JUST BELIEVE ~ Leslie L. McKee

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Just Believe

By Leslie L. McKee

“What do you mean, ‘If I can?’” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.”

Mark 9:23 (NLT)

Have you ever faced something that seemed absolutely impossible? I know I have—on multiple occasions. It’s likely that everyone has encountered such a situation at some point in time. Perhaps it was damage from a natural disaster, a medical report that wasn’t good, or a child who’s gone astray. You may run yourself ragged trying to “fix” the situation. What you find instead is something that feels like pushing a three-ton cement wheel up a steep hill.

Any of those circumstances could be overwhelming … and a “quick fix” is often way beyond our human control. That’s like what was happening surrounding today’s verse.

A father brought his son to Jesus. When the evil spirit inside the boy saw Jesus, the boy went into violent convulsions. This had been happening for years. The father had tried everything to rid his son of the spirit, to no avail. In desperation, the man went to Jesus, to see if there was any way He could help the boy.

Jesus reminded the father that “Anything is possible if a person believes.” What the father cried out is likely relatable to most people. He said, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”

Do you ever feel that way? Know that you believe in Jesus, but, on occasion, wonder if your current circumstance is beyond repair … even for Him?

Jesus wasn’t offering a quick fix, though it would be possible for Him to do so. After all, He’s more than able. Yet Jesus is seeking something else. He’s interested in the long-term spiritual fix … for that father and for us.

Like the man in today’s verse, we’re asked to believe. To have faith. Faith doesn’t put limits on God’s ability. If we trust in Him, we can be witnesses to great things. (Mind you, this doesn’t mean that we’ll automatically receive anything and everything we ask for.) But if we believe, we will see things come to pass according to the Lord’s plans. His power is released through our faith.

 Lord, help me to not put limits on You, but, instead, to fully trust in Your Word. Amen.

Leslie is an editor, reviewer, and author. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and The Christian PEN. Some of her devotionals were published in 2017 compilations by Ellie Claire: Just Breathe and Refresh Your Soul. Another is in Breathe: Devotions to Quiet the Soul, published in 2020. Her flash fiction story, “A Knight to Remember,” was published in Splickety Magazine’s September 2018 issue, and “Love on the Scrambler” in Spark Flash Fiction’s July 2019 issue.

Leslie enjoys reading, playing piano, crocheting, spending time with family and friends (and her turtle!), and rooting for the NY Giants.

MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN ~ Julie Arduini ~ Giveaway

Job’s Wife & Me

Job's Wife and Me

A Throwback Thursday post from Julie Arduini

             When I decided to update the first Christian romance novella I wrote, Match Made in Heaven, I wanted to add a surrender issue readers could relate to. The heroine, Beth Prescott, has congenital hypothyroidism, the same endocrine diagnosis our daughter has.

             Through the years, our daughter has not only struggled with weight gain and exhaustion. She’s needed consistent lab works that have always been difficult draws. We also learned with hypothyroidism is Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Then for us, another diagnosis, the rare disorder called Albrights Hereditary Osteodystrophy. In our situation her bones fused and her height maxxed out at 4’9”. There are certain aspects of puberty that are delayed, and there isn’t a lot of information on Albrights patients her age to know what to expect.

             After a while, I was angry. Mad enough I started pointing fingers. At God. Like Job’s wife, I couldn’t see anything in her situation to be thankful about. “His wife said to him, ‘Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!’” (Job 2:9). I looked at our daughter’s friends surpassing her in height and cried hot, hurt tears. If God is such a good Father, why was He allowing this?

             It took time for me to heal and transform from Job’s wife thinking of cursing God and Job, who blessed the name of the Lord even when He gave and took away. The biggest thing I had to do was lament. Thanks to the book No More Faking Fine by Esther Fleece, I realized I had to let my real feelings out. I was mad. I didn’t understand. But I couldn’t stuff it. I let God know everything He knew anyway. Then I let Him have it all. Surrendered the pain and questions and chose to trust Him with her and her health.

             I’ve had to lament quite a bit since then with big stuff, and small irritations. I realized when revising Match Made in Heaven that Beth’s health and her reaction could be something readers could relate to. She grew up noticing she wasn’t exactly like her peers, and she resented it. Her family were barely church goers to begin with, so it was an easy slide to fault God. When Dean Kellerman enters her life, he’s trusting God with every single thing because he knows too well what it’s like to live without Christ in his life. Writing Match Made in Heaven was a blessing and a challenge, and I believe readers will find their own healing and peace with Jesus as they relate to the story.

