WIN . . . Day and Night. :-)
As a promotion for my books, I’ve decided to give away one of my most popular pieces — the Day and Night planter bowl. On my (*shudder*) 47th birthday, 4/15, I’ll draw names for the winner.
To get your name into the drawing, all you have to do is mention my books on Facebook (make sure I see it) or write a review for Amazon or Goodreads. Every time you quote one of the stories, discuss a character or plot point, make a review comment or post a link to a purchase point, I’ll enter your name. No limit on entries. Also, if you already wrote a review on Amazon, remind me, because I’m totally going to retroactively enter your name.
Seriously, I’m not expecting a big response to this, so if you do participate, you have a pretty good shot of winning.
This bowl is about 6 1/2″ tall and 9″ in diameter. Solid black inside with a drain hole in the bottom.
Building a Bridge in 5 Easy Steps — How to Plot your Book
English: Story Bridge, Brisbane, 1940. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
1. So you want to build a bridge . . .
You start with a largely undeveloped vision of what your bridge might look like — a concept, a character, a world, a theme, a voice. What have you got?
2. Arch, suspension, truss, cable-stayed, beam . . .
Before you can engineer your bridge, you need to decide how you’ll use it. Constructing a wooden bridge over a creek is much different from engineering a span over an ocean bay. What is your ultimate hope for your book? For your satisfaction only, a family legacy, a marketable work. If marketable, what is the intended market, and what are the publishing guidelines for that market (word count, style, parameters)?
Your bridge will start in one place and end up in another, right? This is your story arc – something changes as a result of your story. Maybe lots of thing change, but one main thing changes – the child is rescued, the man realizes that life is precious, the bad guy is defeated, the woman quits her job and joins a jazz band, the world is saved . . .
Maybe you’ll see your bridge in 3 main parts, three acts. It might look like this:
| Beginning | Middle | End |
| q Character in Daily life
q Introduce Conflict q Introduce Sexual Tension (if romance) q Establish Key conflict |
q Build Sexual Tension (if romance)
q Develop Intimacy q Develop Conflict q Secondary conflicts q Realize in love (if romance) |
q Love Scene (if romance)
q False happy ending, just before . . . q Dark Moment. All appears to be lost. q Sacrifice q Resolve secondary conflict q Key conflict reappears q Grief q Revelation q Reunion with time element if possible. Keep intensity high! q Make him or her earn the ending q Happily ever after |
4. Draw up your plan.
You’ll be making lots of decisions as you write (or, if things are going well, the story will seem to decide for itself), but you need a basic blueprint before you set saw to wood or hammer to nail. Once you start writing, plan on staying fluid. Some of these ideas may change, and others may appear and need to be drawn into your original plan.
Character: Who is your main character? What drives him? What does he want? What is he afraid of? What is his fatal flaw or limitation? How does he present himself to the world, and how is that different from his secret self? How will he be changed by the story’s end?
Story Goal: Your character, as a developed human, will have a goal. Initially this goal may be very different from the story goal. For example, your character might be fixed on winning a political campaign, but the story goal might be for the character to confront old pain about her father’s abandonment and move past it into a new, loving relationship with him before his Alzheimer’s makes it impossible. These goals create a push and pull effect in your story, as your character may resist the story goal and try to focus on her own agenda.
Secondary Characters: Keep this fluid in your mind, but consider what characters you’ll need to move the plot forward and keep your reader engaged: the antagonist, the best friend/sidekick (allows your character to talk out loud instead of thinking, and sometimes makes things worse in attempts to help), the romantic interest, the competition, the red-herring (to draw attention away from the real bad guy). . .
Setting: If your story is sent in North America in contemporary times, this might not require much thought. But often the setting is critical to the plot. In one of my books, set in Nebraska in 1888, the weather was critical to the plot. It was basically the antagonist in the story. You need to have a sense of the time and place, whether it’s France in 1628, an oval-shaped planet from two solar systems away, or Wyoming, fifty years after the Zombie apocalypse came to a disappointingly undramatic end. And you need to anticipate how that setting may play into your plot.
Conflict/Obstacle: This is the force that stands in the way of the story goal. It might be a blizzard, a sinister socialite, loving but deluded relatives, a possessed toy or the character’s own past. This is the element that transforms a simple account of events into a story, as your reader keeps turning pages to see whether the protagonist will attain his goal.
