ll see.

Thank you for reading to the end! If you have missed any of these posts, you can simply walk back through the previous posts, but I suggest you start at Day 1, or whichever one you missed, and read them in chronological order, or some things may not make a lot of sense, or may seem out of place.

 

Photo Credit – Photo by Oscar Sutton on Unsplash

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21 Days of Posts – Day 2 – New Year’s To-Do List

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

Welcome to Day 2 of 21 days of posts corresponding to the 21-day fast being observed at our church. Today, I am going to go into more detail about something I mentioned on Day 1 – my 2020 To-Do list.

I gave up on New Year’s resolutions about two decades ago and in the last few years I’ve turned to creating a To-Do list for the year. I admitted on Day 1 that my frustration was that my list never seemed to change much from year to year. In the interest of full transparency, here is my list for 2020. You may chuckle, laugh, and snicker as much as you like, I can’t hear it.

  1. Finish writing a book
  2. Sing more – at the college and at church
  3. Read more (a book a month)
  4. Take more vacation days (and use them effectively)
  5. Continue having daily devotions
  6. Pray even more
  7. Continue to teach my son to drive
  8. Go to even more parties and events
  9. Tell my wife I love her every day
  10. Talk with my mom more (at least once a week)
  11. Regularly communicate with my daughter
  12. Try something new every month
  13. Walk on the beach more (requires vacation – see #4)
  14. Post more blog entries (at least two a month)
  15. Build stuff
  16. Show love more
  17. Lose more weight (~205 would be nice)
  18. Walk/exercise more
  19. Continue to fix the house
  20. Chase the lion…

You see that some are interdependent (#4 and #13, for example), and others are redundant (#1 and #20, as explained on Day 1). Some have been there for four or more years, but there are a couple of new ones.

Item #15 is new. I want to build stuff. Woodworking, crafting, and “making” are all on my radar for this year and I hope to build both useful (having a definite purpose) and useless (having a more subjective purpose) things. I never used to want to create things, at least not since I quit building with Lego pieces. Now I want to make things to help and things to appreciate.

Item #16 is a variant of a previous year’s item. Saying this phrase out loud feels odd, like the words are supposed to be in that order, but that is the order I need them in. I don’t have a problem loving people, but I do have a problem with showing that love, so #16 is huge this year. I’ll explain in a later post, or posts, why #16 is so hard for me and maybe it will sound and feel familiar to you. If so, let me know and we can encourage each other to show love more.

Item #19 is new also, a direct result of buying a house and finding all of the things that need fixed. We knew when we bought it that there would be a long list of updates and repairs, but we’ve been surprised at least three times now. I’m kind of done with surprises with the house…I want to fix what I know is wrong/broken/messed up before discovering anything else.

All I know is that if I can do half of the things on this list, I believe I will feel like I accomplished something come January 2021, and maybe I can add some new items to the list. If I accomplish them all, then I believe I will feel as if I caught that lion…

 

Before I completely sign off for today, here is a fairly solid, numbered list of topics for each day. This way you can pick and choose which posts you want to read. Just imagine that each numbered entry says “day” in front of it.

  1. Jan. 5th – Discombobulation
  2. Jan. 6th – New Year’s To-Do List – you are here…
  3. Jan. 7th – Romance – Twilight vs the real thing
  4. Jan. 8th – Rejection
  5. Jan. 9th – Writing (in general)
  6. Jan. 10th – Hope
  7. Jan. 11th – Disappointment
  8. Jan. 12th – Why I write about relationships
  9. Jan. 13th – The Christian life – our plans vs God’s plans
  10. Jan. 14th – Why I like to listen to The Cure
  11. Jan. 15th – The Christian life – contentment
  12. Jan. 16th – Hurt
  13. Jan. 17th – Chasing the lion
  14. Jan. 18th – Why I like to listen to Marshmello
  15. Jan. 19th – Why I write about impossible decisions
  16. Jan. 20th – The church as a body
  17. Jan. 21st – Contributing talents to the church
  18. Jan. 22nd – Why I like to listen to Billie Eilish
  19. Jan. 23rd – Why I write about broken characters
  20. Jan. 24th – Connection between people
  21. Jan. 25th – The Christian life – learning and pruning

 

Photo credit – Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

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21 Days of Posts – Day 1 – Discombobulation

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1 (this one does), then you should stop now and go read from Day 1. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

It’s that time of year again, when our church conducts a 21 day fast. Each congregant is asked to pick something or somethings to fast from, whether it is food items, habits, coffee/caffeine, or something else. I struggle each year to pick things, as I greatly dislike the two to three day “head is going to explode” feeling sans caffeine, and I don’t have a ton of bad habits to avoid.

