Life Happens

I've been having a lot of problems with my e-mail so I changed over to yahoo. I hadn't checked my old e-mail address for a while and discovered that I had a whole bunch of comments on my blog posts.

I must apologize for not posting here for a while. voicesnet.com originally used b2evolution as their blog host, but now hosts their blogs through their own site. That's where I had been blogging lately, but since you guys are reading me here, I'll continue to blog here too.

Thanks for all the comments, favorable and not favorable. As some of you have said, it's your opinion. I've been writing for a long time and have developed a pretty thick skin; you have to if you write knowing others will be reading it. It's also not uncommon for someone to take something you've written and understand it completely backward from what you intended.

But I do appreciate all your comments, though I prefer them without the colorful metaphors. :)

Someone commented that some of my postings were weird. Thank you, I intend to take that as a compliment. You see, I do see things differently than a lot of people. I find humor in some pretty strange situations. Part of my "weirdness" could come from the fact that my childhood playground was a cemetery. I wanted to be a mortician when I grew up but discovered I was allergic to formaldehyde (not a good match). Now, I write Christian Horror Fiction novels in my spare time. So, yes, some of my postings could sound a bit weird, but hopefully they're not boring.

Thanks for dropping by. You'll hear from me again soon.

Kris

It's been awhile since we had enough snow to slow down Central Illinois. Normally, everyone would just pull on their boots and grab their snow shovels and dig each other out. Last night we got enough snow that you'd barely get yourself dug out then the snow plow would come through and you spent the next hour digging yourself out, again.

What the snow didn't stop were the funerals. I work for a flower shop. A young man in my little town of 2200 was murdered out on a farm. I've only been working as a floral designer since August of last year and this was the first funeral I had worked that kept the phones ringing non-stop and wiped out every flower and plant in our two flower shops.

The interesting part of this, for our shops, was to try to get all these flowers delivered to the funeral home with the road conditions the way they were. Somehow we managed to get it all done without out too many mishaps.

With more snow on the way, tomorrow should be interesting.

My son called me last Tuesday morning to tell me that Zowie, his youngest daughter, had gotten hurt before she made it to school. She rides the bus.

Within the past two years, Zowie has been rushed to the emergency room to have stitches put in her finger because a wild kitten attacked her. She had been told to leave the wild kittens alone. A few months ago, she broke her arm. Her mom had told her not to slide down the porch railing. Guess how she broke her arm?

Back to Tuesday morning, Zowie decided to lick the ice off the bus window and got her tongue stuck. When she finally got her tongue loose she lost a layer of skin.

Yesterday, her mom caught her licking the ice off of a shopping cart. All I could say to that one was, “Only, Zowie.”

The Camargo Township Library hosted my very first book signing last month, Thursday, December 6. Despite all the other things competing with it like school programs, Christmas parties, ball games a visitation, and snow, I still had a good turnout.

My former employers drove about an hour and a half to attend my book signing. A couple of my graduating classmates came, as well as other friends and acquaintances. There was only one person who came through the line that I’d never met, but she knows my folks. Now she’s my friend too!

My bestfriend was a real blessing at the signing, she was my cashier. Having her there freed me up to just write and talk.
Everyone who participated in my book signing in some way, whether it was in hosting, helping or attending, helped to make my first book signing a wonderful experience I’ll never forget.

I won't be having anymore book signings until spring because of the possibility of ice or snow, like we're having this evening. Sales were pretty good through Christmas, but have slowed down. However, I'm working on putting my novel in more stores and trying to get on some radio and TV talk shows.

I do apologize for not keeping my blog up-to-date. My mom has been in poor health and in and out of the hospital a lot. I've started a new job while I was going through the whole publishing and printing process on my novel, so my energy and creativity took a real beating. Now that the first book in the trilogy is out, I've had a chance to regroup so-to-speak, and I'm working on the second book.

Any way, it's good to be back.

Kris

This is a copy of this week's article I submitted to my local newspaper for my "A New Song" column. I hope it blesses you.

I am constantly receiving prayer e-mails for our military men and women. Many of them are repeats of ones I’ve received before, but we can never pray too much for those who serve our country, especially where their lives are in constant peril.

