06.24.09
Posted in Personal, Character at 10:46 am by melody
One evening last week, as my husband and I were sitting on a public bench in Coronado, California, eating ice cream from the Moo Time Creamery, he said, “You have such simple taste.” He was commenting on my choice of strawberry and chocolate. No mix-ins, nuts, sprinkles, whipped cream, rocky road or triple fudge nut brownie-whatever smorgasbord-flavored ice cream. I said with a smile, “I’m a simple kind of gal.”
And it really is true. Despite my rather unique personality quirks and my somewhat unorthodox career choices, I am a woman with a simple heart. I aspire to be a simple-minded person who is right with God, and is not terrified by the reasonings of men, and who can look at the stars and exclaim in adoring wonder, “when I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man, that You are mindful of him?” [Oswald Chambers, Servant as Lord]
The path of faith is not fraught with the intricacies of human intellect and reasoning. There is nothing reasonable about faith. It is the belief in things not seen. If we must see to believe, prove before we commit, we don’t have faith at all. People who need to know outcomes before they engage tend to fail miserably in this task of being simple-minded.
Sheep are simple-minded creatures. They go wherever the Shepherd leads them. They haven’t been taught to second-guess and analyze and weigh the pros and cons and run statistical analyses of positive versus negative outcomes. Their lives are simple. If their Shepherd is good, then they will be safe. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to true freedom in faith is that most of us do not completely trust in the goodness of our Shepherd and are not willing to say, “Wherever You go, I will go. Lead me, and I will follow.”
Do you love Him? Do you trust Him? Then follow Him, wherever the path may go.
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06.19.09
Posted in Personal, Sovereighty of God at 10:28 am by melody
A random thing happened to me this week as I was preparing for my trip to San Diego. The name of someone I’d met on my last trip to SD kept popping up on my Facebook on the list of people I might know. It seemed strange, out of the ordinary. I’d thought of this person a couple of times the past year, even thought of sending him a copy of the new Diner anthology, as he’d asked for a copy of my novel once it was published.
As we well know, that might take awhile, so I debated whether to take a copy of the book with me on the slim chance that I’d have time to stop by the hotel where he worked. You see, I wasn’t booked at that hotel. I didn’t plan on making the effort to get the book to him. It seemed a ridiculous waste of space and weight in my already burgeoning luggage. But, I made a promise a long time ago that I wouldn’t walk away from an open door, if I was sure God had opened it for a reason. I packed the book.
When my husband and I arrived at our hotel, there was a problem with our reservation. No other suitable rooms at the hotel were available. The alternate hotel was booked full. So we ended up at the hotel where my acquaintance worked. He was working that day. I wasn’t sure if he remembered me, didn’t know how to start a conversation at the right time. So I waited.
Timing is, indeed, everything in life, and the art of waiting on God to open the door, in His time, is a skill that takes a lifetime to master. But God does open doors. He shows the way. All things, even small things, work together according to His plan. So I waited. I didn’t rush. I made alternate plans to send the book later if no opportunities came along to give it personally.
We checked out of the hotel. There he was again. Perfect timing. The book was given, a hand was shaken. Kindness offered. Hopefully, a heart touched, a life changed, a promise fulfilled. Everything happens for a reason, when it happens, exactly as it should happen. Serendipity, fate—whatever you would like to call it—the hand of God moves tirelessly through this world, like the constant, steady breeze off the ocean. I need only to look at the smallest of events to find abundant and ongoing evidence of His mercy, provision, and guidance.
I do not know what the future holds; I simply know Who holds it, and that is enough.
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06.12.09
Posted in Daily Living, Personal at 7:44 am by melody
As I sit in my kitchen, enjoying a beautiful summer morning, I realize that much of our lives are spent waiting. When we are children, we wait to grow up. When we are adults, we wait for the right person to marry, the right job, the big break in our careers, the arrival of new members of the family. We wait for our parents to grow old and die, we wait for our children to come back for a visit, we watch and wait as our spouses forget what are names are, we wait for that inevitable time when we’re done with this life…we wait. As I grow deeper and stronger in God’s grace, I begin to understand that time is irrelevant to God. Three months, three years, a decade, or forty years spent wandering in the wilderness—it makes no difference to God, because He is eternal. He does not require human-made timetables in order to accomplish His will. He simply accomplishes it when it is time. It’s useless and a bad idea to try to rush God. Why? Because, when we want God to move faster or do something different we think we know better than He does what is best for us. When we try to push God into our timeline, we defy His sovereignty and we withdraw our resignation to His will. We try to go it alone.Take Abraham, for example. He tried to rush God’s promise of a child by producing one with Hagar, and the contention between Isaac and Ishmael continues to this day in the Middle East. I believe you cannot appreciate the sovereignty of God until you have practiced the art of waiting on God. Waiting involves faith. It involves perseverance. It involves active belief in the face of contrary evidence. Waiting is not passive. It is an active, daily choice to bend one’s will to the Will of the God who made you. It is an act of sacrifice, of love, of respect for the character and justice and goodness of the One in whom you have put your trust.
