Words from the Pumpkin Patch

After successfully growing only one little pumpkin in our garden this year and with Halloween just days away, we decided last weekend to load up the minivan with family members and travel to the nearest pumpkin patch.  In twenty years of parenting this was our first trip ever to a local pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins.  Each member of the family wandered through hundreds of pumpkins, trying to find the perfect orange gourd.  We picked them up, turned them over, brushed off dirt, and compared carefully before each of us made a decision.  My oldest daughter settled on one that wasn't orange at all, but a ghostly white.  My youngest son scored the largest pumpkin with a huge stem.  Some of the pumpkins chosen were round and some were tall and oblong.  We loaded up a wheelbarrow and stood in the ample line waiting to pay for our bulging beauties while my daughters delighted over the bins of tiny pumpkins and exotic multi-colored gourds.  Soon pumpkins and colorful gourds of the smaller variety were carefully added to the pile in the overloaded wheelbarrow.  Twenty-six dollars later, we escaped with 90 pounds of beautiful, hand-chosen pumpkins.

As I listened to some of the ugly political rhetoric on the radio on the way home, I thought to myself, "You know it's too bad that we don't choose our words as carefully as we choose pumpkins."  Wouldn't it be great if everyone picked their words, turned them over, brushed off dirt, and compared carefully before speaking?  We wouldn't choose to pick the first pumpkin we see in a pumpkin patch, and so why do we choose our words so carelessly?

Words are powerful.  They can either inspire hopes and dreams or take them away.  They can either build or tear down.  Once words are spoken, both for good and for ill, we can never take them back.  In this world where the loudest voices are often the harshest ones, shouldn't we take the time to bestow charitable words of hope to those around us?

My third great grandfather, Thomas Briggs, wrote these amazing words, "Always have kind words to give, for they are as refreshing to the troubled heart, as rain to the parched ground.  Bear in mind that little drops of rain brighten the world." 

Many times in my life just a few kind words have made all of the difference. 

I love the book, The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  I love even more when the character Aebilene repeats to Mae Mobley, the little girl she cares for, "You is kind.  You is smart.  You is important!"  What would the world be like if we all told our children something like that every day?  What if every mother told her son daily how amazing it was to be his mom?  What if every father told his daughter that he thanked his lucky stars for her every day?  What if every child was tucked in bed at night with a compliment? 

Today, as I dropped my junior high aged son off at school, he stopped, turned around, and told me in front of both of his buddies, "I love you."  Now, my son often tells me that he loves me, but not in front of his friends.  His words have warmed my heart wonderfully all day.

We never know what effect our words will have on those around us, but I know that words matter.   I love the poem, "Lamps" by Lon Woodrum.

I met a stranger in the night,

Whose lamp had ceased to shine;

I paused and let him light

His lamp from mine.

A tempest sprang up later on,

And shook the world about,

And when the wind was gone,

My lamp was out.

But back came to me the stranger-

His lamp was glowing fine;

He held the precious flame

And lighted mine.

Aren't we so very  grateful to all who have been there with their kind words to relight our lamps when they have gone out?  As we light our pumpkin, Jack O' Lanterns this Halloween night, I hope we will remember the power of words and how choosing them carefully can only brighten the world.

Excerpt from The Island of Stolen Dreams, my adult action/adventure novel:

"Stabbing pains shot through the bottoms of Kate’s feet, awakening her instantly.  In terror she tried to scream, but no sound came.  Scrambling upright amid her heavy shackles, she tried to make sense of her surroundings. The cold dampness of the prison floor only served as an agonizing reminder that the last 24 hours had not been merely a dream, but a living nightmare.  Kate strained to see in the suffocating darkness, but there wasn’t even an insignificant glimmer of light.  All she could hear was the metallic sound of the irons that bound her ankles as she shifted her position.  She waited in silence, finally crying out as something sharp and pointed stabbed at her bare toes once more.   Again and again, she was pierced by some unknown source until her feet felt wet and sticky with blood.  Kicking out reflexively in panic, she made contact with something alive and slick with fur; a rat!  She heard the screech of anger as it scampered away, but it wasn’t long before it returned with more of its blood-thirsty companions." 