Back in March of 2003, I wrote a prayer that was based on praying Psalm 91 for our military men and women. I felt moved to revise it a little and print it again. You can personalize this prayer by inserting your friend or your loved one’s name in it where appropriate.

I urge you to not only use this prayer often, but to make a copy of it and send it to a service man or woman. Let them know you are praying it for them. Sometimes, just knowing someone is praying for you and how they are praying, can be a great encouragement, relieving stress and fear.

Remember, praying the Word of God is a powerful way to pray. As you read the scriptures in other places in the Bible, you may feel the tug of the Holy Spirit to pray that scripture in some way, don’t hesitate to do this. There’s power in the living Word of God.

May the Lord bless you as you pray for our military men and women.

PSALM 91
(For Our Military)

Father in Heaven, you said in your Word that, “He who dwells in the shadow of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” Oh, Lord, I pray that our men and women in Iraq, Afghanistan, and any other place that places them in danger would know this truth. Lord, that they would be able to say of you, “He is our refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Save them from the deadly snares of the enemy; and keep them safe from deadly chemicals, diseases, traps, bullets, bombs, flying debris, fire, and torture and hostage situations.

Lord, give them courage to face whatever comes their way. Help them to be able to sleep when given the time, and let them not fear this “terror of night, nor attacks by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.” Even though a thousand may fall around them, Lord, keep our men and women safely protected with warriors from the army of God, your mighty angels. Oh, that our brave men and women would observe, only, the punishment of the wicked.

Father, I pray that our men and women in our military will make the Most High their dwelling, and their refuge—so that no harm will befall them, and no disaster will come near their dwelling. For you will command your angels concerning them to guard all their ways; and you will lift up their hands so that they will suffer no injury, and they can trample their enemies, those who would hold the United States hostage to fear, and who would enslave their own people.

Lord, you are in charge of all wars. And yet, you care for each individual who is involved in it. You rescue those who love you, and you protect them because they acknowledge your name. When they call upon you, you answer them, and are with them in time of trouble. Oh, Lord, I ask you to deliver our brave men and women in this war; lift them up and encourage them, and I ask that great honor be given to them when they return home. I ask that you would care for the families of our service men and women. Send them people who will help them and encourage them. Father, when our service men know that their families are not suffering in their absence, they can concentrate on the job at hand. Being distracted by worry is a tool of Satan. Lord I call upon you to protect our service men and women from the worries of what’s happening at home.

Satisfy our military men and women with long lives, and save them for their families, their friends, and for yourself.

In Jesus Name, I pray—Amen

It’s eleven o’clock p.m. and I just finished two and a half hours of virus program headaches. This started a week ago when my antivirus company took it upon themselves to renew my virus protection two weeks before it was due and by deducting $53 from my checking account without my prior approval. I called the company and finally gave up talking to a real person after being put on hold for an hour. I hate elevator music.

That wasn’t aggravation enough; the renewal pop-up kept bugging me several times a day saying that I had only X number of days before my renewal expired. So, I accessed the virus protection support through the internet and learned that I needed to download and run a program to shut the pop-up down, which would also synchronize the renewal date on my computer with the subscription department at the company. That worked just fine, or so I thought.

I decided to run the live updates to my program and get that taken care of, since that window popped up too. Here’s where the real problems started. After running the program I was prompted to restart the computer so everything would take effect. I restarted the computer and got a message that said I needed to reactive the product, meaning my virus protection program. Well, that’s dumb! I thought. The reactivation window was frozen and wouldn’t respond. I restarted my computer twice, and each time the reactivation window froze up. The definition of “insanity” is: Doing the same thing and expecting something different to happen.

I accessed the technical support area of the virus protection company and after following their advice for my particular problem and getting no where fast, I got on the chat room with a real live technician. Amazing! Everything he told me to do failed. He finally suggested I disconnect the internet and try to activate my product through the phone and then recontact him when I received a challenge notice. My computer wouldn’t give me the option of reactivating by phone. About this time I could feel the hives coming and wondered why Valium wasn’t an over the counter drug. Stress!!

