What type of script are you writing for your life?

When I say “script” I’m not talking about career goals or college plans. I’m not talking about current class schedules or finding the unique purpose for your future. While all of those are important, there are other parts of our life we need to script, too, such as:

• Dealing with peer pressure from both guys and
friends.
• The search for popularity. How to find it. Or live without. Or be happy in between.
• Relationships with parents. No matter how out of touch with reality they seem to be.
• And living for God without turning your back on the world

When I was a teen I lived from day to day on every wave of emotion I experienced. On some days excitement and passion partnered up, pattering wildly within my heart. Other days, depression and anxiety were my silent friends. I lived each day as it came, with no plan for my future, for my relationships, or for my heart. I lived my life completely unscripted . . . and, well, it didn't go so well for me.

After my boyfriend found out I was pregnant (again) he dumped me for good, and I dropped out of my senior year of high school. (It was too hard going to school—seeing him with someone else, and dealing with my own issues/mistakes/emotions too.) I decided to have my baby, especially since I was dealing with the heartache and regret of a previous abortion. And as my stomach grew, I became more and more depressed. Unlike some mistakes, an unplanned pregnancy is not one you hide very easily. Each day I walked around with the evidence sticking out before me like a basketball under my shirt.

During that painful time, I decided to give God another chance. I’d grown up in church, but during my teen years, decided I wanted to do my own thing. And when “my own thing” left me sad and alone, my grandma’s Bible study group invited me to join them. These sweet old ladies also welcomed me to church and threw me a baby shower (while my teen friends dropped out of the picture). These women showed me what the love of God is all about.

And it was during one of my depressing days, when I was six-months pregnant and feeling abandoned by both my boyfriend and friends, I gave my heart to the Lord. I told Him, “God, I’ve completely screwed up my life this time. If You can do better, please do so.” It wasn’t a fancy prayer, but it worked.



© Tricia Goyer

How about you? What Script are you writing?

Taking My Own Advice

I am a day late posting because I got caught in the frenzy of preparing for a big writers’ conference. For the second year in a row I’m on staff, which I love! I am in charge of a program for first-time attendees, called The Buddy System. First-timers are matched with those who have attended before so they can have all of their questions and fears addressed before they arrive.

With the conference only a few days away, I have been throwing out a lot of advice. At the same time I’m recognizing that I need to take that same advice myself.

“Try not to arrive at the conference exhausted. If you can get some rest beforehand, do it. At least take it slow, knowing that once you arrive at Mount Hermon you’ll be running non-stop.”
But do I do this? Of course not! Between getting projects done ahead of time so I don’t have to worry about them at the conference, coordinating things like transportation and childcare, and conference prep, I’m running non-stop until I head out the door.

“Go with realistic expectation. Focus on learning instead of on selling an editor on your project.”I was doing really well in this department until I got a rejection from an editor who was consider one of my book proposals and decided to take it to the conference.

This morning I am asking God to calm my heart and refocus my perspective. If I’m going to give advice, I better be taking it!

While We're Waiting

Life is full of times to wait. Wait. Wait. While I'm waiting, I usually feel like I have to get busy doing something--anything--instead of just waiting.

When you're in high school, there are so many things to wait on:

Grades.
A college decision.
Your SAT score.
Maybe a prom date.
A bad family situation to get better.
Maybe a scholarship offer.
To find out if you made the team.
To make one good friend.

My daughter sent this song to me the other day. It's helping me wait.



Does anybody need prayer while you're waiting?

Love,
Julie

The Glamorous Life

I didn't watch the Oscars, but I did look at the red carpet snapshots. I have to admit I love those beautiful and sometimes kooky dresses. I don't listen to the clips, because I honestly don't want to hear what most of the people have to say. But I like the dresses. I like the colorful ones the best.
As glamorous as those people appear to be, I know in my heart that at six o'clock in the morning, they look as human as I do when I get up.
Some people think that an author's life must be pretty special. There are some perks. I like meeting readers. But most of the time, I am even less presentable than the female bus driver, the grocery store clerk, the receptionist at the dentist, the teacher, the banker, or the real estate agent, who face the world every work day.
Right now I am still in my PJs, even though it is after lunch. I have to get up and get dressed soon because a friend is coming over for tea. Most of my life is spent without the touch of glamor. But that's all right. I think sharing tiny sandwiches and scones and butter cookies with one friend is much more fun and my type of glamor. Now if I could just serve tea while wearing a blue taffeta gown with sapphires glinting from an embroidered flower, I'd . . . probably be horribly uncomfortable. LOL I guess God gave me just the right amount of glamor I could bear.
The Bible says that He won't give us more than we can bear, and sometimes it does us good to realize that that applies to good things too.

