(Why for free? When you read Chapter 13, I think you’ll understand. “Freely given, freely shared.” And where the heck is Medicetti? You’ll find out . . .)
Thank you for your patience, and enjoy! (I’m gonna take a nap now . . .)
They will also refuse to acknowledge the darkness, even as they crash around blindly.
The ancient Israelite prophet Isaiah wrote:
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)
I can’t bear to list all the ways the world is spinning in the dark right now (Obama’s recent declaration that all restrooms and locker rooms–even and especially in public schools–be “gender neutral” has me too nauseated to write about it).
However, even though our governments and our so-called leaders may be waaaay off the mark on many issues, we as individuals don’t need to follow. We each have our ability to think, to ponder, to declare that we will continue to see the light, that we will recognize the darkness, and that we will not–no matter how many times everyone tells us otherwise–we will NOT see that the sky is merely blue.
Take a good, hard look at it. Today, the tiny section I see out my window is blue, but when I get up and view the entire sky, in the distance there are huge clouds, billowing and approaching.
See the entire sky, and the entire world, for what it really is. Identify the light. Recognize the darkness, and don’t let anyone with power, or money, or charisma convince you that you see otherwise.
Three years ago I wrote about the strange habit we have of thinking that “the sky is blue.”
It isn’t.
My first book, The Forest at the Edge of the World makes the argument that while everyone thinks the sky is blue, that’s only an illusion. It’s actually black. (So quit telling your kids it’s blue.)
We have to be brave enough to take a good, hard look at the world, and to make a judgment about what we see. Oh, how we’re so afraid to do that! We’re so afraid of offending the world that cares nothing for us. In the meantime, we offend our Heavenly Father, who truly loves us.
We need to not be afraid to declare, “No, this is wrong. I will not agree, I will not give in, and I will not refuse to see the light.”
I won’t guarantee there won’t be repercussions for going against the world. You will be knocked down, likely not by some high government official, but probably by your social media “friends.” I’ve taken to hiding in my closet on a regular basis when I, once again, write up something that, as the comments and railings pour in, I regret . . . but only for a moment. Every time I think, “Oh, why did I put that out there? Look at the conflict it’s generating! I hate that!”
I hate fighting. I hate arguing. I hate thinking that people don’t like me. (I’m such a 7th grader sometimes.)
But I hate more seeing the good in the world being labeled as evil, the bitter replacing the sweet, the darkness trying to smother the light.
Here’s the great thing about our world right now: all of us can find a forum where we can stand up and declare where the light really is, and what the dark’s trying to do. Most of us won’t shine too brightly. I know I’ve personally got the illuminating power of a penlight on aging batteries, but that’s ok. I borrow strength from the many brave bloggers and writers and religious leaders of many faiths who boldly shine their brighter lights on the darkness.
And here’s the awesome thing: light, shining together, gets brighter together.
And here’s the even more awesome thing: it takes only one light to dispel absolute darkness.
I’m ready to burst too! And I think it’s in a good way!
The paperback proof for Book 5: Safety Assured Leaving East of Medicetti will be in my hands by the end of the week, then it’s one more read and edit, some formatting for the ebook versions, and then PUBLISHED! My hope is to get it out before Memorial Day, if not sooner. I’ll keep you posted!
(In the meantime, I’m already working on fine-tuning Book 6. Yes, there are books 6, 7, and 8. All of them are drafted, and all of them will be out in the next three years. Oh dear, I’m so giddy that I feel a burst coming on! I better get a sponge. And by the way, sounds like Shem’s got an admirer in Book 5 . . .)
The following was written by my mother, Yvonne Neufeldt Strebel, in 1984. She delivered this talk in church on Mother’s Day. I found this speech in my dad’s journal, and reproduced it here, to show that fear of not measuring up as a mom has been around for at least 32 years.
“Mother’s Day”—the very word awakens feeling of appreciation, gratitude, and love, and rightfully so. I am grateful to be a wife and a mother and to have a good family.
Yet Mother’s Day in our home is known as “Guilt Sunday,” the date for my annual guilt trip.
Beautifully rendered Mother’s Day speeches have left me with a depressing feeling of inadequacy. I have often asked myself, “Could it be possible that my family is succeeding in spite of me?”
I do not measure up to the ideal motherhood, the Supermom. I know that, because I have tried to be Supermom and failed. I am not alone in my plight. Actually, I am in very good company. There are other mothers who have expressed the same sentiments concerning Mother’s Day and Supermom. 
