Yarnalong: An Afghan for Anna & "Mysterion"

Today I'm linking up with Ginny, over at Small Things, who says, "Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading . . . I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading?"

The book:

I'm reading an advanced review copy of "Mysterion", which is a collection of speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, and horror) written around Christian themes.

I've just started this (enjoying it so far--review to follow in a week or two), and I have to say: even if it doesn't turn out to be perfect, I love that there's a book like this out in the world, a book that is engaging Christian genre lovers outside the strict content guidelines that are normal in the Christian publishing. 

I just love that this book even exists.

The crocheting:

So, when I made this afghan,

my eldest daughter instantly claimed it as her own.

Which prompted the rest of my children to let me know that they ALSO wanted their own big, warm, woolly afghans.

What I'm working on now is the first of those afghans, for Anna, one of my eight-year-old twins. You can see in the picture at the top of this post that Anna chose some lovely cool-toned colors for her blanket.

I love how satisfyingly fast all those chevroned stripes build up. So satisfying!


What are you making and reading this week?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links: some good reading from around the web

walk your way through the wilds of the Internet...

SOME INTERESTING LINKS FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, FAMILY, AND FICTION...

Faith  

-"My 7 Tips to Better Self-Care": The author behind this wise article used to go to our church (and moved - sniff! we still miss you, Raven!), and she has some good words for all you busy people out there.

-"Lectio Divina and the Facebook Newsfeed": a call to read less and think about it more.

Family 

- "How Can I Get Rid of Belly Fat?" - okay, it's a clickbait title, but it chronicles an actually interesting little science experiment. (And, like most of my health links--indeed, this and the next, IIRC--I have to thank my friend Becca for sharing this one with me.)

-"Why One Neuroscientist Started Blasting His Core": and I thought this one was fascinating because it talks about the links between posture, the adrenal glands, and mental health. Turns out we're complicated, well-connected creatures.

Fiction 

-Brandon Sanderson (of Mistborn fame) has been putting up new recordings of his college-level speculative fiction writing class. I got a lot out of these last time they went up online, and have started watching this new batch. He's a such a good writer, but also a really good teacher. You can find them on YouTube, here.

-"There is no That": What's behind the work? The work. 

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

"The Joy of Dirty Dishes"

So, the newest Chicken Soup for the Soul book is out, and I have a story in it!


And--to my surprise!--my story is even mentioned in this interview about the book over at Parade magazine.

I admit: it's a little weird to stumble across someone talking about my story! But, it's a little cool, too. :)

ETA: My story is a small little snippet of the bigger story of the birth of my twin girls, and about how I learned to be grateful for even the ordinary, mundane, repetitive parts of a good and full life.

I hope you like it!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Desperate Faith: How to Pray When You Know You're Not Enough

I was listening again to the story in Mark 9, of the time when a father begged Jesus to deliver his son from torment, and Jesus listened, and did.

It's a justly famous story for the father's excruciatingly honest declaration,

"Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!" ....

Listening to it this time, I realized that the father's belief actually is very strong: he is willing to do whatever is necessary to save his son. Even if what is necessary is to believe.

If there is a miracle on offer, he will believe in it.

If believing is what is required, he will do it.

But he is so desperate, he cares SO MUCH, and--I think this is important--he is SO IN EARNEST--that he has to be honest about what he knows about his own ability - he knows he cannot believe enough, he knows he doesn't have enough faith, he knows he is in desperate, horrible, helpless need ... and that is why he is there in the first place.


And that is why we are before Jesus in the first place, too. When we go to church, when we approach the communion rail, when we hold out our hands before him in prayer: we are there because we are in such desperate, horrible, helpless need.

We have some faith (God's gift!), but it is not enough.

We have such need, and it has overwhelmed us.

So, in that place of desperate need and insufficient faith, here is what we must be sure of about ourselves: that we are not enough, that we cannot believe enough, and yet that we desperately need Jesus' help. He is the one who can free us of our demons and our torment.

Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief!

The first is needed for the second, and the first LEADS to the second.


And be sure of this: the Lord Jesus will meet us there. There in Mark 9, you see that our Lord responds to our honest confession of insufficiency. He takes our small, weak, desperate cries, and meets them with unshakable, sure, overwhelming strength. He is good and kind.

He will help our unbelief, and he will make us strong enough to see and to bear his mercies.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: some good reading from around the web

wouldn't mind heading back here...

