Monday, May 30, 2016

TRUST THAT STAGEHAND by Guest Author Niki Turner

Today's guest author is Niki Turner, who is doing a Giveaway of her Ebook Santiago Sol. To enter this draw, leave a blog comment below. Tweet or share on FB, or Pinterest and let me know in the comment section below to have your name entered more than once.  TWEET THIS

TRUST THAT STAGEHAND by Niki Turner
When I have a problem, I want God to swoop in like Batman and fix stuff. I want Him to direct and orchestrate, and be OBVIOUS. But as I continue to walk with Him, trusting in Him, praying to Him, seeking His will and His ways, I find more often than not He chooses to play a backstage role in this drama I call life. 

When I have a problem, I want God to swoop in like Batman and fix stuff. TWEET THIS

When you go to a live theatrical production and the scene changes, you don’t see anything happening, but when the lights come back up, everything is different. The necessary changes have been made to propel the story forward. 

Stagehands—lowly, humble stagehands—made that happen. Without them, the story unfolding on stage would fall flat.

I’ve taken my granddaughter to the ballet twice in her three years. During one of the scene changes in Swan Lake she asked me, “Is it over?”

No, I assured her. It wasn’t over. It was just time for the great stagehand to go to work.

In that picture I see an analogy of God’s work in our lives. We pray, we know what we want to happen, we even think we know His will based on His Word, but we don’t see Him working. We want Him to charge in like the proverbial Cavalry, but He doesn’t. And we wait, and we wonder, and we worry… (Yeah, I know, I’m not supposed to worry, but I do.)

We want Him to charge in like the proverbial Cavalry, but He doesn’t TWEET THIS

And then we glimpse a change: an attitude shift, a new character in motion in someone’s life, a door opening that was closed before, and we know God is at work. He’s making changes we can’t see, putting the pieces in place that we don’t know need to be there for what’s ahead, and it’s all working to fulfill His perfect will.

We can rely on Paul’s words in Philippians 1:6: “…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”


You might not always see that “good work” in motion, but God, backstage, is hard at work, carrying it to completion. TWEET THIS

SANTIAGO SOL by Niki Turner

When a beloved elderly friend in hospice care makes one final request, Tansy Chastain can't refuse, even though returning an heirloom to the patriarch of a powerful Chilean family will take her halfway around the globe. When she's robbed at the airport, a handsome Santiago businessman comes to her rescue. Sebastian Sandoval decides escorting a lovely American for a few days is a perfect distraction from his grandfather's growing pressure to find a lost family treasure. But even as Tansy breathes new life into Sebastian’s jaded perspective, the secrets they are keeping put them in the path of a dangerous, and desperate enemy.  Revealing the truth to each other now will destroy their growing relationship, but if they don’t, those secrets may destroy their lives.

Purchase Links for Santiago Sol:
NOOK 
Amazon
CBD 


Niki Turner is a novelist, journalist, blogger, and the production manager for the
Rio Blanco Herald Times weekly newspaper, one of the oldest continuously operating newspapers in Colorado. Her first completed manuscript earned second place in the Touched By Love 2009 contemporary category romance contest. She also blogs at www.nikiturner.net and is a co-blogger at www.inkwellinspirations.com.

Niki is a Colorado native who grew up in Glenwood Springs—home of the world’s largest hot springs pool. She married her high school sweetheart 25 years ago. They have four children, four grandchildren, and two West Highland White Terriers.

In 2014, she published “Sadie’s Gift” as one of the Christmas Traditions novella collection with eight other authors.  The Skiing Suitor, one of the Love’s Sporting Chance series published by Forget-Me-Not Romances, released in August 2015. Her next project, “Santiago Sol,” will be published by Pelican Book Group, as part of the Passport to Romance novella collection and releases in October 2015.

Monday, May 23, 2016

In Defiance of Physics by Guest Author Linda Yezak


When we first moved 150 miles from home, my dad had cancer. He kept beating the time limit the doctors had given him, but we knew he didn't have long. He worried about me driving back and forth in my old Pontiac, so he gave me his maroon Dodge Dynasty.


There's nothing sexy about a Dynasty. It's worse than a mom-mobile: it's a grandma car–and I wasn't a grandma yet. But when I got behind the wheel and took to the highway for the two and a half hour drive, I learned to love that baby. The state had just kicked the speed limit up to seventy and I was pushing the limit. Okay, I’m lying. I zoomed past the limit on long, empty stretches, whipped around curves, flew over hills. Yowzah! That baby could move!

Coming off a hill, I saw two cars on the road ahead of me just close enough to make me tap the brakes back down to seventy. Off to the side, farther ahead, were two vehicles parked in the grassy easement in front of a pasture. The guy in the car pulled forward and turned onto a dirt drive. The driver of the truck watched the two cars ahead of me pass him.

But he didn't see me.

He pulled a U right in front of me. I slammed my brakes, my hands locked on the wheel, my arms fully extended, shoving my ribs harder against the seat-back.

A calm voice in my head said, "Turn the wheel."

In a fraction of an instant, I thought, "Sure. Better to negotiate the field than to hit the truck." So I whipped the wheel hard right.

But the car didn't turn. It kept propelling me toward the U-turning truck. My front left bumper hit his back right fender. Dead on.