             Have you ever blamed God, or do you need to? Please leave a comment below and I will randomly choose one USA winner to win a signed softcover copy of Match Made in Heaven.

Match Made in Heaven:

She’s afraid to mess up. He already has.

Beth Prescott wants to make a difference with the senior citizens she serves as a volunteer coordinator, but their matchmaking efforts leave her guarded. She’s experienced too much pain to make that leap again.

Dean Kellerman returns to the Finger Lakes area to help his grandfather and heal his own broken heart. He’s recommitted his life to Christ and doesn’t want any distractions.

When his grandfather needs assistance with a senior program, it places Dean right in Beth’s path. Can these two surrender their pasts to Christ and have faith in each other and their future?

About Julie:

Julie Arduini loves to encourage readers to find freedom in Christ by surrendering the good, the bad, and ---maybe one day---the chocolate. She’s the author of the contemporary romance series SURRENDERING TIME, (Entrusted, Entangled, Engaged,) as well as the stand-alone novellas, MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN and RESTORING CHRISTMAS. She also shares her story in the infertility devotional, A WALK IN THE VALLEY. Her other latest release, YOU’RE BRILLIANT, is for girls ages 10-100, written with her teenaged daughter, Hannah, and is book 3 in their SURRENDERING STINKIN’ THINKIN’ series. She blogs every other Wednesday for Christians Read, as well as monthly with Inspy Romance. She resides in Ohio with her husband and two children. Learn more by visiting her at http://juliearduini.com, where she invites readers to opt in to her content full of resources and giveaway opportunities.

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• Monthly Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/321e32f02e17/juliearduininewsletter

 About the Giveaway:

 As stated above, Julie is giving away a signed copy of Match Made in Heaven to one USA reader of today's post who leaves a comment below, including your name AND contact information. Otherwise we have no way to let you know if you're the winner. Make sense?

This giveaway will run for one week from today, ending on Thursday, August 6, 2020, at MIDNIGHT, Central time.

 

THE AMISH MENORAH, from The Men who write Amish Fiction

A busy year for Patrick E. Craig… and much more to come!

Plus . . . a Giveaway, to boot!

Patrick E. Craig

It’s been a busy year for me. Since September of 2019 I have released three books and contracted for three more. I have completed another book slated for Indie release and started a second series with my writing friend Murray Pura. Here’s what my year has been like.

In September 2019, Elk Lake Publishing released the second book in my YA Mystery/Adventure series, The Adventures of Punkin and Boo. The book is titled The Lost Coast and is the continuation of a series I first started writing in 2007 but put on hold until I connected with Deb Ogle Haggerty, owner at Elk Lake . With her help I released book one, The Mystery of Ghost Dancer Ranch, in April of last year and then we followed that with The Lost Coast. Book three, The Hidden Gate is on its way and should be done for release in early 2021.

Then I got involved in some projects with my friend, Murray Pura, who has written more than 28 books of his own. We decided we wanted to do a World War II story and the Islands Series was born. Far on the Ringing Plains is the first book. It’s the story of three young men who are raised as pacifists but through different circumstances end up in the Marines fighting on Guadalcanal, two as soldiers and one as a medic. The book has a lot of the same spirit as Flags of Our Fathers, Hacksaw Ridge and Pearl Harbor. We Indie published it in April 2020. We just finished writing book two, The Scepter and The Isle. In it the same three young men have gone on to the battles of Tarawa and Saipan. It’s in the editing process now and we hope to have it released early next year. Our grand plan is a nine book series going through WWII, Vietnam/Cambodia and the current desert wars. Murray and I are also writing a western series, The Storm Riders, also contracted to Elk Lake, and we are part way through Book one.

But my most current project is the one I want to feature today. In the summer of 2019 I met Thomas Nye at an Amish Writers Event in Shipshewana, Indiana. Over coffee and apple pie at an incredible Amish family dinner we attended, we bemoaned the lack of recognition of the men who write Amish fiction. There are about eight of us compared to the hundreds of women who write Amish Fiction. We decided that an anthology of stories would be a great idea. When I got back to Idaho I contacted Murray, who has written several Amish books for Harvest House, Harlequin and other traditional publishers and broached the idea. He jumped on board and we contacted Amos Wyse, Willard Carpenter and Jerry Eicher. They all agreed to join the project, Deb Haggerty signed it and at the end of April we published The Amish Menorah and Other Stories. Here is a short blurb:

The Amish Menorah and Other Stories

Six short stories by the men of Amish fiction to entertain and educate you. You’ll journey with an Amish man and the Jewish woman whose life he saves (The Amish Menorah by Patrick E. Craig), agonize with an Amish girl in love with an Englische man (A Cloudy Day by Willard Carpenter), fret with two sisters both in love with the same man (When Hearts Break by Jerry Eicher), pray with the family whose child is injured in a fall (The Silo by Thomas Nye), work with the Amish sheriff in a western town (Lone Star by Murray Pura), and laugh at the girl forced to be Amish for the summer (Amish For The Summer by Amos Wyse.)

