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Grace Under Fire

May 27, 2011 in Mercy of God, The Organized Heart with 3 Comments

So for the past month or so, chez Writing and Living has been enduring a trial.

I’m going to have to be vague, here. Partly because much of this story isn’t mine to tell, partly because it’s too long and involved, and partly because the specifics of the story aren’t as important as the lessons learned. And while it was a mild trial, as trials go (no one broke the law or was up for church discipline), it was enough to pretty much disrupt the normal routine for about three weeks.

It is one of those incidents that when I would recount the details to friends and family, they were amazed at how many things had unfolded so perfectly as to put us in the middle of the bull’s eye. It was the perfect time to put some feet to all the study I’ve done on God’s sovereignty. I could not have foreseen this; I would just have to stand firm and persevere.

Well, sort of. You see, I anticipated that this season could possibly be difficult, and I knew there were a few things I could be doing to prepare for it all. But instead I blithely hoped for the best. In a word, I procrastinated. Like Scarlet O’Hara, I decided to think about it tomorrow.

And then tomorrow came and I was gobsmacked. Because it hadn’t unfolded like my worst-case scenario, it was even worse.

I find it hard to pray in these situations. When my procrastinating ways yield trials (or, more accurately, make current trials more difficult than they need to be), I always feel the best thing to do is to quietly lie in the bed I have made for myself. I remember confessing these feelings to Todd during college oh-so-many years ago and being called out on it. Yes, I realize we are commanded to present all our requests to God (Philippians 4:6-7). But when I walked into a college exam unprepared because I had spent the evening before watching ER or visiting some friends’ new baby (said baby is now 16, by the way), it seemed unfair to ask God to bail me out.

That’s correct to a degree. As I’ve talked about in The Book, procrastination is in many ways sinful rebellion against God. It’s essentially telling God that you know better than he does on how you should be spending your time. You don’t believe he can strengthen you to complete the task at hand, so you’re just going to sit and watch 90s sitcoms in their first run (because it’s not like they’re going to be played over and over again on cable in 15 years – I couldn’t have even comprehended Netflix and Hulu back then). To deliberately sin with the plan of running to God to bail you out of the fix cheapens his grace and is precisely the type of attitude John warns us about in I John 1:6.

But the other side of this is just as troubling. You see, if I don’t ask God to help me because I don’t think I deserve his help, doesn’t that imply that in other times I think I do deserve for things to go well?

And even more upsetting is the knowledge that I don’t want to pray because I don’t want to repent. Praying for help means not only acknowledging my failings but also laying aside the sin and walking in righteousness. Perhaps I would prefer just to take my lumps so I can continue in the same pattern without changing.

This is where I look around for somebody who is doing the same things I’m doing, only worse. I’ll never forget the test where I sat down next to a woman in my class named Sue who confessed that she hadn’t prepared and was therefore sunk. (That’s exactly what she said: “I’m sunk.”) I clung to that, and still remember it to this day. Well, Sue didn’t prepare enough, either. It’s not just me.

Never mind that Sue was about ten years older than I was and had two children at home, while my biggest stressor apart from my college work was trying to get to the dorm cafeteria before they ran out of chicken strips. She might have had a bit more to do in the course of the day. But she hadn’t studied enough for the exam, either, so I’m really not so bad after all.

Fast forward to today. The trial has passed. We were sustained, and God came through. And now that it’s over, I sorely want to rest on my laurels — Well, of course it went well. We worked very hard to see that it did – trying so hard to ignore that God not only sustained us during the time of work, but protected us from all matter of onslaughts like sickness and tornados.

It’s only by his grace, no matter how much I want to make it about my effort.

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Mother’s Day Special

May 5, 2011 in books, The Organized Heart with 1 Comment

Cruciform Pressis running an ebook special on my book, The Organized Heart, along with their bestselling Wrestling with an Angel: A Story of Love, Disability and the Lessons of Grace.