5. Assemble the steel, stone, bricks, wire and wood.
It’s time to gather your building supplies. Once you start writing, you may have to run to the hardware store a few times to grab what you missed, and when you’re done there may be a few items strewn around that you ended up not using. But this step will help you to have most of the materials you need on hand before you begin.
*IMPORTANT NOTE: Sometime after the first third of your book, maybe around 12,000 words, you’re probably going to hate it. It’s stupid, your characters are flat, your plot is pointless, and you’ve got way too many threads to ever resolve. This is when we run into that “sagging plot” that editors complain about. Your book starts to lag as you keep plugging along toward the final climax and the end.
You’ve selected basic concepts for your story, but of course you’re not going to explain them to your reader. You’re not going to say, “Kate’s worst fear is that she’ll wake up and discover snakes in her bed, as a result of a prank her brother played on her when she was three.” That would be telling, which is bad. You’re going to show your reader, with action, dialogue, and internal dialogue. For example, you’ll show Kate shoving blankets under the edge of the door before she sleeps, and later you’ll see her brother laugh when she flinches at a nature show.
Following is a list of story elements — building materials that frequently make up part of an interesting, effective, suspenseful story. For each of these, brainstorm 1-10 scenes or moments that illustrate how element might be used in your story.
Stay mindful of the “rule of three.” For a few important elements, create two different scenes showing the element, and then a third scene that shows it with a twist.
I’m giving you a pretty exhaustive example of how to do this step, because it’s important. Take the time to build this list and keep adding to it as more ideas occur to you, and you’ll avoid some (not all) of the dreaded mid-book angst.
Story Elements
Character faces fear
Character flaw
Character flaw makes bad situation worse
Character’s daily life (at onset)
Character’s goal
Character’s public face
Character’s Secret Desire
Character’s secret fear
Character’s true personality
Conflict
Dark Moment (all appears to be lost)
Emotional Intimacy
Grief
Happy moment before everything crashes
Pass the point of no return – bridges burnt
Personal risk to character
Revelation
Reversal scene – some character or fact you though you knew reverses
Rule of Three
Sacrifice
Secret Desire
Sexual Tension
Stakes grow higher
Story Goal
Time element (for suspense) as you near climax
Example
| Element | Scene |
| Sexual Tension | Josie sees Cade after the car accident, and is momentarily jarred by his hotness.
Cade clamps his hand over Josie’s mouth so she won’t scream as the Storm Troopers go by, and she’s uncomfortably aware of his body. Cold, exhausted and hungry from running for days, they are forced to spend the night pressed together in the tight space under the cabin porch. Their wet clothes mean they are practically skin-to-skin. |
| Sacrifice | Josie is initially totally focused on getting away from Cade, but after the Storm Troopers invade the hospital and try to snatch Johnny from the hospital, she abandons her safety for the benefit of the baby and agrees to work with Cade.
Cade throws himself in front of the government agents to protect Josie and Johnny |
| Revelation | Josie considered herself a normal woman, a mid-level accountant with a wacky father, but starts having nightmares about her childhood, when her father was involved with the AM. Show this by having her shake her head at some of her dad’s wacky rantings, pushing away the feeling of recognition at something he said.
Cade paces the dark of the of the cabin, the fussing baby slung over one arm, and tries to force himself to think of Josie as collateral damage instead of the woman he’s falling in love with. While the bad guys shoot at them and try to drive them off the road, Josie suddenly realizes how Johnny tracks their movements. Without explaining to Cade (no time!) she starts issuing directions, using the baby’s reactions as a guide. |
| Conflict | Cade appears, looking for the baby, but before he can explain anything (which he might not have done anyway), the bad guys come around the corner. He grabs Josie and the baby, shoves them into the truck and goes. As far as she’s concerned, he’s her kidnapper.
Cade tries to see Josie as collateral damage, so when she cries from exhaustion and pain, he’s hard and unsympathetic. Josie is relegated to caring for the baby, so she develops maternal feelings toward him. Even though she’s agreed to unite with Cade in trying to get Johnny home, she reminds herself that, for Johnny’s sake, she can never let her guard down and trust Cade. She doesn’t tell him a piece of key information that would prevent the bad guys from anticipating their next move. |
| Secret Desire | Cade’s secret desire, to fight for something worthwhile instead of just fighting to survive, comes out in his nightmares. He dreams that he’s on a farm, with a family and a peaceful way of life, he digs in the garden, but then his shadow family is mowed down in gunfire. He jolts awake and the dream dissolves into the reality that he’s being hunted. |
| Dark Moment | Josie can’t figure out where the AM headquarters is and Cade is nearly dead from gunshot. The Johnny, who has been slowly sickening without the Javeran, collapses. He is rushed to the hospital, but is clearly dying, and Josie is at a loss. |
| Rule of Three | Cade grapples with the bad guys. Josie tries to help, so she puts Johnny in his seat and tries to hit the bad guy with her purse. She hits Cade in the face instead, which allows bad guy to get a good hit in.