1 Corinthians 10:13 (New International Version)
13No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Redefining failure

I’m a person who really appreciates organization, schedules, planning, lists, etc. Up until a couple years ago, this is something I was able to achieve. I never paid bills late, dishes rarely sat on my countertop overnight, and my to-do lists stayed manageable. It was great. I thought the only things that could make my life better were 1. A house of my own 2. A baby 3. A publishing contract.

I received all three within a couple months of each other—we bought our house in October of 2007, had McKenna in December of 2007, and received word that I’d sold

Me, Just Different in June of 2008.

Madness and chaos ensued.

Instead of feeling like my life had improved with these blessings, I felt like I’d received everything I’d ever wanted, and was totally making a mess out of it.

Laundry did not get washed, dried, and put away all on the same day anymore. Dishes often sat on the counter top for a night or two because I was so stinking exhausted. I stopped making complicated dinners. We frequently ran out of milk or fresh fruit. I began receiving notices about late bills; we had money to pay them, I had just forgotten. Several times I forgot to put on deodorant. (Fortunately, that only happened in the first couple weeks after McKenna was born.) I kept thinking, what's wrong with me?

My prayers changed from, “God, here’s a few things I think I’d like…” to, “God, what were you thinking?!?!?! I can’t do all this! How can you possibly expect this of me? Look how messy my house is! When was the last time I cleaned the bathroom? I have edits to do and laundry to fold and a daughter who doesn’t know how to sleep anywhere but on my lap!”

These kinds of panic attacks happened off and on for the first year of my daughter’s life. And somewhere in my preparations for her first birthday, when I was having one my meltdowns, I felt God saying to me, “Of course you can’t do it all. I don’t expect you to do it by yourself, I expect you to do it with me.”

After that lightning bolt moment, things really changed. I saw how my failure wasn’t that clothes sometimes sat in the dryer for a day or two before I folded them. The failure was actually in my former way of life, where I had everything so organized, so perfectly planned and scheduled, that I forgot to figure in God. I forgot how much I needed Him for daily survival. I forgot to rely on His wisdom and ask what He had planned for me that day.

My life no longer looks perfect. Especially these last couple weeks. I’ve been sick with a cold twice, had three writing deadlines, plus I’m pregnant and McKenna’s a wonderfully active 2-year-old. My husband mentioned to me yesterday that he has two pairs of underwear in his drawer. I don’t know what we’re eating for dinner tonight, or how on earth we’re going to get everything done before the baby comes that needs to be done. Or how I’ll manage to balance life when I’ve two kids to take care of instead of just one.

These overwhelming moments no longer look like a glaring sign reading YOU ARE FAILING, STEPHANIE. Instead, they’re arrows pointing my focus heavenward, so I can say, “Okay, God. Let’s do this.”

Stephanie Morrill
www.StephanieMorrillBooks.com

Reduced

It’s easy to ignore the still small voice. The twinge. The pang. Work through the pain, and the pain will go away. Until one day you push a little too far and something snaps.

Still, it’s no big deal. Just back off for a while and it will sort itself out. But one night you wake up and your hand is numb and tingling. It happens again. And again. Finally you make a doctor’s appointment. She examines your arm, applies pressure in a variety of ways. Your symptoms seem to indicate a combination of overuse injuries. She also takes a blood sample, prescribes two weeks’ rest and an anti-inflammatory.

Rest? What does that mean. You lay off the upper-body weights, but that’s about it. Life must go on. Meanwhile, the pain increases. The blood test comes back normal except for a low positive for auto-immune antibodies. It could mean something or it could mean nothing at all.

By now shifting gears in your car even hurts, but your body has always obeyed you in the past. Surely this is nothing.

You play piano for the Sunday morning service, just like you have for decades. But something is definitely wrong. Your arm aches. Your hand is numb. You barely make it through the set. The next morning, you wake up with an arm so stiff and sore, the pain nauseates you. You almost faint.

Rest is no longer optional.

You stop working out completely. You can’t play piano or guitar. You can’t do laundry or housework. No shooting or processing photographs. You can’t even drive your own car. Forget about spending hours on the computer, writing, blogging, tweeting, facebooking. You can only type left handed.