As I prepare to give up my car for a few months and become a member of a one-car household, I’m a bit anxious. I know a lot more of my time will be spent waiting. Waiting to do errands on the one day a week I’ll have use of a car, planning and postponing activities that will not fit into that one day, relying on other people to do things for me or give me rides to places. But I’m looking forward to it, actually. I embrace the chance to experience the lack of self-sufficiency, even in the minutiae of my daily life. I pray it will bring me closer to experiencing a complete absence of self-sufficiency in my walk with God. And I‘m sure it will deepen my appreciation of how richly blessed I am in all things.
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06.11.09
Posted in Writing News at 12:42 pm by melody
Hey all,
I just got a note from the editor at SCR, and the issue is just now shipping out, due to unforseen delays. Anyway, so everyone hang tight if you ordered a copy—it should be on it’s way shortly…
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05.27.09
Posted in Personal, Health at 9:42 am by melody
I just returned from an interdisciplinary seminar in Florida designed to educate people about how to identify, transform, and create healthy living spaces.After spending five full days with a group of people who are passionate about creating a culture of health through prevention and awareness, I’m deeply moved by the depth and breadth of intelligence, shared wisdom, and true commitment to helping and serving others that radiates from this group of people. We come from all kinds of educational and professional backgrounds and collectively possess a smorgasbord of professional aspirations, but we are bound together by a single-minded vision—to rid the world of disease, illness, and premature death by envisioning a world where the human body is respected as the world’s most perfectly designed machine, in harmony with nature, and unimpeded by the harmful effects of well-intentioned technological advances.The guiding principle behind this unconventional way of thinking is the idea that the human body is designed and created with an amazing capacity to heal itself. Reducing toxic loads on the body and giving the body a chance to rest, repair, and regenerate itself is the keystone to long-lasting health and happiness. Bringing the houses in which we live into better harmony with nature and neutralizing many of the chemical and electrosmog effects we encounter every day is an important “missing link” largely overlooked in today’s healing professions.
Healing the human body should be a holistic team approach because, just like each of our fingerprints are unique, so are our responses to environmental stimuli and the remedies we use to bring our bodies back into balance.
Over the past week, I have met people who have their own personal triumph stories, just like mine, of how they overcame debilitating illness and learned how to function in an inhospitable physical environment. Someone else said it was good to finally be doing something that means something. We are survivors. We thrive under adversity. We believe there is a solution. We have purpose, and we have hope.
People are the world’s most precious resource. No amount of technology or convenience or “global villaging” will ever replace the purity of interpersonal contact, relating to individuals as individuals, not numbers or categories, and caring about the well-being of each person who crosses our path. Whether we are creating healthier places for people to live or helping a confused high school kid from Tulsa figure out the maze of protocols on Southwest Airlines, we need to try to help others.
One of my friends once told me he how much he appreciates “the effort” I put into life. By “effort,” I think he means the fact that I make an effort to care. Our society is much to hurried and self-absorbed to pay attention to the hurts and needs of each stranger that passes by in our daily lives.
I try to care. It takes effort. It takes commitment. Sometimes I get disillusioned and discouraged, and the reward is never commensurate with the sheer amount of time and emotional energy it takes to reach out, make connections, and follow up: to go into the world with a mission of deliberate kindness and generosity and compassion. But if I shut myself away in my house and didn’t try, I would be rejecting my purpose in life—to love as Christ first loved me.
Sometimes I do wonder if it‘s all worth it, because people don’t reciprocate and they often punish us out of their own fear or insecurity. But then I realize I don’t do it for reciprocation; I do it because I’m meant to.
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05.05.09
Posted in Writing, Inspiration at 12:25 pm by melody
One of the deep desires of the human soul is the need for reconciliation. I’ve been working on a short story the past few days about a boy in fourth grade who loved me. In my own nine-year-old way, I loved him too, but I chose to reject him, and I never had a chance to make things right. As I’ve worked on this story, weaving a little bit of fact into a whole lot of fiction, certain things have become vividly clear to me in my own personal walk with the Lord.