SOME interesting links FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, FAMILY, AND FICTION...

Faith 

-"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread...": a good poem for Sunday.

-"A Commendation of Leviticus": a helpful guide to a book that often stymies Christians in their Bible reading.

-"15 Proverbs for Social Media Users": much-too-applicable to real life!

-"Some Things You Should Know About Christians Who Struggle With Anxiety": yes, this.

-"On Daughters and Dating: How to Intimidate Suitors": I loved this. I loved the implication that the truly admirable men are the ones who look at strong, godly, content women and say, "Oh, yes please". And that the best way to protect your daughter is to raise her into a woman who is competent and who knows her worth and who knows her family and her God love her, support her, and have her back.  A snippet:

Instead of intimidating all your daughter's potential suitors, raise a daughter who intimidates them just fine on her own. 

Family 

-"McMansion 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture": I fell down this rabbit hole thanks to Anne Kennedy, and I don't regret it. This was fascinating.

-"How one family is sending 13 kids to college, living debt free - and still plans to retire early": inspiring stuff!

Fiction

-"Where Her Whimsy Took Me": a love letter to Dorothy Sayers' excellent novel, Gaudy Night.

-"The Writing Tricks We'd Be Naked Without": a good round-up of tips for my fellow writers.

-"The Unofficial Rules of the Starship Enterprise": This hilarious list-style bit of fanfic confirmed my secret theory that life aboard a REAL starship would inevitably involve a M.A.S.H.-style illegal still...


I hope you have a good weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Don't know what to make for supper? Here are 5 ideas

a crunchy slaw and a creamy chicken salad - so good together!

My family has to eat, and that means I have to cook. It's a chore that's more fun (for me!) when I try new stuff. Here are some recipes I've tried recently, with notes on what I changed, and how it all turned out.


- "Cashew Chicken Salad with Citrus"
This is the dish in the picture above (to the right).  I served it with a simple slaw.

And here's my confession about the slaw: I looked up the ingredients in those fancy, expensive, prepackaged salads you can buy bagged at the grocery store, and just copied them. Here's what I put in my knockoff version: red cabbage, savoy cabbage, celery, shredded cabbage, and cilantro, tossed with a store-bought dressing (Girard's "Chinese chicken salad") and some soy sauce and a bit of sugar.

The two dishes went together really well.

- "One-Pan Broccoli-Bacon Mac'n'Cheese"
This was good, but I suggest a few changes:

1) Use more bacon. I mean, c'mon.
2) You can use canned pumpkin in place of the squash. You could also just roast a butternut squash and scoop out and puree the flesh, instead of buying the expensive-ish frozen stuff.
3) It never hurts to add garlic. Or dried onion flakes. Or red pepper flakes. Or whatever spiciness floats your boat.


- "Thai Vegetable Curry Soup"
Yum. Yum, yum, yum.... this is one you make for the broth.


- "Spicy Thai Noodle Bowls" 
This was a big hit. I love meals that have lots of pieces, where everyone at the table can customize their own dish to their own particular tastes (which is why we have taco salad almost every week...).

I should note, though, that I made one big change to the recipe:
----I roasted the chicken instead of sautéing and then simmering it; with six people to cook for, it's just easier, especially if I want leftovers. Plus, I love the taste roasting gives, well, everything.

It used to be that I never used my giant roasting pan except for giant turkeys, but I've recently discovered it's my best friend in the kitchen. Want to quickly and easily cook 10 pounds of veg? Giant roasting pan. Want to quickly and easily cook 5 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs? Giant roasting pan.

I'm telling you, it's the answer to everything.

Here's how you do it: take your veg or meat, chop it into even-ish portions, toss the whole lot with some olive oil, spices, and salt, and stick it all in the oven at 425 or so. Stir every twenty minutes or so till it's done.

Everything will taste good.

Honest.

-"Lime Shrimp Dragon Noodles" 
I took down the heat level in this for the sake of the kids, but it was still spicy and delicious.

Not healthy, mind, but spicy and delicious.


---and, finally, a bonus! here's a side dish we tried recently and liked:
-"Fruit Salad with Thai Herbs" 
Good (easy!) side.



That's it for this round! Have you found any good recipes recently? Share 'em in the comments!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: "2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love", by Rachel Aaron

"2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love", by Rachel Aaron, is a book I bought after I'd already devoured a good deal of the writing posts she has up for free on her blog (look to the sidebar to find her most popular posts).

