Mr. Darcy's Time Machine

Over the weekend, I finished writing a scene for the Bad Austen writing contest.  My scene is a sci-fi parody of Pride and Prejudice called "Mr. Darcy's Time Machine."  It is posted on the Bad Austen website, so if you want to read it, you can check it out here.  Also, if you haven't (and would like to), please vote for my scene! :)

A Matter of Perspective

     Genesis 45: 4-7 - “Then Joseph said to his brothers, 'Come close to me.' When they had done so, he said, 'I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

      Talk about seeing the glass half full—Joseph was clearly an optimist. I was really struck by Joseph's words to his brothers as I read this passage. At this point, Joseph had been through so much. His own brothers were so jealous of him that they wanted to kill him. Instead, they sold him into slavery. He was then falsely accused of adultery and imprisoned. In this same situation, I'm pretty sure I would be moping around whining about all the bad things that had happened to me. And I'm certain I would find it extremely difficult to forgive my siblings for causing all of my troubles!

     But Joseph chose not to view his situation this way. For him, his sufferings were merely a matter of perspective. Joseph to chose to focus on the bigger picture rather than waste his time lamenting all the ways everyone around him had done him wrong. And not only did he forgive his brothers unconditionally, but he went one step further and urged them to forgive themselves for what they had done to him.

      Despite everything he went through, Joseph was able to see the hand of God in his plight. He was aware that nothing could happen to him unless God allowed it to happen, and that God had a clear purpose, even when Joseph could not see it. Joseph trusted God so much that he claimed God was the one who sent him to Egypt (rather than his brothers), so that he could use Joseph to save many lives, including the lives of his family—the same family that had wanted him killed!

   I also love the way the story of the famine parallels what Joseph went through. Joseph went through several bad years of famine in his life, only for God to deliver him into a great time of reaping. Joseph trusted God in his years of personal famine, and God rewarded him greatly for his faith.

A Plethora of Writing Contests

Reposting this from my writing blog:

So out of nowhere, I've suddenly become embroiled in not one, but three writing contests.  I had wanted to enter Secession Island in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest this year, but it is still nowhere near finished, so I decided to skip the contest yet again this year.  Then, over the weekend, I decided that if I couldn't enter Secession Island, I might as well at least enter something else I've written.  I don't really have any hopes of one of my other novels winning the contest (or even making it through the first round), but figured, what have I got to lose?  Initially, I planned to do a quick edit of Lunatics and Lycanthropy and submit that, since I've gotten no feedback on it yet.  When I didn't get around to looking at it until yesterday afternoon, I realized that wasn't going to happen.  Which left me with old faithful:  Norfanger Plantation.  I am SO SO sick of this book by now, but I took one more quick look at it, did some reformatting, and selected an excerpt.  Then I had to come up with a "pitch."  I wasn't really sure what to do with this, but after some help from a friend and fellow writer, I concocted something that was based loosely on the book description I'd already written up for Amazon.  (Actually, when I got done, I thought the pitch sounded pretty good - I only wish the novel itself were as well-written!)  The entry period opened at 12 am this morning.  Since they will close the competition after they receive 5,000 entries per category (or Feb. 6, whichever comes first), I was unsure whether I needed to submit it right at midnight or whether I actually had two weeks to submit.  I decided not to risk it and set the alarm for 12 am.  There were of course technical difficulties with my submission - ie, the formatting getting all messed up on my excerpt and me having to go through and read through the whole thing, manually fixing the formatting until 12:45 am.  Good times.  But in the end, I got everything turned in.  I honestly believe I will not even make it through the first round.  This is a fun novel, but it's not my greatest writing by a long stretch.  I don't really see it being something Penguin publishers are interested in, but either way, I think it will be a good thing for me to get the experience.