You ice your elbow for fifteen minutes every hour. You have a lot of time to think. A lot of time to pray. When almost all the ways you busy yourself day to day are suddenly stripped away, you tend to take stock. Your values and priorities line up for inspection, and you discover how selfishly focused you are, how much you’ve come to rely on the strength of your own right arm.

It’s a sobering revelation, and it reminds you once again how kind, good, and patient is your merciful God. You thank Him for His faithfulness. You get still before Him, and you pray, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant is listening.”

And then you wait.


(Yes, I typed this post left handed. I'd appreciate your prayers as I navigate this new adventure with God. Also, please pray as I travel to Indiana this weekend to speak at a church. My topic? God’s redemptive power in suffering. Don’t you love His timing and sense of humor?)

A Pledge for True Intimacy

I recently had a conversation during a radio program (She Speaks to Inspire) where we ventured into talking about abstinence, abstinence pledges, and promise rings. We stayed on the topic long enough to bring up the importance of having conversations of depth about what that pledge or promise really means to the person making it.

A few follow-up ideas:

Keep the dialogue going. Have conversations about sex and abstinence within the context of solid family relationships. If that seems difficult with your family right now, make strong connections with mentors at your church (women with women, guys with guys).

Keep asking questions and checking in with those who can help you stay firm in your commitment. Remember that this is more about what you’re running toward (God's gifts and best for you) instead of what you’re trying to stay away from.

Create your line of no compromise by using God’s standards instead of the shifting lines of others. A couple verses to check out are 1Timothy 5:1-2 and 1 Peter 2:11, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-20 in The Message is also powerful!

If you’ve already compromised—even a little—stop now and talk to an adult who can help you get going in a solid direction from this day on. Pick up or borrow a copy of Seduced by Sex, Saved by Love—A Journey Out of False Intimacy. Get rooted in understanding true intimacy worth waiting for.

I know this is an incomplete list. I wrote a whole book about the topic and knew I couldn't cover it all. In my letter to my readers at the end of the book, I said:

This book was written with you in mind. At first I struggled because sex is such a huge topic. How would I be sure I could cover everything you would want to know about it. I realized, very quickly, I couldn't.

So I prayed. I prayed for you. I prayed for this book. And in praying I felt that I might do many things with these pages as I told the stories of others and invited a
dialogue about sex. But I had to do one thing for sure: Go for the heart--your heart.

After all, it's your heart that makes the difference in what you choose to do with anything you read or consider about sex.

So above anything you might or might not fully grasp about sex, may you know God's pursuit of you and may you keep your heart fully open to him. I'm convinced that if you do these things, you'll have no room for false intimacy. You'll discover healing for those wounds and the confusing perceptions that send you there. You'll know in an instant when you're walking the thin line of compromise.

And you'll be attuned to his voice, the one that calls you back into the safety of his boundaries, back to his design for intimacy. True intimacy, not a false one.

I wish for you the most amazing love story you could ever imagine.

Jan

http://www.jankern.com/ - including book excerpts

Secrets

I hated the idea of telling anyone my secret, and now I’d have to tell my kids about what I’d done. I didn’t want them to know I started dating when I was thirteen or that I faced my first pregnancy at fifteen. I didn’t want them to know I’d had an abortion, and then found myself pregnant again at seventeen. I especially didn’t want Cory to know his biological father had wanted me to get an abortion or that he dumped me before Cory was born.

I worried that if my kids knew all the horrible stuff I’d done, they’d think they could do the same. Even more, I worried that they’d look at me differently. I’d be devalued in their eyes. They wouldn’t respect me.

God was squeezing me, molding me into a woman willing to put her life and her kids into His hands. But I wished it wasn’t so painful. Instead of them using my mistakes as an excuse for their own sins, the opposite happened. They witnessed my pain, regret, and struggle, and because of that, they developed high standards for themselves. They made positive decisions for their lives, in part because I was truthful about negative ones I made. And the things I wanted to hide forever are the things that showed them that I’m human, that God is big, and that there is nothing we could ever do to separate ourselves from His love.

It’s hard not to pretend we are better than we are. We all want to look good—to ourselves and to others. We want to hide our imperfections. I wanted to hide my mistakes and sins—hide them all. But in the end what my kids needed from me was the truth. The truth of who I was and who I became because of Christ. They needed the truth of how wrong we can all go when left to our own devices. And where God can take us when we depend completely on Him.

Are you carrying your own secrets or have you been able to share them?