But it didn't.

I drove through the truck like driving through a hologram. No damage to either vehicle. TWEET THIS

I finally stopped and eased over to the side of the road with my heart echoing from my chest to my ears. The pickup driver backed up to see if I was okay. He had a patch over his left eye.

Daddy said later, "As hard as you turned that wheel to miss the truck, you should've rolled."

Scientists could come up with a variety of theses to explain the event away. But they weren’t there. Their god is small, reduced to a size provided by empirical evidence and fallible human logic.

But the God who created matter, who fully understands speed, force, and impact, is the same God who can alter matter and defy science. He can turn iron and steel and sheet metal into vapor if He chooses. And He is the same God who created me.

But even more worthy of my awe and gratitude is that He redeemed me with a price paid by His own Son. Who can so say no to a God like that?
  
ABOUT LINDA YEZAK

After ten years of being “single again,” Linda Yezak rediscovered God's love and forgiveness when He allowed her a second chance at marital happiness. She is living her greatest romance with her husband of 25 years. She writes of love, forgiveness, and new beginnings. The Final Ride, sequel to Give the Lady a Ride releases July 5, 2016.


FOLLOW LINDA YEZAK

        FacebookFan Page:    
Twitter: @LindaYezak
        AmazonPage: 
        Goodreads: http://dld.bz/dSPmg
777 Peppermint Place: http://lindayezak.com



Purchase link for
 Give the Lady a Ride

Monday, May 02, 2016

Just Released Sofi's Bridge available at Walmart, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Pelican Books.....And now for my guest author's postSex-Crazed Reprobates vs. Vegan Knife-Wielders: My Discovery of Galatians By guest Anne Garboczi Evans

Today's guest Anne Garboczi is doing an Ebook giveaway of her book "What's a Foster Family" picture book. To enter this draw, leave a comment below, share this blog on social media, and spell your email address out in your comment. I will draw the winning name on the Sunday after this blog posting. TWEET THIS

By Anne Garboczi

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a perfectionist. Need a banana bread for that church potluck? I might only be in 4th grade, but I’ll bake you ten.

Perfectionists take hope TWEET THIS

What’s the highest score one can earn on the SAT? Three years of studying, and boom, I just got that perfect score. 

You say you offer a three years Master’s program? Watch me do that in eighteen months months. 4.0? Oh yeah!

But my perfectionism doesn’t just drive victories.

How could you wear those clothes? So not modest, teenage girl. If you cause a man to stumble, it’s your fault.

Never had a boyfriend, what do you mean? Never even been on a date? You’re twenty-years-old.

Married now and you don’t cook your husband dinner every night? 

You’re a lousy wife. And complaining when he deployed for a year? Unsupportive military spouse.

What do you mean you didn’t exercise and eat lean meat and whole grains every day of pregnancy? Dry-heaving multiple times a hour is no excuse. It’s probably your fault your baby ended up in NICU.

How do you think you can be a mom when you’re working part-time? Don’t you know that kids need your full attention?

Growing up, I didn’t know what to say when the questions and the doubts bombarded me. Judgment, judgment everywhere, not just from those around me, but from my own brain too. God said, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16).  He even came to earth to die, a miserably torturous death no less, to make me holy. And look at what an unholy wreck I am?

Failure, complete failure. Ever think God might give up on us someday? Seems like a pretty logical step to take.

Then one day, I read Galatians. Do you know what an amazing book that is? I’ve been reading the Bible since I was five, and yet, at age twenty-seven, Galatians astounded me.

The Galatians were of Celtic origin and they seemed like pretty clean-cut folks. Not like those Corinthians, who thought bringing sex orgies into the Christian worship service would be a good idea. 

Yeah, no way that could go wrong. Write them a letter already, Apostle Paul.

But in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he gets really angry at the Galatians. More angry even than at those sex-crazed Corinthian reprobates. The Galatians had gladly accepted the gospel. But then some Jewish Christians came along and started picking on the Galatians for their eating habits.

“Eating pig meat, really?” Back in the day, that stuff could kill you, by the way. Not to mention that it’s against Jewish law

“Circumcision, come on Galatians, we’ve got some male infants and a knife. You know God will love you more if you do this.”

Maybe the Galatians also started to pray a certain amount of times a day, or nail up scrolls to their doorways like Jewish followers of the Torah. What’s so wrong about that?

Apparently a lot. Because Paul let loose on those Galatians. “You think you can please God by your works? You can’t. And the minute you start thinking you can make one jot of difference with your best efforts, suddenly you’re discounting everything Christ did for you. You’re saved by grace, so you can have a friendship with God. And don’t you ever forget that.”

Hmm, guess I won’t make a read-through the Bible in a month checklist or give up dancing so I can be truly holy. It’s just God and me, and His love pouring through every vein and capillary, organ and cell, thought and neuron signal.

So judge away perfectionist brain. I’m redeemed. TWEET THIS





ANNE GARBOCZI EVANS is a mental health counselor, military spouse, author, and mama to an opinionated little preschooler named "Joe-Joe."










Another book by Anne Garboczi 

PURCHASE LINKS for What's a Foster Family? by Helen Cochrane & Anne Garboczi Evans http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Foster-Family-Forever/dp/1505418771/

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