And yes, even though I knew this book repeated a lot of the information she had up for free, I was still willing to pay for it. Why?

1) Because the stuff I'd read for free was just that good, and
2) If there was more she had to say on the subject, I knew I wanted to hear it, and,
3) I'm in favor of paying writers for their work. :)

The "writing faster" aspect of Rachel's work is probably what attracts most of her writer-readers, and it's good stuff, but my favorite part of this book came when she started talking about the "writing better" and the "writing more of what you love" parts of the process.

Here is a quotation that particularly resonated with me:

I’d spent so long blaming my bad writing days on my own imagined lack of discipline, I’d completely ignored the fact that maybe the reason I didn’t want to write was because I was writing something I didn’t like. Maybe the characters were off or the tension was lacking. Hell, maybe the scene was just boring, and instead of forcing myself to keep trudging through it, I should be ripping it out. 

Now, instead of treating bad writing days as random, unavoidable disasters to be weathered, like thunderstorms, I started treating them as red flags. 

I stopped roughing myself up and started asking Why? Why don’t you want to write? What’s wrong? And while the answers were never pleasant (because really, it’s no fun to realize you messed up and now you have to rewrite a scene, or a chapter, or half a book), they were progress, and they were necessary. 

So the next time you don’t want to write, don’t waste time beating yourself up. Instead, stop and ask yourself why. Why do you not want to do this fundamentally enjoyable thing? What’s really going on?

After giving that really stellar advice on diagnosing your own writing malaise, Rachel goes on to give excellent, practical advice on how to fix the problem.

I just can't say enough about how valuable it is to be given practical advice on how to fix the boring parts. Because the truth is, there shouldn't be any boring parts in a novel. The reader paid her money in order to be entertained. (Enlightened too, maybe, but the chance to enlighten can only be earned after you've proved that your story is interesting.) If she's bored, the reader has every right to put the book down.

And does Rachel's advice work? In my experience, yes. I was able to take her advice and fix some really sticky bits in my work-in-progress. Especially helpful was her observation that bad writing days aren't just something that happen to you, but instead they're likely signs that something about your story isn't working, and it's okay to stop and evaluate what it is, so that you can FIX it, and turn your work-in-progress back into that awesome, intense, thrilling read that it really, really wants to be. In other words: don't ignore that writerly instinct when it says, "I'm bored," or "I'm unhappy." Listen to it, and ask it, "Why? Why are you bored? What would make this exciting instead of boring?" And listen to the answer.

And then do allllllllllllllllllllllllllll of the work. Because it really is work. But at least you will be doing work that makes a book that you, the writer, actually like. (And if you actually like it, maybe the readers will like it, too.)

This is a cheap e-book, and a fast read, but very valuable nonetheless. It was the help I needed when I needed it, and I've found myself going back and rereading the potent bits of her advice more than once. Recommended.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links: a free Mars Rover video game, advice on socializing as an introvert, and more!

SOME GOOD READING FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, AND FAMILY, AND FICTION...

Faith

-"Praying for the Police":

It’s easy to be cynical about the cultural Christianity that infuses life in the Bible Belt like hot water in a cup of tea. But this gathering—following so much anger, fear, destruction and despair—touched me. Members of my own family are in law enforcement. And another member of my family is a young black man. I don’t want to lose any of them. 

-"The Gift of My Anxiety"

-"The Casserole-Toting Church ladies Hold the Secret to Happiness": This one is absolutely my favorite link of the week. 

-"Rosaria Butterfield: No Free Passes": I've been impressed by everything I've seen from Dr. Butterfield, and this interview is no exception.

Family

-"Ask a Boss: I'm an Introvert and It's Holding Me Back!": This article is aimed at a work situation, but it still has some of the best advice I've ever read for introverts, full-stop:

A lot of introverts ... just resign themselves to this aspect of work always feeling like a performance. It can be an exhausting performance when it doesn’t come naturally, but their thinking is that it’s like anything else you might have to do at work that you don’t love — say, filling out expense reports or sitting through a boring staff meeting. 

But I think you’re more likely to be happy in the long term if you figure out your own ways to build rapport with people, even if those ways don’t look anything like the methods your colleagues are using. One of the most straightforward ways to do that — and one that a lot of introverts find easier to pull off — is just to take a genuine interest in people. You probably have a natural curiosity about people somewhere in you, even if you don’t typically indulge it at work, and this is the time to let it out.