Also this past weekend, I submitted a brand-new short-short entitled "Unipolar," that I wrote specifically for round six of NPR's Three-Minute Fiction contest.  Another writer friend had given me the head's up on this one.  The only guidelines for this entry were that it had to be a fictional story under 600 words and include one character telling a joke and one character crying.  Writing within such a strict word limit was a huge challenge for me.  I tend to be super wordy - for example, Secession Island is already probably well over 300 pages with no end in sight.  I decided this would be a good exercise for me though, and managed to churn something out and turn it in.  It ended up being a pretty dark and uncharacteristic type story for me, but I felt very good about the writing, so we will see.

And the third and final competition I've got my eye on is taking submissions until the beginning of March.  Which will give me a bit of a breather (thank goodness), although I've already started working on my submission.  The contest is called Bad Austen, and the task is to write an 800-word parody of a scene, language, or character from the works of Jane Austen.  I really think they made this contest just for me.  I was kind of bummed about the word limit, since I have two entire novels that would qualify otherwise, but I've already come up with an idea for something new and I'm having tons of fun with it.

It's been exhausting trying to get these submissions ready last-minute, so I'm going to try to do better about keeping my eye out for more writing contests and preparing for them well in advance.  It's been really good for me to get back into writing, and to have some very specific direction in my writing.

Sporting a new church dress

 

Doesn't she look pretty?

And...she is crawling all over the place!  That's right, folks - watch out, because Gemma's on the move!

iPod Nano

I am super excited to be the proud new owner of a latest gen. 16GB iPod nano.  In pink, of course.  Lest you think that I now own 5 iPods, here is the deal.  I have a big, old-school 60 GB iPod classic that houses all my music.  It is great to take on trips, and just to have one place that contains all my music.  But I rarely use this iPod - it's just too big to lug around.  I had an old iPod mini (also pink) that I received as a present when I graduated from college.  It's super outdated and I never use it anymore either, but I couldn't sell it because it was engraved on the back.  I have an iPod touch that I got for free when I purchased my MacBook Air.  Never really use this either, because I'm too lazy to keep it charged.  Since none of these is ideal for running, I have been using Cy's older-model iPod nano along with a Nike+ kit to track my running. 

All of that to say...I decided it was time to consolidate.  While in the Apple Store several times the week of Christmas having my broken laptop repaired (a whole different story), I had some time to browse and pretty much fell in love with the new iPod nanos.  They are small, sleek...and they are totally awesome!  They come with built-in FM radio and a built-in pedometer.  Perfect for running!

So in the end, I was able to get one...and at a discount!  Turns out Apple has a recycling program for old computers and iPods - if you bring an old iPod into the store to recycle, you can get 10% off the purchase of a new one.  So I traded in my old pink iPod mini and left with a brand new pink iPod nano.  I am putting the iPod touch up for sale (if anyone reading this is interested, let me know!).  And now that I have a Nano to use for running, Cy's Nano will most likely be sold too.  So really, I was helping us out by getting rid of several iPods, right?

Either way, I am really enjoying the new iPod!

A New Shelf and a Smiley Girl

I was strolling through Target a couple weeks ago and spotted this super cute stackable cube organizer. Gemma already had a plain white bookshelf in her room, but I just HAD to have this cute pink shelf for her room instead. We put it together yesterday and moved the white bookshelf upstairs (I'm always in need of more shelf space for books!). I LOVE the new shelf - it matches Gemma's room perfectly and it looks awesome!


Also, just wanted to post a recent picture of Gemma's sweet little smile. She is such a happy girl!

Being a Living Sacrifice

Romans 12:1 - “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

I read about sacrifice in My Utmost for His Highest several days ago, and I've been ruminating on different ideas about sacrifice ever since then. I decided to write up my conclusions to focus them better for myself. Since I was writing them up anyway, why not post them on the blog? These are just a few thoughts I had on sacrifice, a sort of combination of my paraphrasing of Oswald Chambers as well as a few insights I received from reading the about Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis.

