Davalynn Spencer's Blog, page 57

What if God doesn’t do things my way?

“Trusting God with her eternal soul had been easy for Livvy. She had been raised to take Him at His word, and she believed what He said about salvation. It all made sense to her—God’s gift of love and salvation in Jesus. But trusting Him with her heart where Whit was concerned? For some reason, that was harder.”  Branding the Wrangler’s Heart

When I wrote Branding the Wrangler’s heart, I included this struggle in Livvy’s life because it was very close to my own. Trusting the Lord with my soul has always been easier than trusting Him with other things like my children, my career, or my family’s health.

Why is that?

Deep in my heart I know God is perfectly capable of taking care of me and those I love, so why do I fret? Why can’t I let go of worry?

I believe it has to do with choice on two levels: the choice to let God work things out and the choice to rely on Him to carry me through the result. Like Livvy in the book, I have the options of trust or anxiety. I can depend on the one who created the delicate columbine that thrives in the rugged Rocky Mountains, or I can fall back on my own understanding.

When I look at it that way, there really is no contest. My comprehension and perspective are so limited. I’m much better off uncurling my fingers and letting God take over—even when His plan doesn’t exactly match up with mine. After all, He really does know what He’s doing.

What do you struggle with when it comes to trusting God? How do you let go? I’d love to hear from you.

Davalynn

 

Congratulations to Maxie Andersen who won a signed copy of Branding the Wrangler’s Heart in last week’s drawing!

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Radio interview and giveaway

“Blot out my transgressions” is printed in blue ink on the back cover of my new book, Branding the Wrangler’s Heart. That phrase is from Psalm 51:1,2 and it undergirds one important question in the book:

Will Livvy forgive Whit for how he treated her in the past?

 As the book title indicates, branding is a key element in this tale set in 1879 Fremont County, Colorado, near Cañon City.  Not a lot has changed since then when it comes to cutting people enough slack to let them change their ways—and let the good Lord put His brand on them.

To celebrate the book’s release, I’m giving away a copy this week. Be sure to leave a comment on this blog before May 10 to be entered. And don’t forget your email address so I can notify you if you win.

If you’d like to see what I “see” for the setting and characters of Branding the Wrangler’s Heart, check out my Pinterest page.

And to hear my radio interview about the book on Christian Author Talks, click here: 

Unlike cattle, we get to choose whose brand we wear. Here’s hoping that you’ll choose the Lord and let Him fill your life with faith and fresh hope.

Davalynn

Photo by http://amandajphotos.com/

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What’s your perspective?

Every Easter brings to mind the years my family participated in a passion play at our church. Those re-enactments of key events in the life of Christ left an indelible mark on my heart.

I played the part of a woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. In the play, I also stood at the foot of the cross during a theatrically realistic portrayal of the crucifixion. What struck me was my character’s varying perspective.

That woman had held Jesus’ dusty feet in her hands, kneeling over them and weeping. She had seen them up close and worshipped her Lord with an act of servitude and adoration.

If she stood at the cross with others when Christ was crucified, as I did in the play, she would have seen those same feet—up close again, but this time bearing a brutal, unnatural wound. Did she reach up and wipe away the blood?

Such contrast: looking down in adoration and looking up in despair.

Three days later, she may have gained yet another perspective while looking in with wonder at the empty tomb.

What do you see during the Easter season? I pray that your perspective is one of faith and fresh hope in our risen Lord as you consider again that He lives.

                                                                               

Read more about the woman in Luke 7:36-50.

 

Goodreads giveaway

Annual Refresher Course

Our local ranch and farm supply store is singing a song of life. As soon as you step through the sliding glass doors, the music tickles your ear and draws you to a warm spot where peeping chicks are bobbling around in their fuzzy jackets.

And keeping watch over the new crop of pullets are several well-stuffed roosters of a different feather.

 

 

 

 

This delightful ritual repeats itself annually and I’m always invigorated by the concept of new life.

Fresh start. Renewal. Hope.

Imagine if spring came only once in our lifetime. How easy it would be to forget God’s promise of revival and redemption. Instead, every year we have the chance to hear Him say, “It’s not too late.”

As the God of creation, He is also the God of re-creation, and He pointed this out to Noah after the watery ‘death’ of the world:

“As long as the earth endures,

Seedtime and harvest,

Cold and heat,

Summer and winter,

Day and night

Will never cease”

Gen. 8:22

I’m so grateful for God’s yearly refresher course and His reminder that life really does go on.