I’ve already said a word or two about The Organized Heart on here. In Wrestling with an Angel, Greg Lucas reflects on life with his severely mentally and physically disabled son, Jake:

My experience is that God will place a burden on you so heavy that you cannot possibly carry it alone. He will break your back and your will. He will buckle your legs until you fall flat beneath the crushing weight of your load. All the while He will walk beside you waiting for you to come to the point where you must depend on Him.

“My power is made perfect in your weakness,” He says, as we strain under our burden. Whatever the burden, it might indeed get worse, but I know this—God is faithful. And while we change and get old, He does not. When we get weaker, He remains strong. And in our weakness and humility, He offers us true, lasting, transforming, and undeserved grace.

It’s a beautiful book, full of wonderful reminders that God is with us, even in the storms and trials of life. You will be encouraged by this book.

If you’re interested in this Mother’s Day special, you can buy directly through the links below, or from Cruciform’s site.

MOBI $8.45 EPUB $8.45 PDF $8.45

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Recovery

April 15, 2011 in books, The Organized Heart with 6 Comments

I returned last night from The Gospel Coalition Conference in Chicago. It was a great week, but I am tired. I am hoping to rest today, but my list of things that have to get done before the end of the day keeps growing, so I don’t know if that’s going to happen.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the conference in the next week or so. My mind is still reeling from all I heard. Most of the audio and video from the conference is available online, so I urge you to listen or watch. It was all excellent. If you only have time to listen to one thing, though, I especially recommend you to listen to Tim Keller’s sermon on Exodus 14.

Some personal highlights were meeting people in real life that I had previously only known through blogs and emails. I finally met Kim Shay (who blogs at The Upward Call) and her husband Neil (of recent Calvinist Gadfly fame (which I meant to ask him about all week and forgot — Kim and I had a lot of words to get said in a short time)).

Here’s a picture of Kim and me after dinner on Wednesday. If you think it looks like I’m asleep standing up, it’s because I am.

I also got to meet all three founders of Cruciform Press. I am happy to report all three are real humans and not imaginary. Since I’ve read Tim Challies’s blog every morning over breakfast for about six years, I was a little worried that he was just a mirage of pixels on a screen, but nope, he’s a real guy.

Carolyn McCulley, who did me the honor of endorsing The Organized Heart, was there as well. It was wonderful to finally meet her.

Here’s a picture of The Organized Heart in the book store at the conference. It’s blurry because I was trying to be super casual by pretending to be checking text messages when I was really taking a picture. I doubt anyone was paying attention to me anyway, but even if they were, I doubt I was fooling them.

All in all, a great conference. Todd and I are talking about Together for the Gospel in 2012, and I am also dreaming of attending the recently announced Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference. We shall see.

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What a Difference a Year Makes

March 25, 2011 in Just for fun, The Organized Heart with 4 Comments

One year ago yesterday I was out running errands. I was mulling over an idea for a book. I had my thesis, and I had my chapters. It was a book on organization.

Why do I remember this? Well, let me tell you about the errands on my list that day:

I went to the library to pay for a book that I had lost. (I still don’t know where that book has gone to. I like to think it was left in a waiting room somewhere, because they idea that it’s still lying around in this house unseen bothers me.)

I went the the grocery store, only to realize I didn’t have my list with me.

I went to renew my (already expired) driver’s license, only to discover that I now needed my birth certificate to do so (they always make new rules at about the time I’m getting the old ones down). I didn’t have a copy of my birth certificate, and since I was born in another state, it wasn’t the kind of thing I could easily get. Since I had had a Missouri license for fifteen years (barely), they were able to extend it for one more year.

Then I reflected on the fact that I was wanting to write a book on organization. I thought perhaps I might not know what I was talking about.

How do I know it was exactly a year ago? Because my driver’s license expired today. And as soon as the UPS man delivered my birth certificate, I drove (still legally) to the license office to renew my license — just under the wire.

I think I’m getting better.

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So Who Did Make Honky-Tonk Angels?