Sacrifice simply for the sake of sacrifice is pointless. God never demands that we sacrifice just to sacrifice. Our sacrifices need to have a purpose; they need to be useful to God. It took me a while to grasp fully what Chambers was getting at in this entry (and the above is my paraphrase of what he wrote), but I found myself thinking about Lent, and this really worked as a good illustration for me to understand this concept. Fasting or abstinence from something during Lent was designed to prepare the believer to focus more deeply on the death and resurrection of Christ, to clear out worldly distractions and leave only Christ. But it has become a meaningless ritual for a lot of people. A lot of people give something up at Lent simply because it's a custom. And a lot of people choose to give up something that they won't even really miss. Such a sacrifice is pointless. It is neither holy nor acceptable, and it is useless to God.

Being a living sacrifice means sacrificing our lives to God's purpose. Our talents, our skills, our assets, our plans. Being a living sacrifice means giving up these things not so that we can never use them again at all, but so that God can use them in a way different from the selfish way in which we would use them, so that He can use them to accomplish His divine purpose.

God requires unquestioning obedience from us. And this in itself is a type of sacrifice.

Genesis 22:9-12 - “When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, the son he had waited for for so many long years. And Abraham was not only willing, he never even questioned God. To follow God with such unquestioning obedience, Abraham had to sacrifice all of his own personal thoughts, feelings, questions, and plans. And in spirit, he did sacrifice his own son, for the willingness and intention were there.

But then God stayed Abraham's hand, allowing Isaac to live. Because God had plans to work through Isaac to establish His people. He needed Isaac alive to complete His work, needed Isaac to be a living sacrifice.

A Prayer of Confession

This morning while cleaning out some stuff in my bedroom, I found this prayer of confession that I had clipped from a bulletin quite a while back. It's a very good prayer, so I typed it up so that I wouldn't lose it and I could have it on hand to refer to in the future. I wanted to share it here:

O my Savior, help me
I am slow to learn, prone to forget and weak to climb.
I am in the foothills when I should be on the heights.
I am pained by my graceless heart,
my prayerless days,
my poverty of love,
my sloth in the heavenly race,
my sullied conscience,
my wasted hours,
my unspent opportunities.
I am blind while the light shines around me:
take the scales from my eyes,
grind to dust my heart of unbelief.
Make it my highest joy to study you,
meditate on you,
gaze on you,
sit, like Mary, at your feet,
lean, like John, on your breast,
appeal, like Peter, to your love,
count, like Paul, all things as loss for Jesus' sake.
I believe, help my unbelief.

One More Great Read

I can't believe I forgot to put this one on my list: Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder. It's a YA sci-fi novel, and it's sooooo good. This is one of the few books this year that I plowed through cover to cover and couldn't put down. I'm even trying to get Cy to read it because I think he would like it too. Anyway...this definitely should have made my list - I highly recommend this book. There is a sequel, titled Outside In, coming out in the next few months. I can't wait - the ending of Inside Out was a real cliff-hanger!

Imperial Flagship

Over the weekend, I finally finished building the LEGO Pirates Imperial Flagship that I received for Christmas. It was a pretty epic undertaking, with over 1600 pieces.

The imperial flagship is ginormous. When I brought out my Brickbeard's Bounty pirate ship and placed it alongside the imperial flagship, it quickly became clear that the imperial flagship would destroy Brickbeard's Bounty in a battle. Instantly.

On the back of the imperial flagship, the top level comes off to reveal the galley and allows easy access to the cannons (which actually shoot).

Hidden away in the captain's cabin in the front of the ship is a super sweet pipe organ. It's very Davy Jones.

I really enjoyed building this giant awesome ship. Now LEGO just needs to make more pirate things because I've already built all of the ones they currently have.

8 Months Old!

Gemma is officially 8 months old today! She is doing great. It seems like her cute, sweet little personality develops more every day. We are really enjoying watching her grow and getting to meet this sweet little person who is developing.