Excerpt © Tricia Goyer, Blue Like Play Dough

What a Disappointment

Earlier this week my son Nathan saw a contest listed in a magazine, challenging kids to create an underwater ship out of Legos and write an essay about it. After thinking up a plan for a cool ship, spending an hour building it, and having his big brother take a picture, Nathan discovered that he did not meet all the criteria for entering the contest. Obviously he was disappointed.

After pointing out one blessing in the situation (at least he hadn’t written the essay yet!) we helped him make the best of it. I posted a picture of his ship on my Facebook page and bragged about his hard work. The next day we carefully packed his ship in a shoebox so he could show it off to his class at school. Before we knew it the disappointment had worn off. He still had a great ship to be proud of. Someday when he did meet the criteria for entering he would have some practice building great Lego ships. And yes, he also learned to read all information carefully before getting excited about participating in something, especially if it involves work.

So this week we had a lesson in both handling disappointment and making the best of it. How do you handle disappointment? How have you made the best of a disappointing situation recently? Thank God today that He has the power to bring good out of anything!

Oh, here is a picture of Nathan’s water plane, which flies under water. Not bad for a seven-year-old, huh?

Are You in an Abusive Relationship?

I want to write about a tough subject. Abuse. This happened to someone very close to me. It stirred me to write a novel. I'm praying daily that my agent will find the right publisher.

Abuse can be a sneaky thing to spot, sort of like it comes dressed in camo. It's really hard to see when you're in a relationship and you think you love someone. But abuse has nothing to do with love.

I found a good Web site for teens dealing with abuse. http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/relationships/abuse.html#
This site has some great information. "If you think you love someone, but often feel afraid, it's time to get out of the relationship. Fast. You're worth being treated with respect and you can get help."

It gives a list of signs of abuse:
"Harms you physically in any way--including slapping,pushing,pushing, grabbing, shaking, smacking,kicking, punching.
Tries to control different aspects of your life such as--how you dress, who you hang out with, what you say.
Frequently humiliates you or makes you feel unworthy.
Coerces or threatens to hurt you or self-harm if you leave the relationship.
Twists the truth to make you feel you are to blame for your partner's actions.
Demands to know where you are all the time.
Constantly becomes jealous or angry when you want to spend time with your friends.

When someone says something like, "If you loved me you would..." That's also a warning of possible abuse. A statement like this is controlling and is used by people who are only concerned about getting what they want. Trust your intuition. If something doesn't feel right, it probably isn't."

The information below is from this site. http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm

"Do you:
Feel afraid of your partner much of the time?
Avoid certain topics out of fear of angering your partner?
Feel you can't do anything right for your partner?
Believe you deserve to be hurt or mistreated?
Wonder if you're the one who is crazy?
Feel emotionally numb or helpless?

Does your partner :
Humiliate or yell at you?
Criticize you and put you down?
Treat you so badly that you're embarrassed for your friends or family to see?
Blame you for his own abusive behavior?
See you as property or sex object rather than as a person?

The aim of emotional or psychological abuse is to chip away at your feelings of self-worth and independence."

What to do if you think you might be in an abusive relationship...
Google crisis centers, teen help lines, abuse hot lines. Contact a church, your doctor, a health care professional, a school nurse or counselor, a teacher.

If you're beginning to wonder if you're in an abusive relationship, you probably are. You probably didn't read this blog for no reason. There's a lot more information on these two sites.

Get help.

Love,
Julie

March 2nd - thinking income tax

I've been thinking about income tax. I've turned mine in and will actually get some back. That's nice. But this is what I was thinking about income tax: you earn money. You work to get it, and you have to actually do something and do it well to get paid. (If you don't do it well, you get fired and cease to get paid.) Then the government taxes you and you give your earned money away. I don't really begrudge the government taking my money. I just convince myself that my money goes towards a tank to protect our soldiers in Afghanistan. I choose to believe that my money does not go to one of those crazy govt. projects like building a tunnel under a road for migrating turtles.
Here's the thing: apply "income tax" to spiritual matters. I receive income from God in the form of grace, mercy, salvation, blessings, and I didn't do a thing to earn it. And He doesn't require a percentage back. He encourages me to pass it on. To forgive as He has forgiven, to share, to show Christ through my behavior. (Tithing is not taxing, but that is beside the point for this little exercise, so we won't go there.) So this month I am conscious of my worldly income, but rattling around in my brain box is this concept of heavenly income. And I think it'll do me good to dwell on that income and how I am using it.