Go over and read the rest of the article too--it's worth it--but I just love that core kernel of an idea: that introverts have their own way to be both genuine and social. It doesn't have to be a performance; when you hook socializing onto our natural fascination with the world, we can socialize with real interest, and not with awkward falsity.


-Mars Rover Game - my kids have been alternately enthralled and completely frustrated by this free game from NASA. Enjoy!

Fiction

-"Christian Fiction and Biblical Worldview Stories are NOT Synonomous": 

[CBA-approved fiction].. is framed by specific boundaries. While it exists within a biblical worldview, it only represents a cubicle within that world. Strictures such as no profanity, no graphic sex, no zombies, or explicit redemptive themes, are unique to the genre. They do not, however, necessarily frame a biblical worldview. CBA guidelines are far more evidence of a specific theology than they are necessarily representative of the larger biblical worldview. 

-"Praying for Romance": I enjoyed this article by about romance-writing from a Roman Catholic, Filipino, indie point-of-view. 


-Finally, this video is just a ton of fun (and if you pay attention, the task assignment is really clever):

I hope you have a lovely weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

One extra way to pray on Sundays

though the storms beat against us...

Anne Kennedy recently wrote a great post on how difficult it is to get to church on a Sunday, and how maybe - just maybe - that difficulty isn't all in our imaginations.

As she points out, the Devil does not want us to go to church.

And all this reminds me of a habit I've fallen into lately: praying for my fellow parishioners on Sunday.

Our church-going habits are a little different than yours might be, simply because our church meets in the evening. We're a small Anglican church plant and we rent from a larger church, so we don't get access to the sanctuary till 4 p.m., at which point a small army of us arrive and scurry around until everything's set up for that evening's Eucharist.

Sunday doesn't feel as long as it should when church cuts your lazy afternoon to a close so soon after lunch, when it's suddenly time to make sure everyone's showered and dressed properly and NO YOU MAY NOT WEAR THOSE DIRTY CROCS TO CHURCH WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR NICE SHOES DON'T FIT ANYMORE WHY DID YOU WAIT TILL NOW TO TELL ME THIS???

Anyway: it's a scramble, most Sundays.


And so, slowly--so slowly I feel like a complete idiot for not thinking of it sooner--I've started praying for my fellow parishioners, and for any guests and visitors the Lord wants to bring our way: to pray that they're able to come to church that evening, that no evil or inconvenience or temptation will stop them, that everyone will come whom the Lord wants there, and that we will all have hearts and minds open to hear, soak in, and obey the Word we will encounter there, in that hastily prepared sanctuary.


It's the kind of prayer that grows to fill extra crevices of time, and that changes the way I look at the people around me. Every person here had to fight to be here, and the Lord's arm was the arm strengthening theirs for the fight. Every person here is loved by God. Every person here is more than they appear to be. Every person here is loved by the One who loved me. 


The prayer dips and grows and changes and curves. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I remember not before the service, but midway through, and I want to kick myself.

But if prayer is the work, as C. S. Lewis said, then it is the Lord's work, and I can trust Him not just to give me my assignments, but to give me also the grace not to turn away from the call, grace to work at the right time, grace to forgive me when I fail or when I refuse.

And I need it. It's hard to get to church; and it's hard to actually pray.


But I am learning, more and more, that the two are intertwined at the very heart. (And perhaps--maybe more than "perhaps"-- that I myself am there in that sanctuary because of the many, many people who have entreated the Lord for me.)

May God bring us all, week after week, again to His house, to worship Him in the company of our brothers and sisters.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Yarnalong: "Made for More" and "Outline"

Today I'm linking up with Ginny, over at Small Things, who says, "Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading . . . I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading?"

The book:

Dorothy Sayers' essay/book "Are Women Human?" has long been one of my favorites. And Hannah Anderson's "Made for More" feels like an expansion on much of what I love about Sayers' classic.

At least, it does so far!  I'll doubtless write a review when I finish it, and we can talk more about it then. :)

The knitting:

I'm knitting "Outline" by Beata Jezek (free pattern on Ravelry), using some Pagewood Farm Sock Bites and Valley Yarns Franklin (in "natural").

I started this on our family vacation to Oregon, and I'm enjoying the stripe-y goodness of this project. It's very much a potato-chip project: it's hard to knit for just one stripe.


What are you knitting these days? What are you reading?

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)