Excerpt from Temarrian Bound, my adult science fiction/fantasy novel:

"Alena had the sickening feeling that she was being watched. Of course, she was constantly being observed each and every day due to her regrettable situation in this nightmare of an intergalactic science center that was nothing more than a glorified space zoo.  But this time was different, she wasn’t being looked at from behind the glass of the observatory, she was being watched from somewhere inside her biome enclosure.  The hair on the back of her neck bristled as she turned and found herself facing a pair of intense amber-orange eyes that wore the expression of both anger and yearning, like a wild, caged beast of prey. The man glared unashamed… almost predatorily at her through the glass.

          He was definitely human, but by far the most otherworldly- looking of the menagerie of humanoids that she had seen inhabiting the primate section of this despicable science center.   Alena stared boldly back at him while hurriedly taking in his physique, his features, his demeanor.   His skin was bronze to golden in color.  He was well muscled and looked dreadfully powerful.   His burning orange eyes, unkempt shoulder length hair and grim set mouth made him look all the more wild and discomforting.  Alena shuddered and turned away, searching for a place to conceal herself from the unwanted attention, wondering aloud if her situation could be any more miserable." 

Excerpt from The All-Seeing Eye, my young adult science fiction/fantasy novel:

"Ron stopped, sucking in the stale air that was becoming harder and harder to breathe.  At first he thought that his travels had been in vain, for there seemed to be nothing there.  Had he made a wrong turn somewhere?  But at that moment he noticed a strange stone fastened to the wall on one side of the passageway.  Carefully Ron examined it with his flashlight, but the stone seemed not to belong in the cave at all.  It was extraordinary with an eye in the center surrounded by bizarre patterns that came alive as Ron touched them.  He was completely unprepared for what happened when he turned the strange stone.  He leapt backwards in alarm as a doorway appeared and the darkness of the cave was illuminated instead by the brightness of a billion suns.  Even more astonishing was the great rushing noise that came from the door.  It sounded like hundreds of thousands of gallons of raging water, tumbling over a waterfall in a thunderous roar.  Ron’s senses felt like they might explode as he turned the stone once again.  The door closed as suddenly as it had opened.  He stood against the wall; his chest heaving, his blood racing, his mind alive with wonder.  It didn’t take him long, however, to steel himself against what he had to do.  He knew that the answers to everything that he ever wanted to know lay on the other side of that door.  Whatever peril lay ahead, whatever there was on the other side, Ron just had to know." 

"Imaginations in the Basement"

When my daughter, Jessica, was just six-years-old, she would not go down into our unfinished basement alone.  She would say, “Mom, I don’t want to go downstairs.  My imagination is down there.”   She even had her four-year-old brother, Jonathan, saying, “I don’t want to go down there alone.  Jessica’s imagination is downstairs.”  They made this “imagination” into such a huge scary boogeyman that the two of them missed many fun filled hours that they could have spent playing in the basement.  Their missed opportunities have made me reflect upon my own life. How often have I missed an opportunity because I let my own imagination get the best of me?  

Martin Luther King, Jr. has said, "To take the first step in faith, you don't have to see the whole staircase: just take the first step." 

For dozens of years I've been writing, but always I've been afraid to put myself out there, to risk rejection and judgment.  Honestly, I've completed three novels and only sent out two query letters.  One for each of the first two novels.  I sent them both to the same top literary agency in New York and each rejection letter that came back was enough to send me cowering; even though both letters were complimentary and full of praise.  I admit it, I'm not incredibly courageous, at least not in opening myself up to the world, and yet here I am expressing myself on the World Wide Web. 

One of my favorite books is The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson.  He writes a lot about how our dreams always live outside our comfort zone.  He tells us, "Courage is not the absence of fear; rather it's choosing to act in spite of fear."

The Lord tells us, "Fear not; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am the God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee..."  I believe this to be true.  God cares about even the simple things that matter to us, especially those things we are trying to overcome.

We all have “imaginations in the basement” that we need to be rid of in order to follow our dreams.  I have discovered many times that fear can dissipate when we face it squarely and put our hand in the hand of God.  We just need to take that first step down the stairs, so to speak. And so I'm choosing today to live outside my "imaginations in the basement" and act in spite of fear.  In the next few days I will be posting some excerpts from each of my novels.  I hope you will enjoy them.  Please let me know what you think!