Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 46
March 7, 2024
Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot
Three cozy mystery shows you should be watching
March 5, 2024
Faithfully Thinking: Do what the person you want to be would do.
March 4, 2024
Book Review: Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson
March 3, 2024
Sunday Bookends: Cozy mysteries and planning for spring reads
March 2, 2024
Saturday Afternoon Chat: Stormy weather, my daughter’s stuffed animal beds, and missing photography
March 1, 2024
Fiction Friday: The First Chapter of Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage
February 29, 2024
Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot February 29
February 28, 2024
Faithfully Thinking: It doesn’t matter what they say about you if God already spoke over you
Have you ever had someone suggest you can’t do something you want to do?
I don’t mean you are a 4-year-old child and you want to touch the light socket and you can’t.
I don’t mean you’re 21 and you want to drink until you can’t see anymore because you are upset about a breakup and someone rightly tells you that you can’t.
I mean you wanted to be an art teacher and someone told you that you weren’t good enough or smart enough.
Or maybe you wanted to be a writer or a pastor or a church leader and someone told you – “Sorry. Not possible. You’re a mom/too young/too old/not Christian enough/not smart enough/not experienced enough. You can’t do that.”
I’ve been there.
I was told once that I should be happy and content to be a mother and only a mother. That was all I was meant to be. The idea I could be a professional photographer and a mother was ridiculous to this person. It turned out to be ridiculous to me as well since I had (have) no business sense and the business failed. That’s another matter for another day, though.
During that same conversation, I was told another friend of ours should also be content to be a mother and stop trying to find other jobs to do. Her identity was a mother. Period. That’s where God wanted her and me to be, this person said.
Oddly, though, this person was a mother and teaching art at a private school. Somehow, she could be two things in life but we were only allowed to be one. Not sure how that worked in her brain but . . it did.
I was very confused by that conversation. It never made sense to me. Maybe she thought she was encouraging us and I misunderstood the conversation.
What I do know is that we should do what we feel God has spoken over us, not what someone else says God has spoken over us.
The other person may be well-intentioned. They may very well feel God has told them something about you and they think it is the right thing to tell you.
My advice is to always check their suggestion with what you feel God has spoken over you.
Another friend recently told me she heard the words “put it down” when she thought about me. We both knew she was talking about how hard I’d been striving to grow my social media to promote my books. I felt that advice truly was an encouragement from God and took it is such. I started picking up a book more than my phone and began to feel less stress.
In his sermon this past Sunday, Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church said, “What people say about you only has the power over you that you give it. If your father spoke something over you, it doesn’t matter what they say.”
This doesn’t mean that fellow Christians won’t confirm something to you that you feel God has been telling you. It also doesn’t mean that someone really did feel like God told them something about you and your life they think you should know. They may very well be right about that specific thing.
Double check it, though. Don’t just go with it because they said God told them.
Pastor Steven urged those listening to him to remember that it doesn’t matter what someone told you that you couldn’t be. It matters what God has always known you to be.
Furtick says he has to say often to himself, “Christ is in me. I am enough.”
That’s a hard one for me to say, but I’m going to try.
I don’t ever feel enough.
Even writing this blog post I have these constant thoughts running through my head:
“This is stupid.”
“This is going to offend someone.”
“I probably shouldn’t have brought up that story about the former friend. It makes her sound worse than she probably meant it even though it is something that still puzzles me.”
“I’m not good enough to write stuff like this.”
“Someone will probably read Steven Furtick’s name and tune me right out.”
We are never going to be perfect.
We are never going to get it all right all the time.
We are never going to please every person all of the time or even some of the time.
What we can do despite all of that is step into who God says we are – not who we or others say we are.
If we are taking a step that is wrong, God will correct us and turn us on the right path again.
In Jeremiah 1:5, God spoke to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
This was a message for Jeremiah but it can also be a message for us. He knew before we were born what the purpose of our life was and what we are capable of.
Who are we to question what God has spoken over us?
February 25, 2024
Sunday Bookends: Relaxing in front of the fire, middle grade books, disappointing mystery books
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer , Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.
The weather was 22 degrees (F) with a wind chill of 12 and the fire lit on the first try for me. I was thrilled and since I couldn’t feel my toes at that point because I hadn’t wanted to turn the heat up and use up heating oil, I stuck my feet out toward the woodstove, opened the book I started this week – Miracle on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen – and proceeded to read for the next 90 minutes. I also made myself some hot cocoa and a type of Chex Mix concoction with sugar, cinnamon, and maple syrup, baked in the oven.