Springtime, Rabbits, and Teapots

From the tracks in the snow this winter, I figured we had a good-sized jackrabbit. Either that or a kangaroo. But it wasn’t until the last 8-inch “dusting” we received that I actually saw the critter.

Looking out the kitchen window, I spotted a new stump in the back half of our Colorado acre. I looked closer. The stump had two very long ears that would fit fine on a mule deer. And then I realized what I was looking at hunkered down in our snowy back yard.

By the time I grabbed my camera and got back to the window, he was loping into the bushes, quickly out of sight.

I told our neighbor across the street about my sighting, and she said, “Oh, that’s Jack. He has a trail that runs through here.” She should know since she sets cracked corn out for the deer, and I’ll just bet Jack noses around in it, too.

We also have a family of cottontails that live under our spreading juniper trees. Sparrows and doves and quail make themselves at home in the same trees, but I’m partial to the bunnies. They remind me of the teapot my husband’s Aunt Ida gave me one year for my birthday.

Colorado columbines circle the base, and every spring in California, I’d display the bunny teapot and think about Springtime in the Rockies. It’s nice to set that little pot out on the table now with those Rocky Mountains towering over the ridge behind our house.

If you’ve heard the phrase, Springtime in the Rockies, and wonder about its origin, click on one of the following links to hear the old-time love song

Gene Autry        Sons of the Pioneers

If you’re wondering what the real springtime in the Rockies is like, my husband’s favorite poem pretty much says it all:

Spring is sprung the grass is riz.

I wonder where the flowers is.

And if you want to read more about columbines, be sure to check out my next book set to release in May, Branding the Wrangler’s Heart.

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Saving time and marshmallows

Tonight at midnight we lose an hour as we set our clocks forward to 1 a.m. Personally, I won’t be awake to spring ahead, and will have already given up those precious sixty minutes.

Airline travelers lose more than an hour when traveling across the international dateline. It is possible to lose an entire day. When I was a child, my father told me if a person kept traveling long enough in that direction, he would disappear completely. Dad’s sense of humor, I suppose.

It matched his tale that marshmallows were made from horse slobber scraped off and shaped into little flat-ended balls.

At least he never told me the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus were real. I didn’t have to unbelieve such things when I grew up—other than the bit about marshmallows.

Happy daylight-saving time, everyone. I’m not sure where it’s being saved, but if you have a great story, I’d love to hear it.

Warmth, comfort, and potbelly biscuits

My dad had an old cast iron stove in his “office” – a building out back of our house that women today would call a man cave. The stove sat right in the middle of the room surrounded by desks, chairs, book shelves, and a drafting table. There was something cozy about hanging out in that one-room retreat on a rainy day, something inviting and primitively simple.

In my latest book, The Cowboy Takes a Wife, a potbelly stove becomes a focal point around which the characters gather to enjoy Annie Whitaker’s home-made, potbelly biscuits. When I started the story, I didn’t know the old coal-burner would become so important. But if I had been in the Rockies on a snowy day in 1860, that’s where I would have headed.

Today my husband and I have a wood and coal stove in the living room, and it offers the same thing those old cast iron stoves did: great heat and a cozy atmosphere. I crave the intimacy of curling up on the sofa with a novel and a cup of hot tea while the Colorado wind takes a run at our snug little home.

Warmth and comfort – two things we all look for. May the warmth and comfort of God’s love hold you close these remaining winter days.

~finding faith & fresh hope through Love~

 

From the present to the past

There is a curve in US Highway 50 west of Cañon City, Colorado, that the locals call Soda Point. For perhaps a couple of centuries a natural soda spring bubbled up there and Utes and explorers alike took the waters.

In the late 1940s someone or many someones decided that a paved highway was more important than the spring, and that natural wonder has long slept beneath the humming wheels of cars and pickups and semis.

But the curve is still referred to as Soda Point, and distance from it is still reckoned. Eight Mile Hill, Four Mile Creek—both places were originally measured from Soda Point in the mid1800s, and both locales bear the same names today.

For me, Soda Point serves as a portal from the present to the past, for when I round that bend, I step into the world of my historical fiction characters.

In my latest book, The Cowboy Takes a Wife, Caleb Hutton rides his horse Rooster up the river past Soda Point, mulling over his mistakes in life. He’s caught in a late fall snow storm and makes it back to Cañon just in time. He also rides the trail that follows a wrinkle of up-shot rock called the Hogbacks on his way to a ranch that doesn’t need him. Discouragement dogs Caleb until he finally learns what God can do with failure.