I do have some bad habits, like not posting to this site on a regular basis, or writing at all on a regular basis, so I’m going to flip the script and fast from not doing something. I’m going to post something all twenty-one days of this fast, even if it is just “hi” and “bye”, but I will attempt to do better than that.

Today, I feel the need to express my first days of the year discombobulation, which I’ve had for several years now, but seem to be acute this year. Yes, 2019 was a turbulent year, with buying a house, attending my 25-year college reunion, experiencing my daughter’s wedding, being amazed at marking my 25th wedding anniversary (who knew there was someone out there who would put up with me for 25 years?), my youngest child turning 18, and everything in between those events.

So I find myself discombobulated. That’s an expensive word that just boils down to “confused”. I described it as not being able to put all the pieces into a Perfection game, timer or no timer. I’m having trouble with the fact that my annual “to-do” list (what I do in place of New Year’s resolutions) hasn’t changed much in three years, with “finish a book” still at the top of it. “Read more”, “exercise”, and “stay in touch with family” are also still on there, but I did add a twentieth item to my 2020 list – “chase the lion”.

“Chase the lion” comes from the title of a book by Mark Batterson, the full title being –

“Chase the lion. If your dream doesn’t scare you, it’s too small.”

Mark Batterson is the author of Christian inspirational books, about a dozen of them, and while I have not yet read this book, I look forward to it (#3 on my 2020 to-do list – read more). I may read more of his stuff if I like this one, but just the title of this one is enough to warrant a place on my list.

While this book is focused on dreaming big in relation to doing God’s work and putting our trust in him, regardless of circumstances and resources, my personal lion for now is finishing a book. So the first item and the last item on my list are essentially the same thing – finish a book. We’ll have to see if I can do that in the next three hundred or so days.

Back to discombobulation. The pieces of my life are having difficulty going back into regular places, whether it is work, dealing with our still-new-to-us house, my participation in church activities like worship and life groups, my family (a wide-ranging and many-faceted topic), or other aspects of life that refuse to settle. I like regularity and dislike chaos, so this confusion and unsettling are…unsettling and confusing.

I hope that in the next few days I can get to a stasis point where my mind is reaching some kind of equilibrium. That would make moving into this new year and new decade a bit easier. I suspect some of my uneasiness relates to my rapid approach to the age of fifty, but I’ll deal with that thought in another post.

I also have to accept the fact that God may need me in a state of discombobulation so that I will learn something, or have something pruned from me that I need to discard. Unfortunately, only time will tell, and I’m pretty impatient, too. I guess I’ll have to deal with that in later post, also.

 

Photo credit – Photo by Gabriel Crismariu on Unsplash

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Yet Another NaNoWriMo Win (and another WIP)

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I did it again! Fifty thousand words in 30 days. Another work in progress to hopefully someday complete. I accomplished the same results this year for NaNoWriMo, but went about it a totally different way.

In previous years, I would get up an hour earlier in the morning to write and would generally accomplish a third to a half of my daily writing before going to work. This year, I did not get up earlier. I wrote at lunch and I wrote in the evenings and and I wrote on the weekends and I simply got it done. Not sure how, because in the past when I’ve gotten up early I’ve had difficulty winning. Not this year. Maybe that means I will finish this book.

To be honest, I don’t have a book, not even a pale facsimile of a book. I have a couple of scenes, probably opening and middle scenes, and a whole lot of character development. I wrote more “flashback” than current story and wrote one scene, a date scene, in far too much detail. Over half of it will be tossed in the final edit, most likely, but it’s there on the page now.

I have a decent grasp of two characters, a really good grasp on one character, a wildcard mystery character that is more “info ex machina” right now than useful character. I have zero character development for the antagonist. How did I get 50,000 words done and have zero antagonist development? I did as I described above.