After I read some, I worked a bit on my novel, cooked some steaks and roasted potatoes for me and my daughter since The Boy was at a friend’s house and The Husband was at a work event. It was a very relaxing day and it was mainly relaxing because I shut social media completely off and was more intentional about doing the things that help to relax me.
My week wasn’t super busy this past week. I had dinner with my parents on Wednesday when my mom made dinner for Little Miss and I because we were borrowing their car to take Little Miss to Kid’s Club at a local church. Our headlights are still out on the car that hit a deer ran into in October.
On Thursday I planned to take them sone dinner I had cooked and return the car but as I headed out, the rain we’d been having all day turned into snow. No warning. Just snow and it started piling up. I thought it would be a brief snow, but instead, the roads became slick and I ended up staying home.
I took them lunch the next day instead when I took their car back, grabbed my car, and headed 20 minutes north to pick up the groceries from Aldi.
It looks like Saturday will be the last super cold day for the week, even though night temps will be low. Day temps, however, will be in the mid-40s to mid-50s starting Monday.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I finished Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson and while Craig is a great writer, I will be taking a break from his books for a while. I was very annoyed with this one and how I had it figured out way before it finished. I’m not a fan of books where part of the characters are ghosts and I know they are but the author tries to pretend I don’t know. Plus, almost the entire book was “in Longmire’s head” and not really action, like the other books have been. That was disappointing because it was almost like Johnson ran out of things to write about and it was only the seventh book in the series. I will read other books in the series later, but for now, I need to read some books that are a little less dark and … well, strange.
Saying the above sentence may be fairly ironic when I say that the next book I am reading, at the urging of a friend, is about World War II, but it’s a different kind of dark, okay?
I am reading All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr because a friend read it and wants to know what I think. It’s not my usual read, but I’m giving it a try. It’s interesting so far but it is a little jarring because you only read about a character for about two pages and it switches to another character or place and it does that throughout the whole book.
It is a Pulitzer-winning book and was recently made into a movie on Netflix, though, so what might be a bit jarring to me apparently didn’t matter to a lot of other people.
I mentioned above I am also reading Miracles on Maple Hill, which is a middle-grade level book but something I feel like I needed this winter.
I liked that the beginning of the book featured a story about collecting sap and making maple syrup because we are in that season in Pennsylvania right now and my husband just visited a large maple syrup operation at a farm near us. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the book’s setting is Pennsylvania. Because the family comes to the rural area from the city it makes me think of the many people who visit our area from Philadelphia.
Up Next (or soon):
Blessed Is the Busy Body by Emilie Richards
Fields of Fire by Ryan Steck
I know I’ve mentioned before that I am a mood reader so I like to have a couple of books going so that I can pick whichever one my mood fits at that time. I have to say that I am finding it a little stressful to have more than two books going at a time so I have decided to only switch between two books – one a little lighter and one a little heavier.
I am not a fast reader and do not usually have a high read count at the end of the year but I am proud of myself that I have read nine books so far this year. I think that is the most I have ever read in two months. At least one of those was a carryover from 2023 and two of them were middle grade reads, but still, better than other years and I’m glad I’m reading more and watching things less.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched a lot of Lark Rise to Candleford. I also watched a couple of YouTubers, but I read more than I watched this week, which is an unusual thing for me.
This week I hope to catch up on All Creatures Great and Small and Miss Scarlet and The Duke.
What I’m Writing
I made a lot of progress this week on Cassie, which releases in August.
On the blog I shared:
Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot February 22 and my daughter likes my book! Mid Week Catch Up: The weather, homeschool update, books, and other ramblingsWhat I’m Listening to
Little Miss and I are listening to Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink on Audible. I am listening to In this Mountain by Jan Karon (A Mitford Series book) and crying through it. I’ve read this book before but somehow having it read to me by an amazing narrator (John McDonough) makes it even more emotional. It is also emotional because since I first read the book something happened in my family that makes it easier to relate to Father Tim’s tragic situation. There is nothing like standing over one’s dirty dishes and sobbing to make that person (me) realize how much I’ve shoved down over the last decade of my life.
This week I will set In This Mountain aside and start listening to A Tale of Two Cities because The Boy and I are reading/listening to it for English. We set it aside for a couple of months but are going back to it.
Photos from Last Week
I haven’t touched the Nikon in more than a month but I hope to change that as the weather warms up. Here are a few photos from the new cellphone instead.
Your Turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