March 8, 2011 in Just for fun, The Organized Heart, Writing with 4 Comments

I was first on the radio in the 5th grade. I was one of the winners of the school essay contest “Why I Like My Favorite Teacher.” The local radio station came and recorded the winners reading their essays.

It was a good day. We got out of class. The man from the radio station was in the Principal’s office with a reel-to-reel recorder he had brought (brung? Not sure.) Excitement. If I remember this correctly, we put on headphones as we read, but that may be totally false. I do remember that they played everyone’s recording back to us, and we all protested that we didn’t think it sounded like us. Then the principal explained that we don’t hear ourselves as we really are, because we hear our own voice as it echoes through the bones of the face, not just as it travels through the air. I’ve remembered that explanation to this day.

But this was also my first experience with editing. I was the type of child whose favorite teacher was whoever happened to be my teacher at that time. That year I had Mrs. Fair. The principal explained that we didn’t want to make any teacher feel bad that an essay had not been written for him or her, so we weren’t going to mention names on the radio. I remember watching as his thick, black magic marker traveled across my first line: “I like Mrs. Fair because she is fair.” He changed it to “I like my favorite teacher because she is fair.”

My words! He was messing with my words! It wasn’t the same. My clever turn of phrase was ruined forever, all for the sake of political correctness. If I hadn’t been scared to death of the man, I might have protested.

I still don’t like it when people mess with my words. At least now editors make me sound better, not bland and soulless.

Obedient child that I was, I dutifully read the essay. The radio station played them several times over the next week or so. My friends and family complimented me, never knowing how I had been censored. Even then, I was suffering for the sake of my art.

Yesterday my radio career continued. I taped an interview for The Book. Much scarier than reading an essay for my hometown radio station. I was reminded of the scene in Coal Miner’s Daughter when Loretta was explaining her interview strategy to her husband. “I don’t know what I’m saying half the time. I just open my mouth and out it comes.” Yeah. I’m pretty sure that nothing was said about Butcher Holler or my mama taking care of my babies while I sang at all the Honky-Tonks (because none of that would be true), but honestly? I don’t remember.

Some observations from yesterday:

I talk with my hands. A lot. This doesn’t translate to radio very well. Several times as I was answering, I was thinking, Wow, I really wave my arms a lot when I talk. Then I was thinking Hmm. I’m still talking, but I’m concentrating so hard on the arm waving I’ve forgotten the question. If you happen to hear me, please imagine the arm waving, as I’m sure that will make my points clearer.

I always think I sound more southern when I hear my recorded voice. I guess vibrations in the bones of my face filter out the twang. Yes, I’m from Illinois. Southern Illinois. No, the accent is not an affectation. Illinois is a long state. Chicago is hours and hours away, while Kentucky is less than an hour. I’m sure my years in Southeast Missouri have not, ahem improved this.

A speech pathologist friend advised me not to explode my S’s on the air. I had to ask her to explain what this means (in short: say it, don’t spray it). I have no idea if I was successful. I was too busy concentrating on not dropping the phone as I waved my arms.

Another friend advised me to pause after a sentence if I thought they may have to edit it out later. More great advice that I didn’t manage to follow. Again, the waving of the arms took up a tremendous amount of energy. Since I’m pretty sure nothing was said about Honky-Tonks, this probably won’t be necessary.

And save for the few years that I worked in a pharmacy housed in a building that had originally been a Honky-Tonk, I’ve never been in one. Honest. I don’t know why I keep bringing that up. Perhaps I need to send this blog post to my editor…

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The Inside Story

March 3, 2011 in books, The Organized Heart, Writing with 0 Comments

One day, Staci is working on The Book.

Staci types:

I wish I could say that my story of holiday chaos was just that—a season, and an unrepeated one—but I can’t. One year later I was running errands and half-listening to a Christian radio program about New Year’s Resolutions. Listeners called in and listed the changes they wanted to make in the coming year: lose weight, quit smoking, spend more time with their families. At each stoplight I glanced at my to-do list, checking off anything recently accomplished, but also adding new tasks as they occurred to me. As the uncompleted items piled up faster than the completed ones, I once again felt the pressure of too much to do and too little time to do it in. Suddenly I heard the host ask the radio audience to think of our own resolutions, and I tearfully whispered, ―I want to be more organized.