I mean, I have plenty of second hand conjecture and “info ex machina” information on the antagonist, but he only shows up in one written scene, which is not complete. He actually does show up “off-screen” at another point in the story, but I’m not sure where that scene falls in the storyline.

My plan of attack at this point is as follows:

  • Finish a couple of the draft scenes I have
  • Work out a full story outline, from opening scene to climactic final confrontation
  • Work out a full time line, from earliest point in the lives of the characters to the final confrontation
  • Start outlining scenes – just a list of scenes
  • Start writing these scenes
  • Do lots of editing

I’ll be creating a Kanban board to track my progress for this novel, so that should be interesting. I might post screenshots of it as I move along. I hope against hope that I don’t get bored of this story. Wish me luck!

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A NaNoWriMo Update and Other Thoughts

Reading Time: 3 minutes

We’re closing in on halfway through NanoWriMo and my word count is over the 22K mark. I’m a touch ahead of the minimum word count, so that’s OK for now, but I need to get far more ahead, because Thanksgiving is coming…

I found an interesting technology tidbit today. I’m fairly certain that I’ve never mentioned I am a Type I diabetic, at least not in anything published on this site-maybe on a previous site. I’ve been diabetic since I was thirteen years old, so that is creeping up on thirty-five years living with an incurable, but treatable disease.

As with most incurable diseases, especially ones that affect millions of people, there is a sizable support community on the Internet. There are multiple foundations working hard to find a cure, but they are all hampered by the need for any commercial solutions to be approved by the FDA or other regulatory bodies before they are available to the public.

Well, open source technology is trying to make an end-run on this bottleneck. It is succeeding to some degree. Before I dive into how, let me explain the mechanics behind diabetes, particularly Type I diabetes. To simplify this explanation, I will take some shortcuts that medical professionals might feel are inaccurate, but I’m not writing a dissertation, just trying to explain what is broken.

In Type I diabetes, the pancreas, which is responsible for producing insulin (among other things) stops working. This is the root cause of the problem. Without insulin, the body’s cells cannot process sugar, or more accurately, glucose. Levels of glucose build up in the blood, causing a condition called hyperglycemia, or elevated blood sugar. The short-term effects are intense thirst, excessive urination, lethargy, and a craving for sweets or food in general. The long-term effects are damaged organs and bodily systems from dealing with the excessive amount of glucose in the blood.

When a pancreas functions normally, it can react to higher levels of glucose in the blood and produce more insulin to allow the body’s cells to process the glucose. In diabetics, this doesn’t happen. Unless the body gets insulin, a person will eventually slip into a coma and die. There have been dozens of attempts to replace a damaged pancreas – transplants, insulet cell (the part of the pancreas that produces insulin) implantation, and other weirder methods have been tried, all in an attempt to bring the glucose cycle back to normal – a person takes in carbohydrates, the digestive system breaks them down and the pancreas produces insulin to process the resulting glucose.

Insulin therapy, whether shots or pumps, has always been complicated to balance because to properly dose insulin you must know your blood glucose (bg) level. This requires, for most diabetics, pricking their finger and using a test strip and an electronic meter to determine their blood glucose level. They then can use a formula to determine how much insulin to take. Unfortunately, taking insulin after eating, when bg levels are high, has been determined to be less effective at preventing long-term complications of diabetes, which are many, some of which are more dangerous than the disease itself.

It was discovered that the better way to treat with insulin is to determine how much insulin to take prior to eating, to keep bg levels from rising too high. This requires knowing how many carbohydrates are in your current meal, and also knowing how much insulin it takes for your body to process that amount of carbohydrates, which varies from person to person.

The ideal system would eliminate the finger sticking and insulin calculations and coordinate information from a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and feed that directly into a insulin pump, so that the pump can automatically determine how much insulin to deliver. This would essentially create an artificial pancreas. That’s exactly what two open source projects are doing now. Check out the main website for these amazing projects. They do a much better job than I would in explaining what they are doing.

Here is the Looping website and here is the OpenAPS site, both of which are making strides toward creating an artificial pancreas system. Pretty exciting stuff.

I’ll check back in once I top 30,000 words.