The six of us had so much fun with The Amish Menorah project that we are doing another anthology for Christmas. We don’t have a title yet, but we will let you all know as soon as we do.

And that’s what the last year has been like for me. I am looking forward to 2021, and all the writing I will be doing then. **I will be giving away a signed copy of The Amish Menorah with this post so comment below and enter the contest. Stay well this next year and keep reading.

Thanks, Peg, for having me.

About Patrick E. Craig:

Amazon Best-Selling author Patrick E. Craig, is a lifelong writer and musician who left a successful music career to become a pastor in 1986. In 2007 he retired to concentrate on writing and publishing fiction books. In 2011, Patrick signed a three-book deal with Harvest House Publishers to publish his Apple Creek Dreams series. His self-published books, The Amish Heiress, The Amish Princess, and The Mennonite Queen, as well as the reprinted Apple Creek Dreams are now published by Patrick’s imprint, P&J Publishing. In 2017, Harlequin Publishing purchased The Amish Heiress for their Walmart Amish series and released it in April 2019.

Patrick and co-author Murray Pura have just released Far On The Ringing Plains, Book 1 in a nine book series that will take in the whole sweep of men and women at war from WW II to the current Desert Campaigns. They have also collaborated on an anthology of realistic Amish stories written with the four other men who write Amish fiction: Willard Carpenter, Jerry Eicher, Thomas Nye and Amos Wyse. The Amish Menorah and Other Stories was published by Elk Lake Publishing in May of 2020. He has also recently released two books in his YA mystery series, The Adventures of Punkin and Boo, with Elk Lake Publishers. They are The Mystery of Ghost Dancer Ranch and The Lost Coast. Patrick and his wife Judy live in Idaho. They have two daughters and five grandchildren. 

Where can readers find Patrick online?

www.patrickecraig.com  Webpage
https://www.facebook.com/PatrickECraig  Facebook

https://twitter.com/PatrickECraig  Twitter

Where can readers purchase his books? http://tinyurl.com/n6sfagg Amazon

Also on any of the other online stores.

**About Patrick's Giveaway:

As he said above, Patrick is offering one of this post's readers a free autographed copy of The Amish Menorah. To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment below with your NAME and CONTACT info so we can notify you in case you're our winner. As easy as that.

This giveaway will run for one week from today ending on Wednesday, August 5 at Midnight O'Clock, Central time.

Thanks for being my guest again, Patrick. I think it's neat that you're part of a group of men who've dipped their toes into the world of Amish fiction, a genre usually populated by women writers. Sounds like this book needs to be added to my Kindle TBR list.

GIFTS FROM THE GREATEST GENERATION

Dust Between the Stitches: The Great Depression

By Cleo Lampos

A bundle of quilting materials derived from chicken feed bags and sugar sacks.  A trunk full of diaries and letters from Iowa dated throughout the decade of the 1930’s. From these humble scraps a story threaded its way into a book. An historic novel, Dust Between the Stitches, brings the dust storms and the desperation of the Great Plains farmers to life.

When my mother died in 1988, she left very little earthly goods behind. In a hall closet, we found a bag of muslin feed bags and flour sacks that were cut into 12-inch squares and firmly ironed. On many of these textural pieces, a transfer of a bird and flower was visible in faint blue ink. All 48 states were represented. I started to embroider the state flower/birds to complete the quilt. Significantly, I developed a curiosity about the quilting practices of the Great Depression and began an obsessive collection of quilts from that era. Several years ago, my granddaughter helped to finish this abbreviated version of the State Bird and Flower Quilt of the 1930’s.

The Bird and Flower Quilt created from feed sacks.

In an old trunk, a stash of diaries from my mother’s marriage lay under white linens with deep tatting on the edges. Married in June of 1930, my father and mother began their wedded bliss just as the drought hit the West and Great Plains. My father owned a drag-line and was able to find work as he dug irrigation ditches and spud cellars in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas. Twenty-three different addresses in five years, then they settled in Greeley, Colorado, with my kindergarten-aged brother.  Reading these diaries, letters from folks back in Iowa, and some newspaper articles, brought the heart ache, insecurities, and fear of the Dust Bowl into reality.