Staci thinks: Hmmm. Mom is going to read this and tell me I’m being too hard on myself.

Staci types:

You may think I was being too hard on myself. Christmas is a busy time, and it’s only normal to feel stressed and rushed then. But that season simply placed a spotlight on a constant reality. My problem with disorganization seemed more apparent during Christmas, but the problem was always there. In fact, my entire adult life could be described as a series of unfinished good intentions: notes and cards never sent (or even bought), dinner parties never thrown, kind words never spoken, calls never made, help never given.

So I come to you as someone who must fight to stay organized every day of her life.

Fast forward several months. Cruciform Press posts The Book’s Introduction on their website. My mother calls me, tells me that though she likes it, she thinks I’m being too hard on myself.

I love my mom.

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Adapting Well

March 1, 2011 in Just for fun, The Organized Heart with 1 Comment

Seeing as how The Book comes out today, I thought it would be nice to do a post concerning organization and such. And I actually thought I might have trouble coming up with something. I mean, what could happen on your basic Monday in February to inspire such a post?

Little did I know that I would spend the wee small hours of Monday morning in my basement with the tornado sirens blaring overhead. It was a false alarm, but tornado sirens are jarring. It’s hard to rest after that. I don’t know about you, but being awake from 1 am till 4 am tends to throw a bit of a kink in my daily schedule.

You see, I had a plan for Monday. I was going to get up early and straighten the house. I was going to make a snack for a friend who was coming over Monday afternoon. We were going to do school. I may have even imagined a little group singing a la The Sound of Music as we skipped through the meadows. It’s nice in my dream world.

(Maybe that’s where we went wrong. Rather than monitoring the weather radar in the midst of the storm, perhaps I should have led the children in a rousing sing-along of “My Favorite Things.”)

But instead of singing children skipping through the sunny Alps, I got coughing, groggy children on a dreary Missouri February. The snack never got baked, and I didn’t even remember to offer her the graham crackers I had in the cabinet.

But it was a great day. I got to help a young mom. I got to spend time with my kids. And even though Todd and I were so exhausted that we fell asleep sitting up on the couch after supper, at least we did it together.

Sometimes organization isn’t about planning well, but about adapting well.

Not to say I did it perfectly. I worried about silly things, and I may have been a wee bit grumbly before I konked out on the couch.

Tomorrow I get to try again. I hope Tuesday’s arrival won’t be hailed by tornado sirens. But if it is, I’ll just have to adapt.

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In Which I Blush and Kick the Floor

February 28, 2011 in books, The Organized Heart with 0 Comments

Todd and my father are both avid golfers, so I’ve watched the end of a lot of PGA tournaments. And one thing I am continually disappointed with is the lack of reaction from the players. By the time the last putt goes in, I’ve spent a bit of time anticipating the outcome. How is my time rewarded? The winner generally gives a terse nod and stalks off to the scorers tent. If he’s particularly effusive, he may take off his hat and wave to the crowd. Other than Hale Irwin in the 1990 U.S. Open and Phil Mickelson at the 2004 Masters (where I sat and sobbed like a baby), I can’t recall watching a really memorable winner’s reaction.

Todd has explained this to me. (More than once. I’m persistent in this disappointment.) Golfers have to keep their emotions in check. If a guy’s been keeping it in for the past four days, it’s kind of hard for him to suddenly turn that off. I still think he and the caddy could manage a chest bump for the sake of the cameras. Make it worth my time.

But I’ve been told that I tend to be the same way. I’m a disappointing person to try and surprise. Not because I find out ahead of time, but because my reactions are often…dull. I’m great with the little surprises. Bring me home a Diet Coke and I’ll jump up and down like a game show contestant. But give me something big and much hoped for, and I’m liable to sit still as a stone.