After contorting myself into pretzel form, I managed to get behind my computer desk and pull the plug that connected the internet to my computer. I restarted the computer and clicked on a completely different screen to reactivate the virus protection program. What did it do this time, but try to access the internet that wasn’t connected anymore. AACK! I hurried to the back of the computer desk, while still aching from the last pretzel attack and recontorted to replug in the internet. Thankfully, the program reactivated--which brings me to the next problem.

I got a warning message that my emails would not be scanned for viruses, because of a program error. Wonderful! I clicked around in my virus protection program to see if there was some kind of correction program I could run, but short of reinstalling the program, which could possibly open a whole new can of worms, I didn’t find anything. I sat at my desk staring at the error message and thinking back to everything I had done to the program since this afternoon. I remembered running the live updates and noticing that it said something didn’t take, and it suggested running it again—which I didn’t. After deciding that the virus protection was pretty much useless without email protection, and that I didn’t have a whole lot to lose by rerunning the live updates, I ran them and restarted the computer. Everything is running fine.

Larry suggested that I contact the support technicians to tell them what I had to do to fix the problem. I got a hold of a different technician in the support chat room and tried to explain to her that I had fixed the problem. I had learned from experience that most of these big corporations farm out their technical support to other countries. One time I was talking with someone from India. I don’t know who I got for the last technician, but they couldn’t understand that I no longer had a problem, and they kept typing, “What kind of an error message are you getting now?” I finally typed, “Never mind. The problem is fixed. Have a good evening. Thanks for your time.” And I got out of there.

I received a phone call a half hour later from New York, wanting to know if my problem was taken care of. I took an aspirin and two Benadryl and went to bed. I don’t think I’ll turn the computer on at all tomorrow.

Mercy Overshadows the Guilt

“Have mercy on me, O God,
because of your unfailing love.
Because of your great compassion,
blot out the stain of my sins.
Wash me clean from my guilt.
Purify me from my sin.
For I recognize my shameful deeds—
for they haunt me day and night.
Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your sight.
You will be proved right in what you say,
and your judgment against me is just.
--Psalm 51:1-4, NLT

Last Sunday one of our pastors spoke about sin. You know, “sin”; the S word that no one wants to talk about? This pastor talked about how we tend to justify our actions, and even ignore the consequences of our actions, in an effort to try to down-play them as being something other than what they truly are – sin. Sin is selfishness, choosing my way instead of God’s way. Sin is placing myself before God; in other words, I become my own god.
A young friend read in her devotional, last week, about a girl who was a Christian but didn’t feel loved by God (Psalm 103:11-13). The girl discussed this problem with her dad and discovered that the reason for her feeling this way was unconfessed sin in her life. What she discovered was the same thing King David discovered when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and then killed Uriah in an effort to hide his sin; God doesn’t stop loving us, ever. It is our unconfessed sin that distances us from God. It is our own feelings of guilt that creates the barrier. Our fear of being “found out.”
The Bible says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” –1John 1:9, NIV, and “He who conceals his sin does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” –Proverbs 28:13, NIV.
Admitting our sinfulness begins to place us in correct relationship with God by acknowledging God’s right to authority over our actions (Psalm 51:5 & 6).
But it’s not enough to confess our sins to God and admit our sinfulness to be in right relationship to Him. From personal experience, I know that you can pray and cry for hours over your sins and still walk away feeling like dirt if you don’t accept God’s love and mercy, the gift of the forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ and the work He did on the Cross.
Anytime you pray for forgiveness of your sins, don’t move from your place of prayer until you feel the sweet love and peace that comes from knowing God’s love and mercy. Ask, as David did, “Listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea; hear me and answer me. My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught. . .”—Psalm 55:1-2a, NIV; ask that the Holy Spirit will give you the peace of knowing that: For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. . . Psalm 103:11-13, NIV.
This is my prayer for you that you know God’s mercy and you live free from guilt, always.

Kris

Hi, Everyone:

I've got great news. I saw my ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat)specialist and my speech therapist at the same time. I DON'T have any permanent damage to my vocal chords. The surgery site has no scar tissue and the nodules on my vocal chords are gone. We are still retraining my voice and I still get tired and hoarse after a while, but I'm improving. My doctor said it just takes time and it's important for me to know when to back off and stop talking. (But, but, I have months of talking to catch up on!) Isn't God good? HAPPY! HAPPY! HAPPY! :)

Thank you, for all of your prayers, love and support. It's been a long road to travel, but I can finally see the end in site.

