Flowers and Friends

Mr. Lizard is king of the Dianthis

I'm trying to hide.

Gardenia bonsai tree.

A silly cat

This little guy is going to be a 12-foot tall Sunflower.

Just a few pictures to celebrate Spring. 

Easter like Christmas?

I was just wondering, why can't Easter by more like Christmas?  No, I don't mean the tree and Santa Clause.  On Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus by giving gifts.  Charitable giving is on the minds of hearts of many, not just Christians during this time.  We give to our family, to friends and coworkers, and our neighbors.  We give to the poor and the needy families in our neighborhoods.  It bothers me that, in general, that it stops on December 26th.

So, if people are in a giving mood surrounding the celebration of Christ's birth, why not his resurrection?  After all, the resurrection is what gives us hope. It's the culmination of Christ's time here on earth.  It's the completion of his task, that promise of eternal life.

We give for his birth, yet we hunt for candy on His resurrection.  Anyone besides me see a problem with that?

I'd like to change that.  If you are reading this and gave during Christmas, please think about giving on Easter.  If you are reading this and didn't give during Christmas, please give on Easter.  After all, Christ died for you.  He gave IT ALL!!!  If you were planning on going "Easter shopping" to buy that "Easter dress" for yourself and your children I would like to challenge you to take that money and give it to the homeless, the poor, the needy.  Give to your local pregnancy center or homeless shelter.  Buy dinner for someone who is out of a job.  Pay for the groceries of the family in the check out line who is counting pennies.  Give to the parents/families of our military who are struggling.

Most of all, give because everything you have belongs to God.  He gave us his son who gave us his life so that we could live with him in Heaven.

GOD IS LOVE.  LOVE IS A VERB.

I DIED FOR YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.

GIVE TODAY.

Klondike House

I recently had the pleasure of working with John Dwyer, author, in editing his new book, Klondike House.  


"The eldest of six children, John Dwyer recounts his memories of a rural childhood on the remote but beautiful Beara Peninsula in West Cork, Ireland. Complemented by a series of childhood photographs, his stories are told in vivid and colourful prose.

He describes the hard but happy work of saving the hay, cutting the turf, shearing the sheep, and digging the potatoes. His humour comes to the fore as he describes a rampaging sheep and an innocent hobby nearly caused a local outcry. His account of his own family connections with America and especially Butte, Montana are a microcosm of all Irish-American stories of immigration.

Sprinkled with a selection of fitting works by some of Ireland's best-known poets such as Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh and Paul Muldoon, this gem of a book is a chronicle of the simple but happy life of an Irish farmer boy."

You can purchase Klondike House at Amazon. 

Book sample for "Black Purple Sky"

CHAPTER ONE

Mirrors don’t lie. They are not capable of it. They merely reflect what exists on the other side.  It is the viewer, the one who looks into the pane of glass, who interprets what they see. Sometimes the viewer loves what they observe whether it be beauty, happiness, or transformation. On occasions, specifically an occasion like this one, reality hits hard.  It lands square in the face and jolts the viewer to accept what is, what has become of them, and what must be done.

Gretchen’s jaw dropped, her stomach churned, and she gasped audibly as soon as the woman’s hands uncovered her eyes and she looked into the mirror. Her face, under the garish makeup was ashen gray. Who was that poor, pitiful, hideous creature in that awful dress?  She was oblivious to the chatter and bustling activity around her, the fingers fussing with her hair, as she stared at the girl in the mirror.  She was unrecognizable. Sure, she knew she was staring at herself, but it wasn’t.  The girl’s eyes were sad. Dark circles were covered with heavy make-up as was the rest of her face.  The eyelids had been painted a particularly ugly shade of blue, which clashed with the brilliant blue of her eyes. Her cheeks were orange, and her lips, oh my.  The lips were bubble gum pink.

Gretchen forced back tears. What did these horrible women do to her? Gretchen’s long blond hair had been curled, teased, piled high and glued with a case of hair spray.  On the top of her head was a silver crown with poufs of satin and lace which was her train and veil. She dared not look down.  It was like looking at a bloody accident. Horrible, but compelled to look. The garment started under Gretchen’s chin. It was an ugly, vaguely off-white satin with ruffles.  Lots and lots of ruffles.  The top of the collar, just under her chin was lined with ruffles.  Its shoulders puffed up as if a child had cut and sewn the dress and stuffed it with pillows then glued all the scraps onto the shoulder and sleeves.

“Oh my God,” Gretchen thought to herself as she touched her cheek, “kill me now. What have I done to deserve this? He told me I was beautiful. I used to be...”

Ready for more???  Get your full version at Smashwords, Amazon, or if you want it in paperback it is available at Create Space.

This book has been nominated for a Global E-book award

New Release

New book release

Young and beautiful, Gretchen Deen was beginning to live the life she always dreamed of. She was successful in her budding career, nice apartment, decent car, and well-liked by everyone she met.  As head personal trainer, she was accustomed to the flirtatious male customers at the gym where she worked. Rarely did she date any of them, however, one very persistent young man swept her off her feet into a whirlwind nightmare.  Objections were disregarded violently.  Gretchen desperately needed to take a bad situation and turn it into something good. 

Paperback also available.

Share your pain

Sunday's lesson by Cary Hadley at Church of Christ of West Orange was a subject of much debate so I decided to share it with all of you.  


Why does God allow pain?  
1. God has given us free will ( Genesis 1:27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.)  

We are created in God's image.  God is free to make choices and so are we.  He didn't create unthinking robots. 

2. God uses pain to get our attention. (Proverbs 20:30 Blows and wounds scrub away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. 2 Corinthians 7:9 yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.)  