2. Next time: Josie, remembering the purse, tries to hit a bad guy with the skillet from the stove. She hits Cade instead, and the bad guy nearly gets them all before he recovers. 3. Next time: Cade looks up in time to see Josie, intent on helping, closing in on them with the tire iron he’d just used when they got a flat. He screams in real terror, and she hesitates, but then swings and hits a bad guy, knocking him out. She’s so dazzled by the accomplishment that she nearly delays them long enough to get caught anyway. |
Whack that Mole. Just Keep Whacking, Honey.
My Libby is eleven. She’s still a baby – wrapped up in her dad’s quilted flannel shirt, clutching her teddy bear and watching cartoons. She’s a teenager, confident at the karaoke microphone singing songs about love and parties and moving her head sideways in that defiant, ghetto gesture that is alien to my generation.
And she’s a new adult, her tender skin burnt by her growing awareness of responsibility and pressure. Grades matter. She will be responsible for her future. Only she will decide what kind of woman she will become. And – the lesson she knows well – parents are vulnerable to mistakes, grief and death.
“You don’t have to handle all this grown up stuff now,” I told her.
“But I don’t know how to do it.”
“Right, but it doesn’t hit you all at once. It’s not like one day you wake up and you’re expected to know how to pay a gas bill, drive stick, negotiate a home loan, and survive office politics. Right now, you just have to deal with being a middle school kid. Homework, put your clothes away, feed the pets . . . ”
“I can’t even do all of that!”
I know how she feels. We all know how she feels. No matter how diligently we work, something always gets missed. This morning at church, my dear friend – let’s call her Carol – apologized because she’d meant to bring me a dinner last week.
“Are you kidding me? You’re overwhelmed with your new job, managing all of your daughter’s activities, and you had to add another thing to freak out about.”
Of course, I immediately felt anxious then. Because she really does have her hands full. I should totally have thought to bring her a dinner. But then I remembered what I told Libby.
“Life is a game of Whac-a-Mole,” I told Carol.
I’m sure you’re assuming that Carol was puzzled, but she’s known me a long time.
“You’re never going to hit all the moles, Libby. Just accept it now. They just keep popping up. And no matter how fast you swing that mallet, someone’s always going to be looking over your shoulder pointing out the ones you missed.”
Before you’re too impressed, that was probably the fourth metaphor I’d used in that conversation, but it was the first good one, and I was really happy with it. I grabbed my other kid and the three of us went out to breakfast, armed with pens and paper.
“Since you’re never going to hit all the moles, you’ve got to pick which ones are important to you. My important ones are spending time with you guys, building my relationship with God, getting in a stronger financial position, having our house look pretty. And writing, painting and singing.”
The girls listed their moles. Surprisingly, having the house look pretty wasn’t a mole for either one of them, but I wondered out loud whether keeping mom off their backs was a mole. They thought it probably was.
By the time the check came, we each had a list of moles. “Now you can focus on hitting those ones as often as possible. You still won’t hit them all the time, but you’ll hit them often enough that you’ll be on target.”
So now if someone says to them, “Hey, how come you haven’t taken the time to needlepoint pillows for your bedroom, handmake gifts for Christmas and write notes of sympathy to bereaved strangers in the news?” they can say, “that’s not really a mole for me.”
He Was a Good Man.
Sun Pillar (Photo credit: tomhe)
I’ve always been a little whacked, but I’m going to say that this past year has been the closest I’ve ever come to being completely, certifiably, non-functionally nuts. October 4 will be the one year anniversary of my husband’s death, and I can’t believe how much crazy I’ve packed into twelve short months.
“Grief,” everyone says sympathetically. “Of course you feel a little crazy.”
Grief.
My kids are definitely grieving – there are days when they wear a cloak of pain that is almost tangible. All of the family is grieving . . . broken, undone, wounded. I don’t know what to do for them to comfort them. If I did know what to do, I don’t know if I could do it.
There’s so little care-giving left in me.
I tend to put some raw honesty in this blog, with the hope that no one will read it. Last time I did that, but then forgot to turn off the notification to Facebook. I’ll be more careful this time, but I’m working through this and want to write about it.