Kris

I don't know when it happened. It snuck up on me and suddenly I was addicted. I became a Sponge Bob fanatic.

I don't have little kids at home, so I have no excuse. I needed something large and chunky to attach to my keys so I would quit losing them, and something that wouldn't fall to the bottom of my purse. I spotted a large Sponge Bob figurine with a big clasp at the top; it was at one of those semi-truck load sales and I got it for a quarter. There's a square on the back of his body that if you press it his eyes and tongue bulge out. I was hooked. It fit my warped sense of humor perfectly.

Now I have Sponge Bob stuff everywhere and I find myself watching the cartoons every chance I get. What riot! Here's a poem I wrote today. Enjoy!

Sponge Bob
June 6, 2007

He’s yellow and he’s wacky and he wears a tie and shirt.
He’s full of funny sayings, but his square pants are a quirk.

His best friend is pink and dopey, has bulging eyes and a pointy head.
But when Sponge Bob gets in trouble, it’s usually with a squid.

He likes to chase jelly fish, flip crabby patties, sing and play—
Sponge Bob is the greatest! Hey, what more can I say?

Larry’s working vacation week is over. We managed to get two rooms caulked, painted, sorted, cleaned and rearranged. I won’t forget this vacation because we still had the living room torn up on my birthday.

Have you seen Pirates of the Caribbean 3, yet? Larry took me to see it for the Saturday Matinee here in town. There were a lot of kids in attendance, mostly boys wearing eye patches. The movie is 3 hours long and had so many twists and plots that it became very confusing to keep everything straight. At least, during this one I wasn’t sitting there thinking, Is it over, yet? because I was still trying to figure it out. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the movie, but I had to wonder if the kids understood what was going on, of if they just enjoyed the action and humor. My guess is, the movie will still be a big hit.

I've been going through stored photos, photo albums and nostalgia. I bought some photo boxes with dividers and have been labeling and storing everything in the boxes because it takes up less space. I'm taking time to write information on the back of the photos so our son and grandchildren will know what and who they're looking at when they go through our effects.

I ran across a Christmas letter I had written in 1992, the year we bought our house. The letter described the shape our little fixer-upper was in and how I almost changed my mind about buying it. I'm glad we went ahead and did it. We've been here 15 years, now. It's definitely home.

The file was worn and crammed full. Written on the label was “Accomplishments.” I pulled the file out of the back of the file drawer and started thumbing through 37 years of licenses, certificates of completed college courses and other educational certificates, awards and recognitions; all of them mine. At one time, some of these had hung on a wall. I don’t hang them any more. Many of the awards and certificates had yellowed with age in their frames; they had become just so much paper, and that’s when I realized that they had meant nothing to anyone but me.

There was a time in my life when I was career driven. I always personalized whatever position I held and worked the job as if I owned it. I took it personally if the company or business I was working for was having problems and I took it harder if I made a mistake that cost the company in time or money. I set high goals and took college courses to improve myself. I sacrificed family time for a better position and better paycheck. I was proud of my accomplishments and my awards and certificates fed my desire for more.

Fortunately, as time progressed, I began to see what these “accomplishments” demanded of me. If I was in a contest and I won, I was the best, yes, but only the best until the next contest. If I took a computer class it added to my knowledge but I was only up to date until the next software upgrade. As a competitor, I couldn’t stand still and say, “This is what I have accomplished,” and then sit back on my haunches and quit. I would have to remain driven to stay in the game. But I began to realize how much of life and love I was missing.

Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” (Matthew 6:19-21, NIV). There is an amazing freedom in resting in the Lord. I’m not saying that I don’t set goals and that I never take classes anymore; my goals are now more easily obtainable and I’m able to relax and enjoy the process of reaching them even more than getting there. And, if it’s convenient and if Larry and I, both, feel it’s absolutely necessary for me to hone my skills in a certain area, I will take a class, but I’m no longer driven to be an “authority” on any particular subject. Being free of the competitive spirit is a wonderful feeling and opens the heart to love, friendship and serving others. And I wouldn’t trade that for another piece of paper if you paid me.