God does not cause our pain, he uses it.

3.  God uses pain to teach us to depend on Him  (2 Corinthians 1:8-9 ⁸ We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,^[a] about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. ⁹ Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.)  

4. God allows pain to give us a ministry to others (2 Corinthians 1:4 ³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.)

So, in summary, God allows pain because we have free will (to make good as well as bad choices), to get our attention, to depend on Him and to give us a ministry to help others.

Have you ever thought, "No one understands what I'm going through? I'm the only who has ever felt/done/thought/experienced what I have."  The truth is, you are not alone.  There is nothing in this world that has not been experienced by at least one other person.  We, as Christians, should and I believe are told outright as in the above scriptures, SHARE our pain.  After all, I have been forgiven of my sins, my pains, my bad choices and I want you to experience the same relief and joy that comes with forgiveness that I have.  

Sharing my pain is exactly what I did when I wrote, "Lessons Learned at Summer Camp".   I was hurting and needed to tell my story.  I'm not good at verbalizing in person, and the story was too long.  Therefore, I wrote it down and decided to share it with the world.   

The following is a short excerpt.   If you'd like to read the book in entirety, it is available on Amazon and Smashwords.  I'll be more than happy to gift the book to you through Smashwords.  

LESSONS: 

“I met my first real boyfriend when I was 15.  Danielle had 2 daughters.  I babysat them quite often.  In the summertime I would spent a lot of time at their house babysitting or just hanging out with the girls at the neighborhood pool.  My mother trusted Danielle, she went to our church, so I was allowed to go over to her house anytime and even spend the night.  The summer I turned 15 the pool got a new lifeguard.  He was the cousin of my friend, who was also a lifeguard at the pool.  He was at least 18, from California, and very tanned and muscular.  Being 15, I was ‘in love’.  He being older and wiser, told me he was infatuated with me.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Keri.

“He wanted her for her body,” answered Joey.

“My first sexual encounter was with him,”  Angel nodded.  “I didn’t know anything about him, but I liked the attention, liked the way he made me feel.  First there was then ‘innocent’ flirting that led to touching and kissing in the pool, after hours and at night.  I liked it.  I had never been paid attention to by the boys in school. I had never dated anyone in school, not that I was old enough in the first place.  I always thought I was ugly, not the type to be popular or even noticed by anyone, much less boys.  So, here was this boy, this nearly man not only paying attention to me but being sexually attracted to me.  I didn’t once stop to think, I am doing the right thing, should we be doing this?  Good golly no!  A boy was kissing me!  I had never been kissed before.  How could I possibly think about anything else?”

At this point, the girls moved in a little closer, sat up in their beds and stared at Angel intently.  She had their attention.  Even the girls in the adjacent set of dorm rooms and their counselors were hovering by the adjoining door.   She took a deep breath, thought to herself, “Help me God,” waved for the new listeners to come in then continued.

“On our first real date, we went to dinner, then to his apartment.  My mother gave me permission to go out with him.  She liked him.  Who wouldn’t, he was cute and polite!  What was she thinking? I was only 15 years old.  While we were kissing, at his apartment, on his bed, he asked me if I was a virgin.  I was embarrassed to say yes, but I did say yes.  To his credit, he said, ‘Then we can’t have sex.  You’re underage.”  I was relieved.  Disappointed in a way, but relieved.”

“He could have been charged with statutory rape,” exclaimed Ana.

“Probably,” Angel continued.   “However, that didn’t stop him, or me, from doing just about everything else.  Oral sex is sex.  I lot of kids don’t think so, but it is and 15-year-olds shouldn’t be doing it.  I did. I had never been told no, that it was wrong.  I didn’t even know what oral sex was.  I was told you can’t have sex, and to me sex was intercourse.  I liked it.  This was more attention than I had gotten up to this point in all the 15 years I had lived.   I was absolutely terrified of all of the feelings going through my body, but I liked it.”

“You were scared?” asked Keri.

“Very. I had no idea what was going on.  He was doing things to my body I didn’t know existed.  My mother had never talked to me about sex.  My friends at school didn’t talk about sex, not that they knew the facts.  I think I laid as still as a statue and didn’t move or say anything the whole time.  It never happened again.  A few months later, he moved back to California.  I was devastated.  He didn’t tell me he was leaving.  Suddenly, he was just gone.  He didn’t call.  He didn’t answer his phone.  He wasn’t home.  No one knew where he was until he called his cousin, my friend, and she told me.  My first love, my first broken heart, my lost innocence – at the age of 15.”

“Jerk,” scowled Joey.

“You’re lucky the dude didn’t give you a disease,” stated Eva flatly.

“I started a new high school in the 10^th grade.  A magnet school for the arts.  I almost fit in.  I actually did, but I still felt like I didn’t belong.  Everyone was different.  Singers, musicians, actors, dancers, artists.  We were all free to express ourselves.  The people who were made fun of in traditional high schools flourished at this school.  We were all accepted for who we were, not made to fit a mold.  I learned about homosexuality at that school.  One of my best friends was a drag queen.  I, however, was still a shy little girl with no self-confidence.  I still wore the mask even in a place where masks were not needed.  I thought I was a good dancer.  Dancing was freeing, liberating at my dance studio.  At this new school, however, everyone was better than me, lots better.  I was intimidated.  Mask on.”

“What does that mean – mask?” asked one of the girls in the doorway.

“It means I was pretending, projecting an imaging, not letting people know who I really was.  Have you ever gone to school or to church mad at the world, just had a fight with your parents, and a friend says ‘Hey how you doing?’ and you answer, ‘Fine,’ with a smile on your face? That is putting on your mask.” the girls nodded, understanding.