I was married to Donald for eighteen years and two days. We lived together first, so we were together for around twenty years. We spent a lot of that time laughing our butts off. I mean, he was blind and diabetic. He was on dialysis when we got married and got a kidney-pancreas transplant six months later. He was never well; the best he had was not feeling too sick for a short time. We were always poor; the best we had was not-in-crisis-at-this-moment. But we laughed and laughed and laughed.
He wrote goofy poetry on his computer and printed it for me. He made up silly lyrics to songs. He teased me about my writing. Once I was developing a romance story idea and needed a cover profession for a spy who was under-cover. The spy was the hot guy in the story – the darkly clever bad-ass. Donald suggested making him a clown who makes balloon animals. There’s no way to tell you how funny that was in context, and I can’t remember all the outrageous ways he developed that idea for the story, so sorry that it’s not funny here. But at the time, I was driving on the expressway, and he had me laughing so hard that I was making a horrible hiccouphing sound and literally drove off the road.
He was a good man who wanted to do right by his family. He was a believer in God who came through his doubts with stronger faith and who left this world with his face firmly turned toward the warmth of heaven. He was a strong man who endured more than most of us would be willing to. I just can’t even describe everything he went through, but he went through it because he wanted to be here for his girls more than he wanted the relief of sleep and heaven. He was a courageous man who got up, day after day for ten years, used his cane to feel his way to a cab where he rode with a stranger to a stressful job where he could never perform automatically as we all do so often, because he had to on, focused, concentrating every minute in order to do his work while relying on hearing and touch. Then he came home, staggered to bed and collapsed in exhaustion.
He deserves to have people grieve for him, and I promise you, I did.
I grieved as I left him in a hospital bed in Columbus so I could tend to my seven month old baby, my little Anna (now aged 16), who was also sick. I grieved on 9/11, ten full years before his death, because I figured his death would be on the heels of that tragedy. I grieved as I watched my baby Libby crawl-scramble up to him as fast as she could, because I figured she’d be too little to remember him, or how much she adored him. I grieved in the dark, staring at the mound of him, sleeping under the blankets, wondering if this would be the night when he would leave me, and I would awaken in a new kind of hell (guess why I find it almost impossible to fall asleep every night).
People say, “I’m so sorry. How long was he sick?”
I never know what to say. I don’t know when the countdown started. Before we were married? When his kidneys failed? When he was still going to work every day but came home a hollow shell? When he had to quit working? After the accident in Washington DC, when we all agonized through ten days of waiting to see whether he would live or die? When he went into facilities, those last six months, or when he went into palliative care those last weeks?
I can’t remember a time in our twenty years when my life wasn’t defined by caring for him, worrying about him. But I can remember a time when he was my partner in that and everything. He was my husband, my lover, my best friend, my kids’ dad. I can remember that time, but I’m not sure when that time ended.
Gradually, our partnership was replaced by hours and hours of me alone, trying to occupy myself as he lay upstairs or in a hospital bed next to me, fighting hand-to-hand combat with death.
My children were somewhere else, making memories that will not include me. New Year’s Eve, summer vacations, boat rides, fireworks, family reunions, family funerals, seeing Wicked in Cleveland, Thanksgiving . . . I wasn’t there. And he was barely with me . . . or not at all.
I guess all this to say, I grieved. But my grief this year has been of a different nature.
I’ve never wished Donald back. Not once. Why would I call him back to that endless hell of infections, dialysis, blindness and pain? Why would I put my kids and me back into that razor’s edge gloom of blind expectation?
I’m not freshly bereaved. I am a prisoner-of-war, freshly expelled into light and freedom. I’m raw to the point of bleeding, still trembling from shock and pain-echoes. The world changed while I was gone; my children grew up; friends drew new connections over the ones I had allowed to fade and smudge. I’ve lost my ability to function properly in society, and to manage the most rudimentary life-tasks.
My freedom has nearly been my undoing this year. Too many choices, too little perspective. I am free to go anywhere I want, and I’ve been drawn to edges. My poor kids . . . they didn’t need my mental chaos on top of everything else.
But the year is over. It’s almost over. My eyes are adjusting to the light. I’m regaining the ability to plan, to count on tomorrow, to rest in a moment. I’ve started writing, cooking, making rational decisions and plans. Sometimes I even fall asleep at night.