Supermom—you know the type. She gets up very early, every single morning. Go, call on her between 5 and 6 a.m. She will greet you with a radiant smile and will be beautifully dressed, perfectly groomed, unhurried—yet lively—although she has been up for hours.
She has exercised, written in her journal, perhaps even composed music or written poetry.
She in now preparing not only a nutritious, but also an appetizing breakfast, which she will serve on an elegantly set table. No lumpy oatmeal or cold cereal for her family.
Supermom never ever loses her temper, and if she is in pain, she hides it. She always sings while doing chores. She loves and supports her family 100%, does her church and community work exceptionally well—better than anybody else—and never tires. Evening meals, always served punctually, are gourmet delights.
At night, when the day is done, Supermom lovingly turns to her husband and with a brilliant smile, accompanied by a demure sigh, says, “Darling, I love all my challenges. I only wish I could have more.”
I identify with Supermom in only three categories:
Other than that, I do not qualify. And I had to come to terms with that. (I also had to prepare this talk.)
Does Supermom really exist, or is she the sum total of imaginations of many kind Mother’s Day speakers?
If she exists, could she perhaps step forward and tell me how she does it?
I suspect Supermom is a myth. I am no longer willing to compare myself to a myth.
In the 1984 April General Conference, Elder Marvin J. Ashton pointed out that,
“comparison is another tool of Satan. Many [mothers] seem to put too much pressure on themselves to be a Supermom or Superwoman . . . A good woman is any woman who moves in the right direction.”
The foundation of motherhood is nurturing love. If we keep this in mind, we need not compete in the motherhood Olympics in order to find the perfect mother.
We are all on the road to perfection. Along the way, we gather what I would like to call “moments of perfection.” These are occasions when we do well and achieve, usually in quiet ways. There are no headlines, no fanfares, but Heavenly Father approves.
When my own children were small, they would bring me the most beautiful bouquets of dandelions. It was better than their previous practice of beheading our neighbor’s prized tulips. When I treated these dandelions as a bouquet of roses, then this, in a small way, was a “moment of perfection.”
I made myself a questionnaire befitting my own situation:
These could all be “moments of perfection.”
If I am not motivated by guilt or fear of what others might think or say, then I have created another “moment of perfection.”
When reporting back to my Heavenly Father at night, I may have had a disastrous day, in part caused by my own weaknesses. But when I repent and ask forgiveness, and I can feel the comfort of the spirit, I know that my repentance has been acceptable to the Lord and I express my gratitude to Him. This then is a very good “moment of perfection.”
“Moments of perfection” can be gather by us all, regardless of whether we are parents or not.
In the final analysis, as I understand it, that which is really crucial to my being a good mother can be summarize in three points:
With this in mind, I can learn to eliminate fruitless comparison and cancel my guilt trips.
True personal liberation can only be achieved through genuine gospel living. Heavenly Father lives and loves us all, and recognizes our honest efforts.
My mother and me, 1969 (I’m the small one.)
Yvonne Neufeldt Strebel was born in 1927 in Neisse, Prussia, Germany (now Poland). She endured WWII as a child, losing many of her family to the war, then escaped alone as a refugee fleeing from the Soviet army when she was 17 years old in 1944. She eventually met Rudolf Strebel in Munich, and in 1954 they immigrated to America and married, settling in Utah until their deaths. Yvonne passed away in 2014, at the age of 86. She had four children, 23 grandchildren, and many more great-grandchildren.
Woo-hoo! One huge step down, about a dozen more to go until I can launch Book 5: Safety Assured Leaving East of Medicetti.
It WILL be out before May is over. I don’t yet dare set a date because then the Anxiety Gods see that number and take it as a challenge to thoroughly undo me before then.
But I’m deep into final edits and formatting which, because there are three completely different platforms for print and ebooks, with each taking about 10 hours for someone technically-disabled such as myself to properly format, means I need lots of chocolate chips to get me through and I’m trying to give up sugar right now. Yeah, I chose a bad time for that.
But it WILL get done!
In the meantime, thanks again to my oldest son for standing in for the cover, even though he and his siblings keep saying, “What did you do to him? It’s Teagan, but it’s not Teagan.”
“I know,” I tell them. “Because now he’s Peto.”
“Who?”