The Novel’s Characters Come Alive

Addy Meyers is a first-year teacher in a one room schoolhouse near Greeley, Colorado. She faces the Board of Education as they assess her teaching skills. The eighth-grade boys challenge her authority. The dust storms bring her to the reality of dust, pneumonia, and poverty.

Foreclosure of grandpa’s homestead threatens the security of Addy, grandpa and the two orphan children that Addy’s grandparents adopted. Jess Dettmann is a single man who helps them keep their wits and possibly the homestead. The homeless people who occupy the Hooverville nearby are introduced to Addy by Jess. Her compassionate heart reaches out to these resourceful families who have lost everything. Addy is shocked when she cans applesauce at the community canning center that other women are canning weeds to be eaten in the winter.

Creating a quilt from her Grandmother’s stash pile serves as a way for Addy to cope. Despair, dust, and drought weave through the Great Depression and Dust Bowl producing a fabric on which vivid threads of hope will appear. Will Addy save the farm, her job, and her heart on the Colorado ranch?

From Great Depression to Greatest Generation

The gifts of an unfinished quilt and a treasure trove of written accounts of a forgotten decade ignited my imagination. It is my wish that those who read this novel will realize that the children of the Dust Bowl grew up to be the members of The Greatest Generation. The children and young adults during the Great Depression learned to persevere in tough times and used those lessons in frugality all of their lives. We owe them a debt of gratitude that cannot be repaid.

Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam quilt that Addy created.

While teaching behavior disordered/emotionally disturbed students in a Chicago suburb, I discovered that historical fiction is an excellent way to learn about the issues and people of a time period. To help students write a book report on Dust Between the Stitches, an aid has been created. The insights help junior high and high school readers to understand the dust bowl’s uniqueness in the Great Depression, and to write an organized and thoughtful book report.

Cleo Lampos, M.Ed.

www.cleolampos.com

FB: Author Cleo Lampos

FB: Quilters: Mind, Heart and Soul

Books are available on amazon.com.

IT'S ONLY FICTION . . .

It’s Only Fiction But . . .

by Lillian Duncan

It’s only fiction but…could it happen?

I’m so excited about my new series—MESSENGER. This series has rattled around in my brain for a long time, but it’s not the type of book I usually write so I kept procrastinating. I finally decided it was time.

Keep in mind, I started writing this series last year, long before the pandemic.

The series is set in future America known as NewAmerica. Life is perfect in NewAmerica. No crime. No poverty. No war. No discrimination. Everyone is equal.  Life is perfect until the moment you wonder, “Is there a God?”

In many respects, NewAmerica sounds like the perfect place to live. But as is often the case, what looks perfect on the surface doesn’t look quite as good when you delve a little deeper.

There are four books in the series:

THE LAST CHRISTIAN (Book 1) is a short prequel that shows how America became NewAmerica. Mary Frances was born in the United States of America—land of the free and home of the brave. When anti-Christian sentiment spreads across America and the world along with a deadly pandemic, religious freedom becomes a thing of the past.

MESSENGER (Book 2) Magdalena Denton is an unlikely messenger since her home is NewAmerica where even saying the name of God is a crime, but when God has a message, he will always find a messenger.

UNCITIZEN (Book 3) Magdalena Denton’s bright future is gone. She’s been deemed an UnCitizen because she refuses to deny God. Her new-found faith is challenged as she struggles to stay alive, but God promises to never forsake his children.

EXILE (Book 4) After a daring escape, Magdalena and friend face life in the Empty Lands—an even more hostile environment  than they imagined. They discover that when you walk in faith, miracles become a reality. (Will release in July 2020.)

 It’s only fiction, but…could it happen?

 Lillian Duncan… turning faith into fiction.

 

Lillian lives in a small town in Ohio with her husband. She writes the types of books she loves to read. Even though her books cross genres, they have one thing in common, faith-based stories that demonstrate God’s love—and lots of action. OK, that’s two things.

She was a school speech pathologist for over 30 years but retired in 2012 after being diagnosed with bilateral brain tumors due to Neurofibromatosis Type 2 (NF2), a rare genetic disease. 

Whether as an educator, a writer, or a speech pathologist, she believes in the power of words to transform lives, especially God’s Word. To learn more about Lillian and her books, visit:   www.lillian-duncan.com.