Destiny

We watched a movie last night, Prince of Persia, that made me start thinking about "destiny." Is destiny up to fate or God or is it up to us?

I've been wrestling with that question today. And when our son was lost in Hawaii we also struggled with it.

There are some things, I believe, that are "destiny," especially for a child of God. The scriptures are full of declarations of our destiny. Ephesians 1 says:

"He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will."

Romans 8 says:

"For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son."

The Bible is full of declarations of destiny. In fact, at the memorial service for John, we sang a song by Michael Jernigan titled, "This is My Destiny." In his song, Michael pulls in many declarations of destiny pulled from throughout scripture such as: servant, warrior, redeemed, chosen, bride-to-be, cleansed, a new creation, overcomer, victorious, crowned and many, many more.

So on the one hand, while there is a sense of destiny that includes eternity for each and every person who makes Jesus his or her savior and Lord, I wonder how our choices affect the destiny we live out here on this earth. We know for certain that our son's choices enabled him to live a life of integrity while pointing others to the eternal hope and eternal destiny that awaits us.

What do you think? Is our destiny beyond our control or do we make our own?

Update on Aloha is Forever book

We decided about a year ago that we would get a professional editor to do the final editing of our book before publishing it. So we put it on hold, found an editor, got the estimate and haven't been able to come up with the funds to pay her.

So we were talking and praying the other day and decided that we would print a run of about 100 books in the current version and then maybe do some more editing before publishing again. In this wonderful day of "print-on-demand" printing, we can do that.

Now to carve out the time to do one last read through ourselves before we send it off to the printer.

We'll keep you posted.

Miracles

A friend of mine posted this quote from Albert Einstein as her status on Facebook the other day. It generated quite a flurry of philosophical comments. What do you think?

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

My Grandson Edited the Book!

I just recently picked up the book Beakie; The Amazonian Wonderdog to read to my grandson. I had been saving it until he could really appreciate it because it was written by a dear friend and illustrated by the son of another dear friend. It's a gorgeous book - not one to be left in the hands of a small child without supervision. The book is also special because I knew Beakie. She even stayed in my home with her dear, sweet owners.

So I've been reading the Beakie book to my grandson for several days in a row but today when I went to read it he told me right up front that there was one page he didn't like and he wanted me to skip it. Hmmm...my grandson, the editor.

Interestingly the page was about Beakie's first bath and since it's written in first person, and Beakie didn't like his first bath, I guess that's why my grandson didn't like it either.

Why I Gave Up Reading...

I hope that title didn't shock you too much especially coming from a writer!

The other night my daughter saw an ad for a fiction writing contest and said, "Hey Mom and David, why don't you enter this contest?" My son's reaction surprised even me. He said, "Mom...enter a writing contest?! I'll bet she hasn't read a book in about 18 years!"

Actually, he didn't realize it, but he wasn't too far from the truth. It's been probably about 28 years since I made the decision that my family and my work were more important than reading fiction. You see, I used to be addicted. I would get angry and lash out at anyone in my path if they interrupted me at a crucial point in whatever book I happened to be reading. As a youth, many a night would give way to the dawn with my book still in hand. I would get an hour or two of sleep and then rush off to school - only because the book (fiction) I was reading was too interesting to put down. I was a hopeless addict.

I don't remember all that led up to the decision to put my addiction aside, but I'm sure God had something to do with it. It's not that I haven't read any fiction since that day many years ago, but my escapes into fiction now are limited to vacations or trips involving long airport layovers. Fiction definitely keeps me awake much better than non-fiction.

And once I made that decision, it was easy to keep "on the wagon." I still had non-fiction I could and did read avidly. But non-fiction didn't keep me from being the mother, wife and productive person I really wanted to be. It also helped me eventually come to terms with my explosive anger and pretty much give that over to the Lord, the only One able to handle it.

Later the other evening, as my son was cleaning up the dishes and loading the dishwasher I explained all of this to him. I could tell he was trying to process it - since he is also an addict! And I hope it also made him realize just how great my love is for him and the rest of the members of my family.

BTW - the most recent fiction book I have read was The Shack - read mostly of course, on a recent vacation trip! So it really hasn't been 28 or even 18 years since I've read a book.