That’s when I remember they haven’t bothered to read the books. If it doesn’t have a Star Wars character on the cover (Happy May the Fourth everyone!) they won’t touch it.
(For my next book cover, I’ll put a Wookiee in the background so it’ll trick my family into reading it. Actually, a Wookiee would fit pretty good on this cover . . . I think I need to do a bit more photoshopping.)
By Wednesday I’ll have completed the cover for Book 5: Safety Assured Leaving East of Medicetti!
Interestingly, I’m using my oldest son on the cover, the one I wrote about earlier who’s been ill with a strange viral infection for the past week and a half, and now a secondary bacterial infection. After three hospital visits, he’s finally on the mend.
Just a couple of days before he fell ill, we did his preliminary photo shoot. I told him that past experience showed we’d need to do a second shoot, because even though I took fifty shots of him, I’d realize they were all wrong, and we’d have to redo them. And perhaps a third time. (Maybe this is why my family is reluctant to dress up for my book covers?)
Well, after going through his photos, I realized they were pretty good, and I didn’t need to redo them after all. Good thing, because being ill has taken a toll on him, and it’d be a few weeks before he’d be back in shape. 
(First off, he’d have to shave his two weeks’ beard growth, and that would nearly kill him. I purposely took pictures of him right after he got home from the army, so that he’d still be clean shaven. I didn’t need Goatee-Man on the cover, although he pulls off that look pretty well.)
I changed his eye color, turning his dark brown eyes to light gray. (Any ideas who he’s going to be when his editing’s all finished?)
I did the same thing to his brother, who I used on the cover of Book 2: Soldier at the Door. It’s strange how merely changing one’s eye color suddenly changes the whole person. Both of my sons have very dark brown eyes, but not here. They’re no longer my boys, but new characters.
(This change to blue eyes still creeps me out.)
While the rest of my family groans quietly before agreeing to be on my covers (they work for cookies, fortunately) my 8-year-old daughter, however, is DYING to be on a cover, so I may have to write a small book, just for her. (Working title: The Life and Times of a 3rd Grade Narcissist.)
Ever have one of those days/weeks/years, where you were hoping for a sunny day, but instead were buried under a ton of freezing cold snow?
Why is it so hard, on those avalanche days, to remember the snow is only a temporary condition? That the financial/medical/emotional/housing crisis that consumes you today will eventually melt away, and you’ll be left in sunshine? At least, eventually.
And there’s no St. Bernard in sight . . .
This is one of those avalanche months for me: our employment isn’t where it needs to be to sustain us, we’ve had some flooding disasters in our basement requiring repairs and replacements (our deductible is so high we’ll have to cover it ourselves), and for the past week my very healthy and active adult son has been in and out of the ER battling a high fever and various infections, and no one can pinpoint the cause, despite the many expensive tests they’ve run. And, because he was just released from active duty in the army and doesn’t have a job yet, he doesn’t currently have health insurance. I was reminded of that fact when I went to pick up his prescription this morning. Bizarrely, a month ago, his younger brother, on an LDS mission in Oklahoma/Texas, came down with viral meningitis and was hospitalized for five days, with daily treatments for another week. (I need an extended warranty on my adult sons; theirs is expiring, I fear.) Pile on top of all that some personal epic failures where I handled some problems poorly this week, and I feel like I’m suffocating.
Sometimes I think part of the reason I’m encountering these avalanches is because I’m so close to finishing Book 5–Safety Assured Leaving East of Medicetti. There are principles and ideals in this book that have weighed heavily on my mind for literally decades, and I didn’t know how to share them until I began this series. Getting this book out feels very important. I’m still plugging along at it, when I find a few minutes here and there, getting all the thousands of remaining details fixed and nailed into place, but without the usual joy I experience when I’m close to releasing a book. I apologize to it each day when I sit down to my laptop that I’m editing with a dull heart.
Which, in a way, I know is stupid; downright stupid! We’ve faced greater challenges before! Years ago we lost a home, had to live with relatives, and were even homeless for a time! We spent four months living in a condemned house! (It was torn down after we moved out; rumor has it someone kicked the foundation and it fell on its own.)
We’ve weathered job losses, financial disasters, car accidents, and emotional distress, and lived to chuckle about it. Sunny days returned!
So why, oh why, is it so hard to remember those sunny days–sunny weeks and even months–on avalanche days? Why do we frequently sit down in despair certain that this time there’ll be no deliverance? That the months and even years it’ll take to come back from this latest disaster will be the ones that finish us off for good?