Keith Ferrazzi, a notable marketing and networking guru, says in his book Never Eat Alone that one of the most common reasons people do not maximize on the networking opportunities available to them is because they will not accept an offer of help for free. It’s strange that in this society of entitlement and government bail-outs, most people still instinctively believe they should earn or be worthy of any good thing that is given to them.
Whether this is symptomatic of man’s ego (I don’t really need your help, I can do it myself) or a sense of reciprocity (if I take this, then I’ll owe you), this attitude seeps into our spiritual lives as well. Many of my friends who have spurned Christianity point to old scars inflicted upon them by well-meaning members of the church. I don’t know about you, but I remember my childhood scars. I remember the scars accumulated on the playground by the cruel actions and words of other children, scars accumulated by thoughtless remarks or patterns of behavior by teachers, parents, and other role models. We say these things are in the ancient past and don’t affect us anymore, but I believe they do. The scars we incur when we are young stay with us and shape the way we see the world.
Many of us feel like the path to heaven is found by being the good son, doing our duty and keeping our head down, nose to the grind, in the hopes that one day, the inheritance will be ours. This is good and law-abiding and all that, but it is boring. It isn’t vibrant. It isn’t earth-shattering. There is no guarantee, and it is ultimately futile. We grumble and groan at the penitent murderer on death row who “finds God” the day before he is executed, and think it’s just not fair for him to get a free ride after living his life the way he did.
But it is this murderer, this thief on the cross next to Jesus, who is closer to the kingdom of God than any of the church-going, law-abiding citizens of a frozen pseudo-Christianity who think the gift of salvation is just an accessory they should add to their collection of good deeds. We are all prodigals, every last one of us. There is no one worthy to enter the kingdom of heaven on his own merit. Good sons do not win the prize. The undeserving prodigals receive the crown of gold when they are weeping on their hands and knees, begging for the mercy and favor of the King.
When I think back on the many, many ways I’ve failed my friends, my family, my husband, and my God, I am brought to a place of emotional destitution and shame. I cry out to God for mercy, to cover me with his grace, and to hide my wickedness in Himself. And every time I come, He is there to receive me and fold me up in His mighty wings. It is here in this place of reconciliation and forgiveness that I come to understand a little better the nature of the gift that has been given to me. “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Cor. 5:21) The mind-blowing magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice for us should bring us to our knees every single time we think of it. It should humble us and make us see the stupidity of thinking that we could ever do enough to make ourselves worthy to step into the presence of His perfect holiness. Yet because of this gift, He is here, watching and waiting, with arms wide open to welcome us back home.
Broken relationships and long-standing feuds are the norm in our society, but a man who responds with a steadfast spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness makes the world sit up and take note. One of my friends has had a soap-opera storyline become a reality in his own life, and yet he has responded with a love and grace that can only come from God. In the midst of his intense suffering, God’s name is magnified.
God does not have a problem with forgiveness. We are the ones who will not forgive either ourselves or the ones who have wronged us. Be a prodigal today, and ask for the gift of reconciliation. Even if that person doesn’t forgive you, God will always take you back, no matter what.
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05.01.09
Posted in Daily Living, Inspiration at 8:03 am by melody
Today I’m reeling from the news of another friend’s shattered marriage. While the natural question, “Why?” goes through my mind, I already know the answer. Sometimes there is no clear-cut “why.” All of us miss the mark, every single day, in both small and large ways. Whether it’s brushing off our quiet time with God to play another game on our iPhone or turning our back on a decade of marriage, we all fail. But God’s grace is sufficient for all things. He knows no difference between a millimeter or a mile—if we miss the mark, we miss it. Simply because we are justified by His blood does not mean we are sanctified in our actions. It is a daily struggle to make the choices that honor Him. No one is safe; no one is immune. We can make poor choices at any time, under any circumstances.
Our lives are not measured by what we accomplish in our careers. Neither are they measured by the number of successful years of marriage we’ve attained, nor how many children we have. They are measured by the depth of our inmost communion with God. No one else sees this part of us. Only God is intimately acquainted with it. When we go deep and decide to live life on the utmost edge of human experience—relinquishing all that we have and all that we are to the control of the Author of our salvation—this, my friends, this is the dwelling place of joy.
