What do you do—where do you go—when you reach that point in your life when you simply need rest? I’m not referring to physical rest after a long day of raking your lawn. I’m referring to mental rest. Perhaps so many thoughts are rushing through your head that you can’t grab them quickly enough before they go slithering down the drain and are gone forever. This has happened to me. Sometimes I reach the point when I feel like a deer trapped in the headlights. I’m paralyzed. Family commitments. Church responsibilities. Editing pressures. Fathering challenges. Financial stresses. Marriage duties. Publishing frustrations. The failure of achieving personal goals. They all pile up, don’t they? I’ve had bursts of creative illumination about future stories, about future goals, about things to add to my to-do list. And I mean to write them down before they vanish, but . . . then what happens?…
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The notion of lost memories and the mysteries of the brain have always fascinated me. Even more so when my dad was diagnosed with stage-4 brain cancer (glioblastoma multiforme) in January 2009. Because my parents moved to my town for Dad’s cancer treatments and I sometimes helped out as caregiver, I got to see the ravages of brain cancer up close and personal. Sometimes when my mom needed to get groceries or run other errands, I sat with my dad and worked on my laptop (rather like I’m doing now) while he slept in a reclined wheelchair. Usually Dad slept soundly, but other times he mumbled words. Names. A smattering of mumbled speech. Something garbled from a dream. Normally, the soliloquy made little sense, but sometimes I recognized a name. Roger. Wayne. (Those are the names of two of my dad’s four brothers.) I heard only an occasional word, but Mom…
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Recently, I had one of those odd life-connections-I-can’t-explain events happen to me, starting on Saturday. Does this ever happen to you? You get one of those jolting reminders that God is very much in control? Disaster about to Happen While passing through our basement, I realized a good section of the southeast corner was submerged. The floor drain—or something below the floor drain—had decided to go on strike, and all the water from my daughters’ baths had pooled all over the floor instead of going down the drain like it was supposed to. The soapy water was slithering its way toward my very un-basement-like home office (which had required a good bit of money and man hours to build), and I could see disaster about to happen. I grabbed buckets and filled them, sprinted up the stairs, and emptied the buckets in our yard . . . as quickly as…
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Wednesday was one of those days. I had a comprehensive copyedit of a 120,000-plus-word novel due by 8:00 p.m. With evening prayer meeting scheduled, I knew I had even less time than usual. By 3:00 p.m., I was doing a reread of the last fifty pages on my Kindle, just double-checking my work. By suppertime at 5:15, I was still at it—and feeling pressured and getting hot and bothered. Ask my family. I literally devoured my wife’s wonderful salmon pie, flew upstairs to get dressed for church, and dashed back to my basement office to wrap up the last few details and e-mail the file . . . just ten minutes before we had to leave for church. And on top of that, I was in charge of leading worship. Gasp! Quality Suffers Yes, I met my deadline. Barely. But by cutting it so close, I wasn’t a happy camper. Why?…
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