Self-Injury - Compassion and Understanding

March 1st is Self-Injury Awareness Day, and I have to tell that I'm so hoping and praying that people are still stirred by the issue and wanting to be aware and help. The numbers of reported cases of self-injury have risen since I wrote about it through the true stories told in Scars That Wound, Scars That Heal--A Journey Out of Self-injury.

So let's take a moment to get self-injury back on our radar, continue to raise awareness, dispel the myths, and encourage sensitivity to the issue and to the individuals who struggle.

As a part of that, I'd like to share a post I wrote for my own site a couple years ago for teens helping teens, and yet it might offer some ideas for any who want to reach out to a friend who struggles:

Maybe you’re a friend to someone who self-injures. What do you do to help?

Does your friend know you know? Are you wondering how to approach her (or him)? Tell her you have seen the injuries, have noticed her sadness (or the signs and emotions that you have seen). Then ask if she wants to talk about it. If yes, listen and let her share what she’s able to. It may only be a sentence or two. If she’s not ready to talk, tell her you’re there to listen when she is ready. Sometimes just the awareness that someone else now knows and cares is a huge help.

Are you the only person your friend is turning to? That can become extremely difficult for you, if it isn’t already. Don’t do this alone. Self-injury is much deeper than a behavior or a coping mechanism. The emotion and pain and the stories behind the choice are much more complex than even she is able to handle. It would be a lot for you to try to carry for her.

Be honest and tell your friend that you can’t carry this alone and neither should she. Be a trustworthy friend in how you handle what she has shared with you in confidence, but at the same time know that it is helping both of you to get others involved.

Find a trusted and wise adult friend who you can talk to—preferably someone who knows about self-injury, who is able to help you bring God into the picture of healing, and who has good suggestions for balancing help and friendship with your own personal safety and emotional health.

Help your friend find others she can talk to who can help in the ways you can’t. If her family can be loving and supportive, offer to go with her to talk with a parent. Or help her set up a meeting with a pastor or community professional who has experience and compassion in helping those who struggle with self-injury.

Keep in mind that self-injury as a secret conceals more than the outer wounds and scars. The secrecy prevents the inner pain from being addressed and the person from moving toward healing. Connecting to a community that cares can be an essential part of moving out of the pain and toward hope. As her friend, your greatest contribution toward her healing could be helping her begin to make those connections.

Let's keep our hearts open to the conversations.

Jan
http://www.jankern.com/

A few other posts and articles that might be of interest:

Helping Someone Who is Struggling, Part 1
Helping Someone Who is Struggling, Part 2
Helping Someone Who is Struggling, Part 3
When Someone Who is Struggling Comes to You
Parents Responding to Self-Injury (Guest post on Mommy Life Blog)
Long Sleeves in Hot Weather (Article that appeared in September, 2009 Light & Life Magazine)

Christians and teen pregnancy

Last week I received a lousy review for my latest release, Out with the In Crowd. It's an unfortunate part of the business, and while you brace yourself for it, it's always a bit crushing when it happens.

Except for this time.

Out with the In Crowd is book two in The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series. In the first book, Me, Just Different, we learned that Skylar's 15-year-old sister is pregnant. One of the story lines in Out with the In Crowd is about Abbie wrestling with what to do after the baby's born. Yet the entire story is told from Skylar's perspective, so we also see a lot of what the pregnancy does to the rest of the family. Particularly because Abbie is in a bit of denial and a lot of the baby prep (diapers, picking out a crib, etc.) somehow falls on Skylar's shoulders.

I never set out to make a statement about teen pregnancy. It's just the direction the story went, and in writing Out with the In Crowd, I portrayed how Skylar, who's recently become a Christian, deals with her sister's mistake.

Apparently, whether I meant to or not, I made a statement. And one particular reviewer wasn't a fan of it. What troubled me most about her review was this statement: “Years ago it would be incredibly shameful to show your face in public with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy; today it is the norm. But I question that it should be for Christians. I don’t think it should be, regardless of what the world around us is doing.”

At first this made me laugh out loud. I just sat there and reread it over and over, shocked. I mean, seriously? SERIOUSLY??? We're not talking about a couple of acquaintances. We're talking about a big sister taking care of her little sister the best way she knows how.