Though my characters are fictional, the land is not, and I imagine the ochre walls and red abutments overlooking the Arkansas River are much the same today as they were a hundred and fifty years ago.

I know people’s struggles are the same, and we still try to run away from our problems rather than trust the Lord to show us how to work through them.

Today a steel gate blocks the path that my character, Caleb, would have taken on his ride upriver to the mouth of the great gorge. But for those who want to see the area, there’s a hiking trail along Tunnel Drive west of town, just before the turn off to Pueblo Community College’s Fremont Campus. From that high vantage point, one can look out over the Arkansas River and up Grape Creek where Caleb heard the “laughing waters” and saw deer scaling the canyon’s walls.

Funny, how still today, a walk through God’s creation can help us focus on His voice and His answers.

I hope you enjoy reading The Cowboy Takes a Wife – the first in this historical series set in Cañon City, Colorado.  I had a great time writing it.

Davalynn

Win a signed book

The Cowboy Takes a Wife releases on Kindle today and in paperback on Feb. 4. Read on to see how you can win a signed copy.

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Before Colorado statehood was attached to this stretch of prairie and Rocky Mountains, it was known as Kansas Territory (or Jefferson Territory to the hardliners). The Arkansas River cut out of the mountains near a Ute encampment and coursed through a little mine-supply town called Cañon City.

And that’s where I begin my story of Caleb Hutton and Annie Whitaker in The Cowboy Takes a Wife—Cañon City, 1860.

This month I’m promoting the book during a blog tour without ever saddling up.

I wonder what Caleb would think of traveling via the Internet rather than horseback.

Some of my stops will offer an opportunity to win a free signed copy of the book, plus a look at character profiles and author interviews. I hope you’ll visit one or all of the locations listed below.

A book signing is also scheduled at Words of Life book store on Cañon City’s Main Street Feb. 8 from 1-3 p.m., not too far from where my characters meet in the fictional Whitaker’s Mercantile.

Plus I’m offering my own give-away right here in a random drawing of people who comment on this blog post prior to Feb. 8. Be sure to leave your email address in your comment so I can contact you if you win the book.

May Faith and Fresh Hope be yours.

 

Jan. 30             Guest post: Personal experience with Becky Jacoby at http://www.beckyjacoby.com/davalynn-spencer-surprise-affirmations-provide-a-lift/

Feb. 3 Author interview and BOOK GIVE-AWAY with Laura Davis at http://www.interviewsandreviews.com/

Feb. 10 Guest post: Personal experience with Christine Lindsay at http://www.christinelindsay.org/

Feb. 10 Guest post for animal-lovers with All Creatures Great and Small blog at http://roxannerustand.com/

Feb. 11-12 Author interview and BOOK GIVE-AWAY with Martha Rogers at http://www.marthasbooks.blogspot.com/

Feb. 12 My marketing tips at http://www.seriouslywrite.blogspot.com/

Feb. 24 Heroine Annie Whitaker interview and BOOK GIVE-AWAY with Margaret Daley at http://www.margaretdaley.com/margarets-blog/

Feb. 26 Author interview and BOOK GIVE-AWAY with Hallee Bridgeman at http://www.bridgemanfamily.com/hallee/

When “no” becomes “yes”

Every January I switch out my desktop calendar, looking back through the previous year to transfer birth dates and other important information.

This year, instead of a simple transfer of dates, the endeavor became a time of praise and awe and thanksgiving.

For example, last January I sent a proposal for a short pioneer-Christmas story, hoping it would be selected for an anthology by a major publisher. It was not selected. However, that story became the first in a three-book series picked up by another major publisher. All three books release this year, the first one in February—all because the first publisher said “no.”

In September, my husband and I moved into our long-awaited home, and we have been surprised by all the little things here that fit our needs so perfectly. Yet as I looked back through the first half of my 2013 calendar, I saw note after note of appointments with realtors to see a house I thought at the time was the perfect one for us. It became a discouraging drudgery, and I nearly gave up hope. So many “no’s.”

“God has something for us,” my husband said one day.

And He did. Without all those other “no’s” we would not have pressed on to find the home we now enjoy.

It’s so disappointing to hear “no,” but God can turn it into a wonderful “yes.”

Are there any “no’s” in your life that have prepared you for “yes”? Are you still waiting? Or have you received the fabulous “yes”? I’d love to hear about them.