I am convinced that a relatively small percentage of people who call themselves Christ followers ever experience this depth and intensity of life. Instead, they are stuck in a pattern of hum-drum religious rituals that lack deeper meaning and purpose. The outside world sees this and thinks God is boring. What they need to see is a down-in-the-trenches, get-your-hands-dirty, running-with-your-hair-on-fire passion for Christ and the scared sh—lessness of a person wakeboarding off the tail of a Boeing 747.
The question is not whether we will suffer, but rather, when we suffer, will we suffer well? Faith is not faith until it has been tested and found to be true. In order to experience the joy of a vibrant life, we must allow God to bring us to the place where He strips us of every pretense of self-sufficiency and brings us to our knees in agony, where we call out to Him to either put us out of our misery or save us. Then He fills us with his awesome grace and mercy, allowing us to experience what it’s like to live life completely sustained by the power of the God of the universe. It’s a rush, man. It’s life-changing.
Is your hair on fire for God? Are you screaming at the top of your lungs and holding on for dear life? You can have this kind of life whether you park cars for a living, are a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, or are homebound because of a terminal illness. Just get right with God. Relinquish your love and your life to Him. Take a deep breath, plug into your Power Source, and let it rip. Your life will never be boring.
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04.20.09
Posted in Writing, Personal, Movies at 8:05 am by melody
I’m headed back up to Tulsa this week for a couple of days to hang out with my writing friends. We’re planning a reunion of a writing group that spontaneously formed after a writing conference this past summer. It’s funny how things happen.
Last year, I suffered through many disappointments with my writing career—projects that dried up, producers who vanished, a book tour that yielded less than desirable results—it was tough. I was in the middle of a two-year dry spell. No new publication. My first short story publication seemed like a false start to my publishing career. I traveled a lot, ostensibly for research, ostensibly to learn more about my craft. I actually did do both of those things. But when a friend asked me point blank why I was traveling so much, I had to think about it, and my answer was, “To meet new writing friends.”
“Really? Are friends important to you? Important to your writing process?”
And, yeah, now that I look back, friends really are important. I was searching for something. I was looking for community—an extended family of sorts, to whom I need not explain myself, who appreciate me for who I am, just as I am. I was searching for friends who like me for (or perhaps in spite of) all of my quirks and eccentricities, who enjoy my creativity and respect me as a colleague. Friends who encourage, nurture, and support each other on the difficult path of writing.
The seemingly random set of circumstances that brought me to this place and these people is, to the outside world, purely coincidental. But since I’ve seen the hand of God working so clearly in my life, I won’t insult Him by calling this bit of serendipity a result of blind luck. Everything happens for a reason, and whatever reason God had in mind for bringing me here, He has chosen to bless me with an abundance of His grace and mercy.
I watched the movie Henry Poole is Here over the weekend, and it was surprisingly moving and heartwarming. And whatever theological differences I might have with the Catholic Church about whether the face of Jesus would appear in a water stain on someone’s poorly constructed stucco wall, the deeper truth of that charming storyline is that the face of God always becomes clearer when you are looking for it. And even when neon signs are flashing “God is here” and alarm bells are clanging in your head and you know that funny buzzing, burning sensation in your chest is neither the remnants of Mom’s homemade chili nor an impending heart attack but something much deeper and more important, if you are not looking for God, you will not find Him. It’s as simple as that.
For most of my adult life, I’ve felt out of place. I wanted to go home but I didn’t know where that was. Perhaps it was because of my illness, or maybe because I moved to a big city where I didn’t have any family and didn’t know a single soul except my husband. Perhaps all of those things led me to feel like an outsider. What I do know is that I’ve been praying for people who feel like home. And now, it seems, I have found them.
Don’t underestimate the power of a kind word. It is a seed that has the potential to grow into a beautiful garden of blessing in yours and other people’s lives. To those who have sown those seeds in my life, those who have embraced me and I you, I want to say thank you. My life is richer for knowing you.
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03.30.09
Posted in Writing News at 9:02 am by melody
Last Friday was an ordinary writing day. I had just returned from mailing a story to a couple new markets and one new writing contest. My email box had two messages in it. One was from a magazine whose contest I’d completely written off because I hadn’t gotten any notification for fifteen months about it. I figured it was one of those “oh, by the way, you didn’t win” notifications that sometimes come months after the winning entry has already been published. So I my heart didn’t beat any faster and my palms didn’t sweat when I clicked the button to read the message.
“I am delighted to inform you…” That sweet, sweet phrase is so seldom encountered by me anymore. I had won my first national writing contest, with prize money and publication. The thing about email—you can’t tell if the envelope is thick or thin, so you can’t mentally prepare yourself.