I’m still pretty crazy, but I think I’m working my way back to charmingly crazy and fairly non-toxic. Maybe one day, as I settle into age, I’ll even tone the crazy down to eccentric.
But then again, my goal has never been to be completely sane.
Naomi is Guilty of WrongThink
As a writer, the thing I crave most is to have readers. I mean, sure . . . the fantasy of having a bestseller, selling movie rights, being able to add luxuries like string cheese and brand-name cereal to my grocery list –those are swell motivators.
But here’s the test of a true passion: Would you do it for free? Or, even better, would you pay to do it?
Would I pay to write? Yeah. I’d probably resent it. So would my kids, as it would reduce the likelihood of me buying string cheese even more, but I wouldn’t be able to resist.
I need to write, and, for me, the completion of the writing act occurs when you read what I wrote.
So, if you follow me on Facebook at all, you already know that lately I’ve been sabotaging my own effort to have readers.
Whither Thou Goest, I Will Go is a Christian historical novel, and The Temptation of Mrs. Emily Templeton, while far from meeting the Christian Booksellers Association guidelines, is directed toward a Christian audience as Emily grapples with her fundamentalist upbringing and her perception of God.
And everyone knows what Christians stand for. Christians stand for abstinence programs, helping the poor, the American flag, and keeping “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. They stand against gay marriage, abortion, the validity of global warming, and universal health care.
A few years ago, I was actually completely on-board with that platform. I became a Christian kind of late in the game, in my mid-twenties. It took me a while to figure out exactly what that meant, so I took to listening to Moody radio and internalizing everything I heard.
That was my mistake.
I’m not saying Moody radio is a bad thing — truly, I’m not. It gave me many hours of inspirational music, moving sermons and exposure to God’s Word that I’d never had before.
My mistake was turning to any human source for an understanding of God. The Bible was right there. I should have read it, instead of letting a bunch of patriarchs run it through the sieve of their own perceptions, filters and limitations and then hand me the easy-to-digest results.
It took me a long time to distinguish between “official Christian beliefs” and God’s Word. They aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but neither are they necessarily in harmony. It took me a long time to understand that I, a believing Christian, am not required to agree with the Christian Platform.
- I can be a Christian and support keeping abortion as an option for women. (I hate abortion, but think the best way to combat it is make contraception, pre-natal care and adequate economic post-natal support available to women).
- I can be a Christian and disagree with the concept of “American Exceptionalism.” As a nation, we’ve made some great choices and some really awful ones. We need lose the fantasy that we are more special than any other humans on the planet, and that we are more entitled to its resources.
- I can be a Christian and think that living a “green” life is part of being a good steward. In fact, I can be mostly vegetarian and believe that eating the amount of meat that Americans eat is actually immoral.
- I can be a Christian and support the separation of church and state.
- I can be a Christian and support the legalization of gay marriage. Which I do — adamantly. I don’t feel entitled to legally require everyone else in our shared homeland to live by my beliefs.
I know some of you who disagree with me, and that’s cool. Maybe some of you will, as others have, demand to know how someone who “claims to be” a Christian could “go against the Bible” this way. Maybe you, my potential readers, will conclude that any value or truth you once found in my stories was a lie, and no one who “claims to be” a Christian would continue to read my work.
I don’t enjoy having Christians rail against me for not agreeing with some humans over human matters. I don’t enjoy having my very salvation called into question. I don’t enjoy knowing that my opinions alienate some of my audience, friends and even people I love.
But I have no choice but to search God’s Word, determine my position on issues and speak for my beliefs.
And if that costs me readers, so be it.
Nine Months of Pure Suck.
I’m surrounded by loving and supportive family and friends, grief counselors and the abundance that God continues to provide for my girls and me.
But I do not know the woman in my mirror. I do not recognize her thought processes, her voice, her dreams.
Batman and The Greatest Love of All
I’ve always hated this song.
I karaoke some of Whitney’s stuff, but this one always left me cold. “Loving yourself is the greatest love of all”? Um, no. God’s love is the greatest love of all. Anyway, I’m already a narcissistic brat – I don’t need to be celebrating it in song.
My friend — we’ll call him Batman — loves this song. Loves it like it’s one of the two favorite songs of all of his 41 years. Loves it like it reflects his core beliefs and values.
Batman isn’t a narcissistic brat. In fact, Batman is amazing. Super smart, super accomplished, makes a daily difference in the lives of lots of other people.
So why? What is it about this song?
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Phil 3:14
I love the courage in that verse — it brings up the rising theme song of every movie where the main character is fighting to succeed against the odds.