She is almost crawling - not quite there yet. She gets up on all fours and teeters then falls back onto her tummy. She can actually crawl backwards - she is quite good at that, so hopefully she will get the hang of the forward movement soon. (I am dreading having to chase her around and keep her from getting into stuff, but I can tell that she wants to get moving so badly and I hate watching her get frustrated when she can't!)

She is getting so big too! Whenever I look at older pictures of her, I am amazed at how small she used to be. And, as usual...can't wait to see what the next month will bring!

No Resolutions, Just Christ

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes that "All our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out." This really spoke to me as I'm beginning a new year. I've never been a fan of New Year's resolutions, simply because they seem designed to be broken. This year, I decided to set a few "goals" for myself, but now, after reading Chambers, I've realized I've only set myself up to fail, since my goals were based on me, and what I can accomplish. Well, I can accomplish nothing.

One of the goals I made for myself was to lose some weight and get in better shape. My weight is something I have really struggled with for the past few years. I have a very hard time forming a true perspective of what my body should look like, especially now, after having had a baby. I have come to realize that in college I was too thin and not healthy, but I am still struggling to determine and accept what might be a good weight for me. I also struggle because it seems like no matter how much I work out, or how hard I try, I just can't seem to shed any pounds. This is especially hard when I witness others around me who seem to stay thin effortlessly. I have to fight for every ounce.

Anyway, all of that just to say that I've been missing the point with my goals. Even the weight one. As long as I am eating healthy, getting plenty of exercise, and taking care of my body, then I shouldn't worry about anything else. Focusing so much on my weight is focusing far too much on me. Also, I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and God has created me to be the body type that I am. And when I am focusing so much on one mere aspect of myself, I am obviously not focusing my attention on Christ.

In the same entry, Chambers also writes: "No matter what changes God has wrought in you, never rely upon them, build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives." Even if I were to lose a bunch of weight, and have a perfect body, would I really be in a better place? I would be priding myself on what I'd accomplished, and definitely placing far too much emphasis on myself.

No, my focus needs to be not on what I can do to improve myself, but what Christ can do through me, if only I'll quit being so self-centered and let Him. So I'll keep my 2011 "goals" in the back of my mind, because they will help keep me structured and can only help me to improve, but I don't want them to be my main focus this year. Instead, I want to build this year on the Person of Christ, and on His Spirit. And if I happen to slim down, great - it will be an added bonus. But my true source of joy should not come from seeing a self-centered goal completed, like a finished manuscript of the novel I've been working on for the past 3-4 years, or the numbers on the scale dropping. No, my true source of joy should be in Christ. So that is my resolution for this year: To Build on the Person of Christ. And if I acknowledge up-front that I have no power to carry this out, and will have to rely on Christ to work in and through me, paradoxically, the goal can be achieved.

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 3: Christmas with the Browns

My family had been planning to come down on Dec. 26 after church, but then, over the weekend, we learned that they were expecting up to 8 inches of snow! Sure enough, they woke up Sunday morning and were snowed in with about 5 inches. It was still snowing, and not expected to get above freezing all day. They had to cancel church, but were still just stuck in Ellerbe because of the roads. They called and said they would be down on Monday, as soon as the roads were clear enough.

Then...it started snowing here! It wasn't cold enough to stick, but it snowed pretty heavily all day long. I took Gemma out to look at the snow, but she just stared at it. She wasn't sure what to think.And then, around 1 pm, I got a call from my mom telling me to put the soup on, because they were on the way. They ended up taking a slightly longer route that used more mainstream roads, but they made it here safely. And then it was like Christmas all over again! There were tons of presents for Gemma of course. Her favorite was the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Kitchen, something that wasn't on her list that my mom had decided last-minute to get.

And of course, as usual with the Brown family, there were about as many gag gifts as there were real presents. Such as the oh-so-attractive 3D glasses and Rachel and I with our twin bump-its! We had so much fun!