It reminds me of a sunny day in Palo Alto, CA when I opened my acceptance letter to Stanford University. The envelope was thick. It had forms I needed to sign in addition to the acceptance letter. I knew in my gut before I opened it that it was good news.
That beautiful summer day in California changed my life. This sunny day in Texas changes my writing career. Maybe not in very noticeable ways—I’ll still look the same, sound the same, do the same things to market my writing. But on the inside, it’s a milestone of the highest magnitude. It’s professional validation from the literary community that I am welcome on the playground. It’s the first of what I hope to be many more open doors.
One comment from a Facebook friend said I was such a great example of the persevering writer. Other friends have admired my longsuffering nature. This is indeed strange, because I have never, ever been a patient person. I used to have very poor follow-through with projects, people, jobs. I was a self-sabotaging quitter. But then God took away the thing that I loved most dearly in life—music—and began to create in me a heart that was more like His. He gave me writing as a gift to help me through the dark days of walking with Him through the valley. And I became impatient with Him, competitive, proud. He blessed me with “almosts” to encourage me, but never allowed me “success” in the world’s terms because He wanted me to love Him first and best.
The past few months have been very discouraging for me as a writer. Some of the exciting projects I was scheduled to work on have evaporated, and my inspiration and motivation to write waned as rejection letter after rejection letter came and the writer’s block held me in an iron grip. Finally, last month, I decided that writing was not the thing that sustained my soul—only God. He is the only thing I need, and the only thing I desire. Mentally and emotionally, I let go of writing. I laid it on the altar with my music and said, Lord, everything I have is Yours. Do what You will with it. Just let me love You.
When I did this, I realized that much of my frustration over the past several years came from the conviction that I had to carve out a place for writing to be first (or if not first, a very high) priority in my life. What I didn’t realize is that I thought by making writing my first earthly priority, somehow I could make it on my own.
What this period of wandering in the wilderness has taught me is that if God desires me to be successful in my writing, He will allow it when He desires it. I can’t control it, rush it, whine about it, or wave my tiny useless fists in the air to make Him change His mind. God is sovereign. And when we finally, truly lay everything that is precious to us on His altar, only when we let it go and give it away, only then will it return to us in a manner that is honoring to His name.
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03.23.09
Posted in Inspiration, Life at 5:26 pm by melody
It came as a surprise a couple of weeks ago when one of my friends informed me that he’d used my name in an essay he’d written for the NPR affiliate in Tulsa. Needless to say, I was curious to know what he’d said. The essay was about Facebook. I’d posted a status update that read, “Melody is, in fact, still alive.”
The post was a response to a snide comment from someone at a party that I hadn’t kept up with my status updates and she was wondering if I was still alive. The next day, I read an article on a Yahoo news blog about the growing need for cyber death notifications for hard-core online gamers and chat room aficionados, because often the online “friends” do not have real-life contact info (sometimes even a real name) to check in on a person when he or she suddenly disappears.
The world is becoming globally connected, and the surge in popularity of real-time micro-blogging applications like Twitter only reinforces the fact that our society is in the grip of a cultural contagion: we need constant affirmation of our significance. We want to feel like other people care about the minute details of our life.
People don’t really care what their Facebook friends are doing. They want other people to care what they’re doing, and so the billions of lines of meaningless text about the minutiae of our mundane lives are exchanged in a sort of understood reciprocation of the fundamental power source of the human ego. ME. Is it a form of exhibitionism? You bet. What does it say about us as a society?
Well, we all want to feel like our lives mean something. I’m as guilty of it as the next person. But time spent in the garden with God yields some spiritual realizations. We are only significant because God considers us significant. Nothing we do, nothing we accomplish, nothing we intrinsically are without Him are worth one single iota of time, or attention, or love from the Creator of the universe. We are like dust. We exist for a blink of an eye. Our lives are like vapor. But, each of us is significant because God cares. God knows the number of hairs on our head, comforts us in our distress, soothes our aching hearts and kisses our scraped knees when we fall down. God provides us every good thing, and He knows every desire in our hearts.
Why do we feel so compelled to Twitter and MySpace and Facebook an archive of the changing moods and events of our lives? To shout out at five-minute intervals to an impersonal and anonymous cyber-universe to confirm that we are, in fact, still alive?
God is right here. In your room. Sitting next to you. Waiting for you to tell Him about your day. Isn’t that amazing?
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