Moving to WordPress

I want to thank all three/four of the people who are following me on this blog.  I have taken the advice of Kristen Lamb and decided to create a more professional blog. I have moved to johnpauldewalt.wordpress. I would love all of you to follow me there.

Thanks.

Just to Pay Expenses

What’s the best job in the world?  One for which “…they actually pay me to do what I love!”  Talk about a dream job.

Jefa-fa Dun-ham (as his puppet Peanut calls him) has never worked at a real job.  He has always been a ventriloquist. (Sorry about commercial in the link.)  People just pay him millions to entertain them.

How unlike the Michigan man of the early 1900s I read about in the book, Anchor Post.  His daughter wrote that her father was a preacher of the Gospel; he farmed only to pay expenses.

So, I will take the advice of Kristen Lamb, author of Are You There Blog? It’s Me, Writer.  She said to her audience – writers, “When people ask what you do, you need to tell them, ‘I am an author’ or ‘I am a writer.’”  Since I believe Messiah would have me proclaim Biblical truths through my stories and essays and I enjoy writing, from now on I will tell people I am an author.  I just work in a factory to pay expenses.

Whom do you know has a dream job?

To Die Happy

I don’t believe I’m becoming obsessed with death.  However, I have been thinking a lot since my wife’s funeral last October about what I’d like to have at my own.  It boils down to a lot of music in worship of Messiah.

I would want

·      hymns from my childhood  O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing, How Great Thou Art, Great Is Thy Faithfulness

·      anthems from my teen years in church choir     The Heavens Are Telling from Hayden’s Creation Oratorio, Open Our Eyes

·      choruses from young adulthood as a new believer      The Steadfast Love, (I’m drawing a blank on more examples.)

·      as well as proclamation music from these last decades          Indescribable, (Another blank.)

Open Our Eyes listed above declares

Thou hast made death glorious and triumphant!

For through its portals

we enter into the presence

      of the living God!

I love that song, not only for its stirring crescendo, but also for the truth of its lyrics.

It is often said when a man dies in the arms of a woman that at least he died happy.  Last Sunday, during worship, I wept, overwhelmed by joy in the Lord.  I thought that were I to drop dead right then, I would leave this life doing one of my favorite activities.

Insha’Allah or Que Sera, Sera?

My son and I almost had an auto accident earlier this evening.  Driving me home from work, he ran a blinking red light.  As we passed through the intersection, I saw headlights coming toward us – from his side.

After we made it through safely– and I pointed out his error, I thought about my lack of reaction.  Somehow I felt confident we would not be hit. 

I contemplated the car being wrecked.  That would have been bad (let alone either of us being hurt).  We have only the one car between us. 

Yet, I was not disturbed.  Was this fatalism - Insha’Allah, as Arabic speakers often say?  In our ignorance, we Americans see this as a shrugging “If God wills.”  (Wikipedia says it’s a statement of submission required when making plans for the future.)

Or was my feeling more like Connie Francis’ light-hearted Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)?  “The future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera.”  This never seemed like much of an answer to me.

I find I like Wikipedia’s Insha’Allah better or maybe my own “hopeful fatalism”; it’s all in God’s loving hands.

To Twitter or Not to Twitter? Do I really want to build a social network?

I am not much of a social person.  I like to converse with one or two people and exchange thoughts on various issues or read what an author has people say.  However, I’m not much for standing around just to chat with people.  The problem is I agree with Linus from the Peanuts comic strip.  “I love Mankind…it’s people I can’t stand!!”  This is why I have refused to return to my Facebook account for some months.

I was put off by the lightweight interactions I found there.  I considered the frequent mutual admirations and silly games a waste of time.  I found I cared more for the content of what people shared than for the people who did the sharing.

However, I do need to keep my fingers in the pot with some relationships: my stepdaughters and their families, my sons and their activities, various people with common interests and goals.

Michael Hyatt is the Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the world's largest Christian publishing company.  He encourages the use of the modern technology of Twitter to keep tabs on relationships and to let people keep tabs on you.  He said it’s also needed to build a platform for book sales.  It’s a great way to have influence on people, something I feel a lack of.

Michael also encourages blogging.  Forget privacy; be open and transparent with people.  Build trust for you as a person.  Build a good reputation for your brand of whatever your product is.

I have decided, therefore, to follow Michael’s advice and sign up for Twitter for two weeks.  I’ll talk to my important relationships about their own Twitter accounts and see what happens.

We’re Ba-ack!

Much has happened in the fifty-one weeks since my last essay.  For one thing, the thought that no one would ever read these – let alone comment on them – caused me to run for cover.  I felt like the cat when my grandchildren come for a visit.  (Sorry, Spot.)  So much for my essay on refusing to quit.

It didn’t help, of course, that my wife took sick again, this time with tumors in the back of her brain.  She became unable to climb stairs and porch steps so we closed off the dining room and brought in a hospital bed and other stuff.  A friend also built a small ramp over the back steps so we could use a wheelchair to get Donna to frequent radiation and chemo treatments.

On top of that, my job required me to work twelve-hour shifts weekdays and eight hours each on Saturdays and Sundays.  With the addition of the medical visits and other errands, my time outside of work wasn’t very free.

Donna died early in October and her funeral had the church packed with people from the congregation, the Christian school where she had worked, and other special friends.

Hours at work have dropped though I still work most Saturdays and an occasional Sunday.  This will give me more time to work on writing.  I need to complete the novel about Joshua and Caleb and submit it somewhere.  I have several completed short stories that I need to send out.  And there are essays I want to put before people in cyberspace, insights I believe God would have me set before the public.

So, it’s time I stop petting the cat and watching NCIS so much and get back to writing.