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 2: Christmas Day

So of course, Gemma decided that Christmas morning would be the perfect day to sleep in. I thought that once you had a kid, you didn't have to come up with an excuse for being up early on Christmas morning anymore, that the kiddo was supposed to be up first, waking everyone up? Not the case. We were both awake and Gemma just kept snoozing away. Finally she woke up and we got to open presents!!!

The present-opening went better than expected. Gemma was actually way more aware of what was going on and way more into it than we thought she would be. Each time something new appeared from the wrapping paper, she would reach for it and play with it until something new came along. Her favorite present by far that morning was the toy laptop she received from her friend Lucy.Cy and I got lots of great presents as well. In fact, we ended up getting each other the same present - a universal remote for the XBox 360. We both thought we were very clever surprising the other with the remote, since it was on neither of our Christmas lists.

Around lunchtime, we headed over to Frank and Andrea's for some roast and more presents. Gemma got some more super fun toys, and modeled a Christmas bow for us.

Cy and I both scored some Legos and a few other nice things. When I opened my Lego Imperial Flagship, Noah exclaimed: "Wow! I want that for Christmas!" But he seemed pretty content with his fun new set of interactive talking dinosaurs and his new digital camera. By the time we finished opening presents, poor little Gemma was absolutely exhausted, so we drove back home so she could get a nice long nap. It was a really great day - Gemma seemed to enjoy her very first Christmas.

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 1: Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve this year was hosted at our house. The rest of the Shealys plus Kelly's mom and sister all came over for the festivities. Andrea made chili and I made corn spoonbread and wassail. For dessert, we had peanut butter pie plus an assortment of Christmas cookies. We tried to take some pictures of the three cousins together, but Gemma and Liam didn't want to cooperate. Gemma picked a fight with Liam by grabbing his face. When she wouldn't stop, we had to separate them. But then Liam decided it was time to retaliate and pretty much tried to tackle Gemma. After that, we really had to separate them.

After dinner, Cy read the story of Christ's birth from Matthew and Luke. Then we gathered around the piano and sang some Christmas tunes. Noah in particular enjoyed the singing.

Then it was time to open stockings. We each got a ton of great stuff. Gemma scored some socks, a bib, and her favorite: a bottle of formula. After everyone left, it was a toss-up whether Gemma or Daddy would be the first one to fall asleep so Santa could come.

Best Reads of 2010

I have been sick with the plague for the past week, which is why there has not yet been a blog post about Gemma's first Christmas. I am working up to it. In the meantime, here is a quick and fun (at least, fun for me) post: my annual list of the best books I read in the previous year. So here they are, in no particular order:

1. The Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie; The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag)

2. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Infinitely better than the Twilight books. I was not a fan of the sequel, however.

3. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. It's been years since she published The Historian (which was fantastic), but The Swan Thieves was worth the wait.

4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. There was so much hype about this book that I put off reading it because I thought I would only be disappointed. I was not.

5. The Hunger Games & Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (read these twice actually). I was wary of this one too since people were comparing it to Lord of the Flies. It is nothing like Lord of the Flies. Mostly because it is fantastic and Lord of the Flies is terrible. Mockingjay (the third volume of the trilogy) was horrible.

6. Graceling by Kristin Cashore.

7. Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, and Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran.

8. Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. Another book that was seriously hyped, yet managed to live up to its reputation.

9. The City and the City by China Mieville. I was really not into this book when I first started reading it. It took me a while to get interested, but then I couldn't put it down. After I was finished, I thought about it a lot and developed a growing appreciation for its subtle brilliance. Then I *attempted* to read his new book, Kraken (because I loved The City and the City, and being a little bit obsessed with Pirates of the Caribbean, I was pretty pumped about a kraken, but it was so bad I couldn't even get through 75 pages! It was totally bizarre and I had no idea what was going on!)

