It's Listed!

It was a pretty wonderful moment when I found my book listed on the "Coming Soon" page of my publisher's website.  The official release date is April 1, 2010, but you can check their website for pre-ordering information.

A big thanks to my editor, to the Lord who really owns the truths in this study and to my own sisters in faith for whom  I'm so grateful. 

Here's the official blurb:

God has monogrammed His beauty on you. Beauty attracts us, because it is the visible imprint of God's image on His daughters.

Your Father delights in you.

In this volume of the Sisters in Faith Bible Studies, you will meet several women who embraced their God-given desire to be beautiful, as well as God's command to live a holy life. As you share and grow together with sisters in Christ, you, too, will be empowered to resist our culture's destructive beauty messages and embrace God's heart of love for His daughters.

For more info, visit Wesleyan Publishing House/Reflecting Beauty

Double Take ~ an exciting new novel from Jenness Walker

I'm pleased to announce that Steeple Hill has just released a novel of romantic suspense written by my friend, Jenness Walker.

Cole Leighton can barely believe his eyes. A woman on his bus has just been abducted—in an exact reflection of a scene from the bestselling novel he’s reading. Someone is bringing the book to life…and isn’t above forcing an innocent woman to follow the story to its tragic end. Using the novel as his playbook, Cole catches up with the beautiful victim—but rescuing Kenzie Jacobs doesn’t keep her safe for long. The killer is writing his own ending, and none of the twists and turns lead to happily ever after.


Jenness Walker has loved to read and create stories since she was a little girl.  She is happiest when dreaming up a new plot or crafting a new character, but she also enjoys decorating and taking roadtrips with her husband and web-designer husband, Jason.

Jenness lives in Florida where she occasionally takes a break from writing to indulge in a strawberry smoothie or delight in a deli sub lunch by the water.  One day she hopes to own an Infiniti G-35 Sports Coupe with shiny chrome rims, but in the meantime, she gets a kick out of old books and sepia-toned pictures and of course, spending lots of time with her friend Hyacinth--yes, her laptop has a name. 

Jenness' debut novel, Double Take, has just been released from Steeple Hill.  Look for it at your local Walmart or favorite bookstore or click the book icon in the upper right corner to visit Jenness' website.

Guest Article

I discovered the following article while doing some research for some writing I am doing. I think this lady has captured something significant here--there were so many women unnamed in the Bible who lived and breathed and experienced wonderful things. It made me see them from a different persepctive. I hop you will enjoy it too and will be challenged to think of yourself, as Ms. Donahue says, as an "ingredient woman" used in God's recipe for history.     -- VQ

Nameless Women of the Bible

(Mentioned "Between the Lines")

by Lois Donahue

The last group is by far the largest because it encompasses the remaining, legitimate, unnamed women who existed ‘between the lines’ of the Bible. They were part of that same majority of people who live day-to-day during any given historical time-frame -- the kind of people usually lumped together in the overused expression ‘great masses’ or, worse yet, so often grossly underrated and mistakenly described as ‘ordinary’. In reality, of course, these are the people who are an absolute necessity in ‘making history’ but, in most instances, overlooked in recording it. This does not mean we intentionally overlook these particular Bible women - we know they were there - we just need to be reminded - we need to occasionally ‘bring them to life’. First, by realizing that they were as diverse as we are - in size and shape and disposition and personality and temperament; but even more importantly, by making an effort to extract them from the homogenized crowd and think of them as individuals. After all, let’s face facts by using the following examples. At any given moment during the Bible time slot, there was an actual living, breathing woman who most likely --

- feared for her life as the flood waters rose -

- was a neighbor to Lot and his family in Sodom -

- also laughed at the possibility of Sarah getting pregnant at her age -

- had calloused hands from working as a slave in Egypt -

- walked on dry land through the Red Sea with a child in her arms -

- had a relative who fought with Joshua at Jericho-

- had dry and wrinkled skin from the desert sun --

- worked as a servant for Elizabeth and was there when Mary visited -

- saw her infant son killed because Herod was paranoid -

- asked Joseph to make her a table -

- lived in Nazareth and watched Jesus grow up -

- drank wine at the Cana wedding -

- got too old to carry water from the well -

 knew personally one of the lepers Jesus cured -

- cleaned and cooked fish caught in the Sea of Galilee -

- questioned her son about the missing barley loaves and dried fish -

- knew her husband paid his taxes to Matthew -

- sat in the shade of one of Gethsemani’s olive trees -

- on a hot day sat with her feet in the cool water of the Jordan River -

- waved palms when Jesus entered Jerusalem -

- helped prepare food for the meal we now call the “Last Supper” -

- shouted “crucify him!” -

- was frightened by that Friday afternoon “eclipse of the sun” -

- lived on after Jesus died -

- stayed in a tent made by Paul -

- cried when she heard Stephen had been stoned to death -

- at some point had to decide - remain Jew or become ‘Christian’?

I hope the above sampling of women from this final group will help you think of other women, just as real, who, for whatever reason, have been ‘overlooked’.

Here at the end I would like to repeat the quote I used at the very beginning of this two-parter on Bible women, “people are the ingredients from which history is made”. I hope it will always be remembered that women who lived in Bible times as well as each of us and all those women yet to come -- whether they are a ‘pinch-of’, a ‘teaspoon-of’, a ‘cup-of’ or a ‘quart-of’ -- are all “ingredient women” obviously chosen by God to be part of what we might think of as His “recipe” for history.

- http://www.catholicwomen.com/kitchen18b.htm

cultural assault

The more I experience life, the more I realize how tightly Satan's fingers are wrapped around our earth, specifically the culture. 