And then as the comment sunk it, it occurred to me how incredibly sad this viewpoint is. How can you read the gospels and believe this? After learning how Jesus chose Matthew, a tax collector, to be a disciple. How He dined with Zacchaeus. How He stood at the well with the Samaritan woman who’d had five husbands and now lived with another man, yet made her feel accepted and loved. How He allowed a woman who the Bible simply says had lived a “sinful life” to wash and perfume his feet.

A book of mine is never, ever going to make this reviewer happy. Abbie is my second favorite part of The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series. (My first favorite is Skylar’s reinvention, as you might assume.) What I love about Abbie’s story is that she shows how sinful decisions carry consequences, like having a baby at 15, but God’s grace is bigger. He loves me—a girl who waited until she was married to have sex—as much as he loves the Abbies of the world. He loves McKenna and the little boy I’m carrying right now—conceived in holy wedlock—as much as he loves the children of girls like Abbie.

And I’m grateful for this. Because while sex before marriage hasn’t been an area in my life where I’ve struggled, I’ve still used an abundance of God’s grace. We all have. And I have every intention of continuing to write stories that explore that.

Stephanie Morrill

http://www.stephaniemorrillbooks.com/

Princess Bride, Part II

Two weeks ago, I told Sarah's story. Last Friday, the princess who never expected to meet a prince walked down the aisle, face veiled, in the surrender of a bride. As she approached, Luke sang a song he'd written for that moment. A song that shifted the focus from the "now" to the "not yet"--from the earthly to the heavenly. It went like this:

Well, the prophecy’s not simple, though all of it’s been said and done
Still the revelation waits to form itself within our love
And this we know, though we are yet unknown:

In our minds and in our flesh we ache
For the coming dawn, for the light of day
And the light will break us, and faith will claim our lives
For when the two are one, both of them must die
For when the two are one, both are brought to light

Still the darkness will linger all through the long and lonely night
So you can play the church, and I’ll play an imperfect Christ
And though I’m frail, I’ll try my best to love you here

For there are mysteries much deeper than the skin
And to uncover them, we must humbly enter in
By the heart of love, where God and man are one
I pray these vows we make reveal the Son to us
Oh! in these vows may love be born in us

Oh be my apocalypse, know me in this gentler kiss
For all love is a knowing, but to be known we all must end
And I would learn you here
And I would hold you dear

And as we see ourselves by each other’s love
May we come to know the perfect Lamb of God
And on that final day, when we all see the Lord
Well, I won’t be your husband anymore
And Christ will be your love forevermore
And Christ will be your love forevermore
And Christ will be our love forevermore

So let us climb the hill together
So let us climb the hill together
Let us climb the hill
Let us climb the hill


Throughout the entire ceremony, I felt as though we were all tiptoeing on holy ground. Now, almost a week later, I'm still basking in the glow.

No matter who you are or what you've been through, it's never too early or too late to pray for your prince. Sometimes, dreams really do come true.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

About a month ago I decided to go back to school; it has been a huge adjustment. I have to wake up early, try to balance my schedule, and get used to doing homework again! In light of these changes, has been increasingly hard to spend time with God and get to know Him more.

Last week during my Anatomy and Physiology class I was suddenly struck at how remarkable the human body is, and how extraordinary God is to have made us the way He did. I mean, I was sitting there in class while the teacher was lecturing on the circulatory system and I started tearing up.

The Bible says we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and all at once it just hit me- every cell of our being has God’s finger print on them. There are so many functions that are automatically happening in our bodies every second of the day that are completely involuntary and that we are not even aware of. Our lungs take in air and give oxygen to our entire body, our heart beats without us even having to think about it. The average heart rate is 60-80 beats a minute, which is more than 100,000 beats in a single day, and 36 million beats in a year- without stopping for a break!

After just a month of studying Anatomy I can’t believe that people can deny the existence of God. He is such an amazing creator and I feel like I’m learning more about Him everyday as I study His detailed artwork.

Psalm 139:13-16
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Teen pregnancies are on the rise again.

Interview by AOL's Parent Dish--me and the President of Planned Parenthood about teen pregnancy. What didn't come out in the article is that I AM for abstinence education.

After a long period of decline, teen pregnancy rates are on the rise again and experts say that abstinence-only programs, the media and absent parents are to blame.

A Jan. 26 report from the New York-based Guttmacher Institute reveals that the pregnancy rate among 15- to 19-year-olds rose three percent in 2005-2006, the first increase in more than a decade. The nonpartisan think tank looked at its own data and that of the federal government to determine that more teens are getting pregnant now than since before the 1990s.