10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. This is a really odd book, and had some inappropriate scenes that I wasn't crazy about, yet it was very well-written and weirdly fascinating.

11. River God by Wilbur Smith - Historical fiction set in ancient Egypt = good times.

12. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson - I wasn't a huge fan of book 2 of the trilogy, but I liked the way the trilogy ended with this one.

13. Faithful Place by Tana French - not as good as her previous two, but still thoroughly enjoyable.

14. The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett - Wow is really all I can say about this. The word epic is so overused these days, but if anything deserves to be described as epic, this is it. Also enjoyed watching the mini-series this year as well.

15. Juliet by Anne Fortier - an interesting new spin on the well-known (and overdone) Shakespeare tale.

16. Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs - I randomly started watching Bones on Netflix earlier this year and then decided to try Deja Dead since I had never read anything by Kathy Reichs. I was hooked. I ended up reading everything she's written.

17. Cold Magic by Kate Elliott - An obscure but enjoyable book. Probably only interesting to serious fantasy/sci-fi fans.

18. The Host by Stephenie Meyer - I finally got around to reading this. It was nothing like what I expected, but I enjoyed it very much. I thought it was much better than Twilight, actually.

19. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton - LOVE, LOVE, LOVE KATE MORTON! And her books just keep getting better!!!

20. The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. I had downloaded the first book in this series onto my Kindle ages ago and for some reason, had never bothered to read it. I kept hearing about his new series (Leviathan, Behemoth), and checked Leviathan out from the library. It was decent, and while waiting for the library to get a copy of Behemoth for me, I decided to read Uglies. I was instantly hooked. I plowed through Uglies and downloaded Pretties. Then I plowed through Pretties and downloaded Specials. I wasn't so sure about Extras, since it featured a different character than the original trilogy. But I went ahead and read it too...and it ended up being my favorite of all of them!

21. A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels by Libba Bray - I promise my interest in these books has nothing to do with the fact that the main character's name is Gemma! (Although that might make me a bit impartial to said character.) I downloaded the first of this trilogy ages ago at the same time I downloaded Uglies. After Uglies turned out to be so good, I decided to give the Gemma Doyle Trilogy a try also. Not as good as Uglies, but still really good. YA fantasy set in Victorian England, told from the point of view of a girl named Gemma. Um, this book was clearly just screaming my name! I haven't read the third installment yet, but it is next up on my reading list.

And, just for fun, some books that were so awful I couldn't even finish reading them:

1. The aforementioned Kraken by China Mieville

2. The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls by L. J. Smith - love the show, love the original books. No idea what she was thinking when she wrote this.

3. The Naming by Alison Croggon. I was pretty excited about this - it's a fantasy, quest-type YA read. But it was soooooo boring I literally kept falling asleep while reading it and couldn't even make myself finish it.

4. The Passage by Justin Cronin. Okay, I actually did finish this one, but only because I made myself. This book had a ton of hype, and when I started reading it, I was actually very interested. The first couple hundred pages are really good, and it's a unique vampire story (which is hard to do with the vampire craze going on). But the book really should have ended there, and not 500+ pages later after which point I was thoroughly confused and no longer interested at all.

5. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. After reading his two medieval epics, I was pretty excited about his new Century trilogy. Oh my gosh. I was so bored. I read a little over half, then skimmed to the end. I will not be reading book two. I was glad I got this from the library and didn't waste my money.

6. Three Seconds by Roslund & Hellstrom - I got an ARC and was pretty excited, since it was being compared to Stieg Larsson. It was nothing like Larsson. It seemed like the English translation was done very poorly, so that may have been part of the problem. Either way, very confusing and not worth my time.

And a P. S. - I am already reading a fantastic new book by Julie Klassen (LOVE HER!), The Girl in the Gatehouse, that just came out on January 1. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through, but I can already tell it will be making my 2011 list!