The first Christmas gift Todd ever gave me was a puppy. I had never had a dog, and I wanted one badly. Todd? Not so much. He likes dogs well enough, but having grown up with them, he was aware of the work they required. We may have even argued about it. I was convinced that a dog wasn’t going to happen for a long time.

But when he picked me up from work on Christmas Eve, he had a puppy in the car. I don’t know if I even smiled. I pondered in silence for at least twenty minutes, oblivious to the fact that a man who would rather do about anything than draw attention to himself had just carried a howling puppy through a crowded shopping mall on Christmas Eve in hopes of bringing me joy. The least I could have done was kiss him.

For the last few weeks, friends have been asking me about the book. They want to know if I’m excited. And as I give them my earnest, awkward answers, I can’t help but feel that I’m letting them down. Yes, I say, I am excited. But also a little nervous. I thoughtfully weigh out my words and answer carefully (which is not typical), only to realize too late that they really just wanted a big smile and exuberant “Yes!”

Blogging is hard, too. I can generally squeeze a thousand words out of the most mundane trip to the grocery store, but coming up with the written equivalent of blushing and kicking the floor is a bit harder.

When I confessed to a friend on Saturday that I didn’t know what to say, he then said, “So what would you like me to ask?”

And that is the million dollar question.

I am excited. The lessons contained in the book were hard to learn, and I hope my foibles and failings can save someone else some grief. They’re lessons I still have to remind myself of, so to me, anyway, they’re still relevant. And then there are the emotions every writer feels — like I’m sending one of my children out in the world to fend for himself.

So if you see me, you can ask about the book. I’ll try my best not to over-explain. But if I seem a little muted, that’s just my way. I’m delighted on the inside. Honest.

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Rainy Days and Unbelief Always Get Me Down

January 19, 2011 in Mercy of God, Motherhood, Real Women Love Theology, The Organized Heart with 3 Comments

Yesterday dawned cloudy and gray. The cloud cover was making it easy for the kids to sleep in, and I was alone in the living room, sipping my coffee.

I thought about the things on the agenda for the day, and it depressed me. None of it looked appealing. Not the laundry, not the housework, not the homeschooling. Laundry and housework are never my favorites, so that was understandable. Homeschool is usually something I enjoy (in theory, anyway), but lately? Not so much.

One of the kids has entered a rough patch in school. We’re kind of at an impasse, where it feels like no progress is being made. I’ve been here before, and I know how this works. We’ll plug along, day after day, and then one day a gear will catch inside his head and we’ll start moving forward again. Knowing this, though, and slogging through it anyway are two different things.

The same child is unprepared for his piano lesson. He’ll take this hard, and since he’s at a place where he can’t practice effectively without my help, I feel mostly responsible.

My oldest is going to public school next year, so for the first time I feel the traditional school calendar pressing on me. We still have some things to cover. The idea that he might head to school unprepared because his mother was busy writing a book on organization is an irony I don’t care to live out.

All little things, really. Many people in the world are facing much harder problems than this, but it was the kind of day where I wanted to call in tired. The only thing that sounded appealing was to curl up in my quilt and watch Austen adaptations on TV. Never mind all that stuff I wrote in my book, I was in a funk, and I preferred to stay there (at least for the five hours of Pride and Prejudice, anyway).

And that’s the biggest part of the problem: I wrote a book about this. I know the cause of my angst is really unbelief. I even outlined it carefully and sent it to a publisher. And now they’re going to put their money where my mouth is and bind it up in print on real pages. I should be beyond this kind of thing by now, shouldn’t I?

There are worse things than waking up with a case of the blahs. I wasn’t spiking my coffee with hard liquor or entertaining gentleman callers. My kids were going to wake up confident that I wasn’t going to spend the day beating them or screaming obscenities. If I decide to ignore my work and do my own thing, I’m going to look downright serene compared to some households in the world.