What's causing the jump? According to Guttmacher, it was the focus on abstinence-only programs that began in the early 2000s, which were prohibited by law from including contraception information. As a result, teens' use of contraceptives declined.

The report "should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who still believes that teenagers aren't sexually active or that abstinence-only programs curb the rate of teen pregnancy," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in an email interview with ParentDish. "Over the course of a decade, federal and state governments have spent $1.5 billion on abstinence-only programs. It is a tragedy that we are witnessing an increase in the number of teens who are getting pregnant, especially when we know what works -- medically accurate, age-appropriate sex education that gives young people the tools to make responsible decisions about their health."

The best tool in a parent's arsenal, she adds, is communication. "Studies show that the best way to prevent teen pregnancy is to provide teens with honest, accurate information."

Tricia Goyer is an author and speaker who works with teen moms on a weekly basis, and she knows of what she speaks. She became pregnant with her eldest son, Cory, now 20, when she was a high-school senior. Goyer, author of "Life Interrupted: The Scoop on Being a Young Mom," says there are two other key factors in play when it comes to the increase in teen pregnancy: Absent parents and the media.

"Parents today live busy lives," she says. "They aren't taking the time to build close-knit relationships with their kids. Many, many young women are also growing up without fathers. I believe this leaves a hole in the hearts of teens. They are yearning for love that they don't have at home and look for it in each other."

Goyer points out that glamorizing teen pregnancy on TV and in the movies only serves to teach young women -- and men -- that engaging in sexual activity has very few real consequences.

Read the rest here!

After read the rest and watch the short video - come back here and let me know what you think.

Tricia Goyer

Did You fall for a Lie?

“Check your wrapper,” Haley whispered to Kai and Nathan. “If it has an Indian and a star on it you get a free box of candy.”

“I have one,” Kai exclaimed.

“Me too!” Nathan ran over to me, waved his Tootsie Pop wrapper in the air like a golden ticket. “Put this in your purse. It has an Indian and a star. I get free candy.”

Kai handed his to my sister Kristy. “When can we go to the store?”

Kristy and I exchanged looks. Was that rumor about an Indian and a star on your Tootsie Pop wrapper earning you free candy still around?

“Um, we need to check out the details before we run down and ask for free candy,” Kristy told Kai. “You might have to send for it.”

I grinned at Kristy. “Do you remember telling us about the Indian and a Star thing when we were kids?”

Kristy blushed. “Yeah.”

My sisters and friend had charged the lady at the check stand with a fistful of Tootsie wrapper. According to Kristy one Indian and star combo won four free Pops. The checker didn’t have a clue what we were talking about. Embarrassed, Kristy pretended not to know what we were talking about either. “What Indian and star? I never said that?”

“I was such a brat.” Kristy laughed.

When I got home I decided to do a little research on the Indian and star before my sisters or I made fools of ourselves again, this time with our kids in tow.

As it turned out, this urban legend about the Indian and star has been around almost as long as Tootsie Pops. Sometimes the promised reward is a free Pop, other times a bag of them, several Pops, or a box of candy. For generations, kids have presented wrappers to store owners or sent them to Tootsie, only to be disappointed. (Some store owners are nice enough to honor the requests, probably because they were left jilted by the same vicious rumor as kids.)

When I told Kristy she cracked up before passing the word to our other sister, Sherry. Our kids even thought it was funny, once they heard that we’d fallen for the same thing.

According to some websites, Tootsie doesn’t even know how the wives tale started.

This reminded me how often we fall for lies. The enemy loves to throw them out at us and many, like the Tootsie Pop story, have been around forever.
“Did God really say . . . “
“If God loved you He would/wouldn’t . . .”
“What you did is unforgivable.”

They go on and on, and are rarely original. But how do we keep from falling for them? We can actually borrow some ideas from the Tootsie Pop scenario.
1. Stop and think before you act or give in.
2. Consider what happened the last time you listened to the same message, or a similar one.
3. Check out the facts (the best place being God’s Word).

While the lie that my sisters and I, and later our kids, bought into was harmless, Satan’s lies tend to cause damage far beyond the disappointment of not getting a free sucker. Ask God to keep you aware of deception and grounded in His truth.

This Looks Sooooo Good!

I just saw the trailer for this movie, Letters to God. It's coming out April 9th and produced by the same people who produced Fireproof, Flywheel and Facing the Giants.

Can't wait to see it!