Why can’t I remember, for example, that less than a year after we lost our house, we were able to purchase a brand new one for an incredibly low price? And when we sold it five years later, the profits wiped out another debt we’d been carrying for years?
This was my front yard two weeks ago. A week later it was 75 degrees.
Today I’m trying to remember those sunny days, ones that were suddenly so hot and bright that the remaining snows vanished before the day was over, and I found myself breathing easier.
Today I’m trying to remember that while sometimes winter holds on, and on, and on, I can’t ever remember a year when spring and summer didn’t come. They do, eventually. Never as soon as we want them to, but the sunny days do return.
Eventually.
In the meantime, I need to quit my brooding and find a shovel . . .
(By the way– I still have some free magnets and book marks to give away! Just send me your mailing address, and I’ll send you my thanks for your support. If you want last year’s magnets too, let me know in the message below. I have a couple left.)
Just give us a warning first, please
I’m not entirely sure why some people are huggers and others aren’t.
For the record, I’m not a hugger. Embracing someone else creates an intimacy that makes me very uncomfortable. I guess it’s because I don’t know what it means. I have some extended family who hug all the time, and when I’m around them I brace for impact.
I’m not that big of a hugger with my kids, either. When they’re little, sure—lots of cuddles. But when they get bigger, something changes and we quit. When I pick up my kids from the airport after they’ve been gone for a long time, we have to negotiate that hug because it’s not natural. Same when my kids go back to college. We do the hug, and it’s an awkward sight, I’m sure. I show affection through attention, talking, food, service, but not hugging.
So when less intimate acquaintances move in for that embrace, I panic. What do you want?! What does this mean?! What level of friendship do you require of me now?! Why are you touching me?!
If you’re a hugger, can you help Perrin and I understand why? Seriously, we have no idea what it means . . .
(Also, remember to fill out the form below if you want a free magnet and bookmark. I’ll start mailing them out next week, and I promise I will do NOTHING else with your address. I just want to say thanks for your support. I also still have a couple of magnets from last year’s promotion; let me know if you want those, too.)
Book 5, Safety Assured Leaving East of Medicetti, is getting closer to being published! It’ll be out before the end of May.
I’m having so much fun working on the cover and finalizing edits that I want to thank you for your support and patience by hosting another giveaway. For until they run out, I’ll mail you a book mark and a magnet, just for the asking.
(These will be collector’s items some day, folks.)
I designed the magnet for my own selfish use–I tend to forget things, so my fridge now has reminders like this:
(Although I don’t think my 8-year-old wants me to remember this.)
Isn’t that awesome? And cool? Don’t you want a magnet and bookmark?
Then just fill out the form below. I promise I will never use your name and address for anything else but sending you free swag. Your information is safe with me (primarily because I tend to lose addresses right after I write them down).
I also have a limited amount of the magnets I gave away last time (I really should clean off my desk more often, to see what else is hiding under the baskets I never use). If you want a set of these older magnet as well, let me know. I’ll be giving them away until they’re gone.
(Yep. Got these on my fridge as well.)
So fill out the form below (and let me know if you want last year’s magnet, too, if still available) with your full address, and I’ll get them in the mail to you. And yes, I will ship internationally.
THIS IS AN OLD GIVEAWAY–NO LONGER AVAILABLE!
Thank you again for your support and patience, and I’ll keep you posted as to when Book 5 is published!
My mantra . . .
This is what I chant to myself when the kitchen pipe leaks, and black mold destroys the drywall and carpeting in my son’s basement bedroom . . .
When our two ancient vans have one problem after another after another . . .
When my plans for the day get blown out of the water by a minor crisis, so that the next day I have twice as much to take care of, until another small disaster hits, which means the day after that will be three times as busy . . .
When finances take a hit, when goals get delayed, and deadlines loom, when hurdles get larger, and rewards grow smaller, and the world mocks and rages and derides . . .
Or when I can’t even resolve the little things, like finding comfortable shoes for my huge and wide man-feet, or hemming my daughter’s prom dress by the weekend, or taking my preschooler on a walk to the park, that’s when I remember . . .
Oh, that’s right. I’m not here on vacation. I’m here on a lifelong test.
(I could, however, use a ten minute break . . . )
Forestedgebooks.com 