What are you fighting for right now?
Are you paddling leisurely toward your goals between episodes of So You Think You Can Dance? Have you given up the fight and allowed your goal to become a sad wish?
Come on, sister — you already know. You’re meant to sing. Meant to get that degree. Meant to reclaim the health and fitness of your body. Meant to get control of your household. Jeremiah 1:5 assures us that God has plans for us, and most of us at least suspect what they are. What is the prize you’re straining for (or should be straining for)? If you don’t know what God has planned for you, then by default, isn’t your goal to find that future?
You have no idea what I’m up against. The kids, my husband, money, my aching back. . .
I don’t care.
Well, of course I care. Baby, we’re all in this together, and I do care. But if you’re not confronting obstacles, then your goal probably isn’t the core purpose you’re looking for anyway. Life isn’t a 21 minute sitcom — it’s an Oscar-worthy, inspirational full-length movie. You need the obstacles or you don’t get the cool theme song:
Can you fight through the odds?
Without going in to details, since I don’t have many anyway (Batman is a man of mystery), he explained. He came from a disadvantaged past. Not American disadvantaged, but other country disadvantaged. So, yeah. Like the late night commercials. For the price of a cup of coffee. . .
Okay, well, that last bit is invention. I really don’t know, and I’m not going to share the little I do know. Let’s just say, he didn’t have the stuff you want to give your kids so they have a shot of succeeding in life.
The main ingredient in his success was discipline. He set aside lots of basic human needs and worked long and hard while others were relaxing. He fought for everything he has, everything he’s accomplished.
But before the discipline, there was a moment of decision. A moment when he, a young teen, looked at his slim odds realistically, and knew he didn’t wasn’t going to get anywhere without a hero.
And here’s where the song comes in.
Everybody’s searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfilled my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me
Batman needed a hero. And the only hero to be had was in his (I presume cracked and tarnished) mirror.
Where’s Your Hero?
Let me tell you a secret. Which, by my telling it to you on a public blog, makes it by definition no longer a secret. But stay with me here. Anyway, the secret is, everything was really rough for me for a long time while my husband was sick. Losing him so slowly was hard, but it also gave me time to build up the idea of what it would be like after.
He wouldn’t be suffering anymore. I wouldn’t be a caregiver. We wouldn’t have the unsustainable drain on our finances and my energy. My kids would be free of the darkness that gradually enveloped our home, so they could be happy and have fun. I would have long blocks of uninterrupted time to write and paint and take care of myself. The race would have been won, the theme song would have played, and I would be dancing a wacky dance behind the rolling credits.
Hasn’t really gone that way.
hahahaha. You already know this. Even if you haven’t been following my blog, you already know this. That’s the fun thing about delusions — realizing later how obviously flawed they are. Kindergartners were snorting derisively into their juice boxes as I walked by.
At any rate, now I see. My hero is in my mirror — my blue hand mirror. Thankfully, since I’m incredibly nearsighted and can’t wear my glasses when I apply mascara, my hero is huge. Like, 10x bigger than a normal person. Her pores are rather large and I see she has a blemish on her right cheek, but the size has got to count for something.
And maybe the “love yourself,” if you look at it the right way, is actually more about honoring the creation that God made in you and taking ownership of the purpose that He already had in mind.
How to Be Your Own Hero
Knowing that you have to be your own hero and having a clue how to do it are two different things. So here’s my plan, and if you’re grappling with the same challenge, I invite you to join me.
1. Even though I’m not making a lot of headway, I believe God created me to ______________________________________.
2. If God sent me a superhero, say, Batman (although my friend Batman is already really busy), to fight this battle for me, to deliver me to the above goals, the hero would have to go through these steps/complete these tasks:
a. _________________________________________________
b. _________________________________________________
c. _________________________________________________
d. _________________________________________________
e. _________________________________________________
3. Go to your mirror. Look in it. Sigh. If you’re feeling intimidated, flip it over and use the magnified side. Because, guess what. You’ve got to be the hero. Whether you’re single, married, widowed (like me), brave, smart, scared (like me) — you’ve got to be the hero in your own life. So refer to the above list and get started.
It sucks. I’d rather have someone fix stuff for me. And haven’t I been through enough? Haven’t I worked hard enough, been brave enough, been strong enough? For crying out loud, how much does a person have to go through before –
But I digress.
My giant-pored hero is in my mirror. She works for me now. I’m gonna be like Batman.