Love,
Julie

Princess Bride

The title of this post may be misleading. It's not about one of my all-time favorite movies. It's a story about a girl and the two things almost every little girl loves pretending to be. A princess and a bride.

The girl was born in 1986. She had a beautiful mommy and a handsome daddy. They looked good in pictures, but they weren't living in happily-ever-after land. When the little girl was in kindergarten, her beautiful mommy started going blind. A few years later, her handsome daddy went away, leaving the mommy, the little girl, and her baby sister. Even though she was very young, the little girl had to learn how to do a lot of things around the house, because her mommy couldn't see.

When the girl was sixteen, she came home from school one day, and her mom wasn't home. Someone else was there, and that someone told the girl that her mom's heart had broken. Literally. Her aorta separated from her heart, and she died. Just like that.

The court told the girl's dad that he needed to take care of his daughters. He wasn't happy, but he had to obey the court.

The girl went to live with her dad, even though he didn't want her there. She was sad. She was also angry. And she started doing lots of bad things. Dangerous things. It was almost as though she wanted to self-destruct. And maybe she did. Until one night when she was seventeen, she picked up a Bible and started reading in a book called Job. When she read a verse that said, "You prefer evil to affliction," she felt like Someone had spoken it directly to her. She stopped reading and prayed, telling that Someone that she didn't want to prefer evil to her affliction--even though her affliction had been so painful. She told God she wanted to know Him.

The next day the girl called her bad boyfriend and broke up with him. Then she looked in the phone book to try to find a church. She found one, and the next Sunday she went there. The people in the church welcomed her. They wanted her. They became her family and taught her about Jesus and how much He loves her.

As she got to know Jesus and studied His words, the girl's sadness and anger went away, and God replaced them with compassion for other hurting people. More than anything else, she loved reaching out to people who were poor or sad or afflicted like she'd been. She loved helping them find their way to Jesus. She even went to India to help some of the poorest people in the world. She wasn't afraid of anything that might happen to her. When she was serving Jesus, she was fearless.

But she was afraid of marriage. Her ideas about marriage weren't happy, and besides, she didn't need anyone but God. She told Jesus she wanted Him to have her whole life, that she would obey Him no matter what. So, imagine her surprise when Jesus told her He wanted her to get married! He even showed her the man He wanted her to marry.

The girl started praying for that man. She knew he loved Jesus, too. She also knew he had seen some hard things when he went to Africa to serve Jesus, and she prayed God would heal his heart. God did heal his heart and then He filled it with love for the girl. The man asked the girl to marry him, and she said yes. (Then they gave each other high fives. It was very romantic.)

If ever there was a little girl who didn't feel much like a princess or even want to be a bride, this was the one. But she grew up to be both. In fact, she'd always been a princess. For one thing, her name is Sarah, and that means princess. But she was also adopted by the King, and that made her a princess for real.

In eight more days, she'll be a bride, too. She'll walk down an aisle toward the man who will love her as long as they both shall live. And she'll be surrounded by family--not only her father, sister, and her church family, but her groom's family, who've adopted her into their hearts so fully she might as well be their own daughter.

How do I know? Because the groom is my son. And the bride is a more wonderful princess than I ever could have designed for him, had God entrusted me with the task. In eight days, the two will become one and will ride off into the sunset.

Of course, this isn't The End. It's only the beginning.




(The photo above shows Sarah in her mother's wedding dress. On February 19th, she will wear my daughter's dress and my veil. Both fit as though they were designed for her. Because they were.)

Super Bowl madness

I suppose all across the country people are getting ready for football madness today. My husband is organizing a neighborhood potluck down at the community center, and he's been prepping for days. Having been an event planner once, I know how many details there are to pin down, and how hard it sometimes is to get people to step up and help.

But you know what? The phone started ringing last night with people offering to lend a hand. This morning the pickups began to roll in as friends rallied around to help. Phone in one ear, I'm holding the fort here at the house, directing people down to the center.

Friends. Don't you love 'em? The guy who offers to cut up the onions for the chili. The writer friend who says, "Let's do a writing day at my house." The girl who shyly offers to help you with your science project when you need a partner. We find real friends in the most unexpected places. And sometimes it makes us realizes just what we have to offer someone else in return. And let's not forget the best Friend of all, who surrounds us and helps us the minute we reach out our hand.

Where have you found an unexpected friend in the woodwork of your life?

Good to think about. Meantime, gotta go grate cheese for the chili-dogs!

Love, Shelley