But while I look the part of the sweet Midwestern housewife, searching Netflix for period dramas and pouring yet another cup of coffee, this is really my passive-aggressive way of shaking my fist at God.

How dare you ask me to work on a day like today! What were you thinking, making it cloudy when I’m tired and have so much to do? Why does homeschool have to be hard? Why can’t things be easier? The wall-to-wall carpet in my three-bedroom, two-bathroom house has to be vacuumed, and I don’t want to. Why do you ask so much of me?

I’m working through The Bruised Reed again, so it picked it up from the end table. Reading Puritan writers isn’t on my to-do list, either, but it looks better. I’m a sly one, I tell you. I can find all manner of good things with which to stall from the work at hand. This is what I read:

As seed rots in the ground in the winter time, but after comes up better, and the harder the winter the more flourishing the spring, so we learn to stand by falls, and get strength by weakness discovered…We take deeper root by shaking.

And later:

Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strenth in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in whom our strength lies.

Yes, I am weak. I would much rather play than work. I live a life of blessing and ease, and yet I still grumble and complain.

So I got up and got to work. As blessed as it would have been to have woken up with a song in my heart and a good attitude in my head, I didn’t. It is what it is. I began the work of the day: clearing the counter, paying the bills, working on math.

I wish I could report that it turned out to be a great day, but it was just an okay day. School and piano lessons went better than I thought they would, but I can’t say that they went swimmingly. I arrived at the grocery store just after the noon news began forecasting snow, and had to deal with the crowds (Hank Williams, Jr. is correct that country folks can survive, but they still prefer to stock up on toilet paper before snow storms, given the chance).

But by the end of the day, I had done what I needed to do. Not perfectly, but with a smoldering wick of faith in the only One who matters. And some days, that is about as good as it gets.

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Rewriting History

January 13, 2011 in The Organized Heart, Writing with 7 Comments

Right before the holidays, the publishers of my book asked for my bio. For most people, this should be simple. A few lines telling about yourself. Basic info. For me, I kind of wished they had asked me something less daunting, such as rewriting the book in German.

I may have mentioned it a time or three, but I’m the youngest of four daughters. This means I spent most of my childhood clamoring for attention, only to stand in painful, embarrassed silence if I happened to actually capture it.

My sisters might remember things differently. If they wish to dispute this, they’ll have to get their own blogs.

Anyway, I put it off for a long enough time that it got to be embarrassing. Since all this occurred over Christmas, I spent a night or two sitting in my parents’ living room mulling it over. I had a few ideas that didn’t make the cut.

First try:

Staci is the youngest of four daughters. During her preschool years, she was often sent to bed early while her teenage sisters popped popcorn, drank soda, and laughed uproariously. This spawned a nagging feeling that you miss all the fun stuff of life if you go to bed early. The resultant tendency to be a night owl has led to the chronic struggles with disorganization that led to the writing of this book.

Nah, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?

Take 2:

Staci was once required to play a goat in the church Christmas play while her friends got the more glamorous parts of stars and angels. She was able to overcome this, however, and go on to be the author of a blog that is read regularly by her sisters, mother, aunts, nieces, and a few loyal high school friends (who should probably still feel guilty for this misfortune in casting).

Bitter much? Seriously, I’m totally over this. I see the director regularly and am very civil. Deep down I think I got this part because my mother could sew the costume.

Take 3:

Staci is a homeschool mom of three. In 2004, while attempting to put off doing the housework, she started a blog. This eventually led to people paying her to write stuff. Now she has written a book telling people why procrastination is bad.

Take 4:

In 1988, Staci was asked by her math teacher to tutor 8th grade algebra students. This experience taught her that she is adept at explaining things for which she has no natural affinity. In a further illustration of “those who can’t do, teach” she has now written a book on organization.

ahem

The final product:

Staci Eastin is a writer living in Missouri. She and her husband Todd have been married since 1994 and are the parents of three children.

I’m sure it was worth the two-week wait.

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