I am passionate about helping women realize the deception we face on a daily basis.  Many of the challenges in our world are the direct result of a skewed society which is like putty in the Enemy's hands.  Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the culture's obsession with feminine beauty as a means of self-worth and as the most valuable asset she can possess. 

Women want to be beautiful; were created to be beautiful.  The entrance of sin did horrendous things to us through the warping of DNA and the aging process to which we are all prone, so not all of us perfectly display the beauty to which we are heirs, but it was God's design and will, nonetheless. 

You may disagree with me, but I have come to believe that the idea of feminine beauty plays a huge role in many of the cultural and spiritual battles we face today.  Relationships have taken a huge hit in this arena.  That is Satan's ultimate goal anyway.  Relationship defines our God -- He exists in relationship (the Trinity); He comes to us in a salvation relationship (Father/child); and He plans our eternity in relationship (Christ is the Bridegroom--the church is the Bride).  In fact, the reason the human family exists in the first place is because our God desired relationship with those who could love Him back.  I firmly believe that Satan delights in destroying relationship more than anything else, for it is close to the heart of God. 

Feminine beauty affects cultural ills that are not only destroying lives but relationships as well. 

Consider this:

Because a man lusts and a woman desires to feel affirmed, they engage in intimacy outside of marriage -- their future relationship with a spouse is damaged.  A child is conceived; it is aborted--a woman faces a lifetime of guilt and all her future relationships are affected; a baby will never get to have the relationship of a mother and father.  When the parents discover the truth, the relationships of the parents and the daughter is traumatized.  And it started because a man thinks the pleasure offered in beauty is a legitmate reason to engage in intimacy and a woman is willing to trade her beauty for affirmation and love.

The insidious parasite of lust has attached itself firmly to our culture.  You cannot walk down the street, visit a mall, dine out in a restaurant or shop for groceries in Walmart without seeing its tentacles entwined in the styles, the advertising, and the manner of others.  It is draining the value of women and the sapping the moral strength of men. 

The culture will never align itself with biblical principles regarding the proper celebration of beauty, but we as Christian women must be aware of what is truth. 

The study book for women title Reflecting Beauty:  Embracing the Creator's Design is my challenge to the deception in the culture.  Writing this book was an awesome experience.  When you discover what God's Word really says about feminine beauty, it is like inhaling a fragrant breeze after escaping a stinking barnyard (sorry, farmers!)  It isn't suffocating or depressing.  It is life-giving and enlightening.

I am also trying to finish up a novel in which the characters come face to face with some current issues along this line with some suspense and romance mixed in as well.  I hope that women will read these books and be empowered to rethink and reject what the culture constantly spews in our faces.  The ideas aren't mine anyway; they are His.  God delights in beauty; but He also wants to protect beauty, and it is never a measure of a woman's worth; it is the way she reflects His majesty.  This is the message that we are to celebrate and model in our lives.  It is exciting!

of books and mom guilt and such

As a mom, I tend to be part of the guilt brigade.  Been there?  I should have done  . . . I should be doing . . . oh, this book recommends this . . . have I ruined my children's chances in life??

So, the very few things that I feel halfway good about I tend to clasp tightly to me; they bring me comfort that maybe all is not lost.

One thing I have tried to pass on to my kids is a love for the library.  Now, let me rephrase that -- I love the library; they are hopefully learning to love the library.  Often, they protest going, but inevitably, once we get there, they get engrossed in pulling out interesting books.  I hope that the regular exposure will create in them a fever for good words. 

My father introduced me to books and the thrill of a good story.  My folks were evangelists and many weeks of the year, we lived in a camper trailer at one church or another for special services.  And, after the service, before bedtime, my father would pull out the current book he was reading to my brothers and I and fill our little space with the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Joy Spartan of Parsonage Hill, Little Pilgrim's Progress. the Bears of Blue River, the Enormous Egg, Escape from the Shawnees, River of Fire, Alexi's Secret Mission, and many others.  We would usually beg for another chapter; you know how frustrating it is to try to sleep when the hero is in a crisis moment?  Those wonderful hours developed in me a love for books which I carry with me until this day.

Then, my father took us to the library.  The smell of books is still one of my favorites. It is the smell of a new journey.  I love to dig on the shelves and find a treasure I haven't seen before.  My first library card was in Shelbyville, Tennessee at the Argie Cooper Public Library.  It was a vintage red brick building with high shelves and artwork of flowers in vases and  similar subjects.  The card was white plastic with raised letters.  The librarian would take the card and put it in a little machine; then she took the cards out of the back of the books I was getting and punched them down in the machine which would stamp my card number on them.  Then she would put cards with the return date in the pocket in the back of the books and hand the stack to me.  (remember this old process-- the digital system is better, but I spent many an hour "playing library" with my own homemade cards and everything!)

I have carried on the tradition--reading continued stories to my kids (though to be honest, it's been a while since I've done it now!)  And they seemed to enjoy it as much as I did as a kid.  I hope that means I'm doing something right there. 

And we have a weekly "library day."   It used to be Thursday, but now it's Wednesday.  Things change, depending on what our present schdule is--just now, homeschooling and my grocery shopping day have dictated a change.  And, oops, I forgot about a couple items due yesterday and now owe a fine!  Maybe some feel that a library fine is the height of irresponsibility.  To me, it's a sign that I use that place a whole lot (okay, that's justifying myself, but hey, it's my blog and my fine, right?)  And, as my friend Leah says, when you pay a fine, you're supporting the library!  Like that!

So, today, my troops and I will march into our little library and make our selections.  And mom will feel that maybe she is winning part of this parenting battle after all.  And, as a writer myself, the fact that they are getting up close and personal with words makes me feel good too.  (by the way, I'd love to hear about your mom guilt and triumphs--we all have them, you know--and your kids need what you bring to their lives--they were custom designed for you!)