I had just bought the utility knife from Home Depot. It was brand-new and razor sharp. Combine that with my inexperience with cutting old carpet from an even older flight of stairs, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Always cut away from your body, never toward it, I’d been told. Especially with a knife that’s that sharp. But I forgot. Or wasn’t listening, as sometimes the case may be. The accident happened in a flash. It was so quick, I’m not even sure how I did it. But the cut on the side of my hand was deep, the wound resembling two lips with plenty of blood oozing in between. The cut didn’t even hurt, but I instantly knew this was no Band-Aid-variety wound. Light-headedness prompted by the shock of what I’d just done descended on me for a few minutes. “I’m so sorry,” I said to Kim, my…
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Lately my church has been going through a fascinating, encouraging book during Sunday school called God Is More Than Enough: Foundations for a Quiet Soul by Jim Berg. This book goes along with Berg’s video series Quieting a Noisy Soul; we’ve been watching the videos during Sunday school and then reading the correlating chapters during the week in preparation for Wednesday night discussion. When I come across a real gem, I like to let others know about it—and this is one of them. And in the spirit of “approving excellent things” (Phil. 1:10), I like to share the blessing. I must admit that I read few nonfiction Christian fiction books because so many I’ve read (or tried to read) were so simplistic, I felt insulted. Or they tried so hard to be novel that the content flirted with false teaching or waded into psychobabble. This is not one of them. The…
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I’m hitting the road early today, so today’s post has got to be short and sweet. But I wanted to tell my readers about something exciting I recently came across. If you know me, you know I like free. I constantly post about free Kindle books at my Facebook, so if the idea of free Kindle books appeals to you, please come and friend/follow me (https://www.facebook.com/adamblumer for free nonfiction and https://www.facebook.com/AdamBlumerNovelist for fiction). But free phone service, not free books, is why I’ve come calling today (pun intended). A few years ago, I came across Google Voice, and I can’t speak more highly of it. Google Voice gives you a free phone number, and you can send and receive free local and long-distance calls—even send text messages—within the US and Canada completely for free using your computer (via Internet access). Read more about it here: http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html. If you have Internet in your home (and most of…
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I’ve written a new eighty-thousand-word novel—except for the ending, that is. That’s where, I confess, I’m struggling right now. “What? Why?” you may ask. When faced with seemingly too many good plot choices, my default is to become indecisive. I’ve been there, done that—written an ending I thought was the best one only to later discover it stank to high heaven. Wasted words. Wasted time. Wasted life. If only I could get it right the first time. <See me banging my head against the wall?> Indecisive Me Maybe you’re not like me. Maybe with every life choice you know instantly what you want and which path is best. But that’s not me. Picture me at an ice cream stand. Okay, which flavor do I want? Mackinac Island Fudge? Chocolate? Black Cherry? Rocky Road? Mint Chocolate Chip? Um, well, I like them all. So the question isn’t, which ice cream do I like…
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