Being kind to your own family members

We're so good in public. So polite, so understanding, so kind.

But what about at home?

One of the best things my parents modeled for me was being kind to your own family members. These are the people who matter most to you in the whole world. Why would you not be the most courteous to them?


I was reminded of this idea as I read Titus.

Grace and peace to you, wrote St. Paul.

Grace and peace.

This is what we owe to those we live with. The ones we know best, the ones who see us at our worst.

Grace and peace.

Only through the Lord Jesus Christ, who supplies our lack.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

The Love Behind Valentine's Day & a Giveaway!

Today I have the pleasure to be over at Jill Kemerer's blog, writing about St. Valentine and true love:

Even though there are many stories about Valentine (and even many stories about many different Valentines!), the oldest and most reliable account is clear about the important details: there once was a man named Valentine, and he loved the Lord Jesus, and he died for that love. 

It’s a strange story to focus on in the midst of all the chocolates and roses and hearts that decorate our stores and our schools and our news sources during February. 

Or is it?

Head on over to Jill's place to read the rest!

And while you're there, be sure to enter the giveaway at the bottom of the post - it includes books, chocolate, and a Starbucks gift card!


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

What owning pets can teach us about agape love

My dog is an idiot.

And my cat is mean.

And I love them both to pieces.

My dog, Callie, really wants us to love her. ALWAYS. Which means ALL THE TIME. Which means SCRATCH ME PLEASE SCRATCH ME I LOVE YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THE END.

And my cat, Jack, would really like us to feed him, for which he will deign to bite us delicately, rather than biting us with intent to maim. (He's so kind and condescending. Sort of like Lady Catherine de Burgh.)

But they're both lovely animals, actually. In their own ways, they're desperate for attention and care, and they give back the affection their natures allow them, and they make our lives better with their presence and their sheer, stupid energy.

And it made me think: I can kind of get agape love a little better since I'm the owner of goofy Callie and supercilious Jack.

Pets vs. Humans
Sometimes it's easier to love imperfections like a bitey cat than to love imperfections like a gossipy tongue. It's easier to love my stupid dog than it is to love . . . well . . . stupid humans.

Animals are simple. They have their own personalities, sure, but the eat-prey-love drives are pretty surface and easy to understand in all of them.

Humans are anything but simple. Even at ninety years old, can you hope to really know yourself? Really?

But, see, I love my pets. I don't expect them to be something other than they are (though I sometimes hope).  And I feed my cat on the days he scratches up the carpet the same as on the days that he purrs happily while I pet him (this is a rare occasion with our persnickety formerly-feral feline).


And I guess that's how I should love people. Because we're all sometimes cranky or stupid. And we hope the people who are meant to love us love us still.

God helping us. Amen.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: "The Exact Place" by Margie L. Haack

If you've ever heard the late Rich Mullins' excellent song "First Family", you'll have an idea of the tone of Margie' Haack's memoir, "The Exact Place". Her clear-eyed prose is kin to Mullins' simple and profound lyricism.

Haack grew up on the swampy, lakeside land just on the American side of Minnesota's northern border, oldest in a large farming family.

To be honest, I usually avoid books about country life, because I find they tend to be either much too depressing or, the exact opposite, much too sickly-sweet.

But to my delight, Haack's book falls into neither trap. Walking with a firm step that tilts neither towards despair nor nostalgia, Haack's book tells the story of her childhood in one of the most fully-realized settings I've ever read.

I loved the descriptive botanical details of the unique environment around her home, and the funny stories about her escapades with her siblings, and the touching stories of her summers on the lake with her grandfather. All of these fascinating components buoyed me effortlessly along in my reading.

But the theme that Haack circles around to again and again is the feeling that dogged her throughout her childhood: the feeling that she had to work to earn both God's love, and the love of her stepfather.

She circles around to it over and over - she never stays on it very long, but every time she touches on the theme, she goes a bit deeper. It's like hearing a musical phrase repeated and elaborated on here and there in a fugue, until you realize that every single note - no matter how seemingly unrelated - is there to support this one statement.

And then, in the penultimate chapter, the phrase is answered and resolved. I've rarely read anything more satisfying, or anything that rang truer.

You know how we Christians love to tell stories about answered prayers and the extraordinary moments when we're absolutely sure God acted or spoke? And the stories are wonderful, but out of context they seem odd or unlikely or just . . . just like something other than the wonders that they are? I think what I loved best about this book is that Haack gave the context to God's answer of her one, most personal, most compelling question. If she'd told less of her story, I wouldn't have fully understood the wonder of the moment when God finally met her. But by the end of the book, I was so immersed in the world of her childhood, that when God finally met her and assured her of his love, I understood why what he said to her meant so much.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

(Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book for free from the publisher, Kalos Press, which is an imprint of Doulos Resources, to whom I am under contract. I was not paid for my review, and all opinions expressed here are my own.)

Log Cabin Scrapghan

I know I'm posting lots of blogs about crafts and links and not much else, but that's because it's the end of the school year, and I'm giving myself a bit of a break from all things writing-related, so that I can concentrate on finishing the year well.

Of course, I'm still jotting down lots of blogging ideas, so I have a dozen or so half-started blogs in process. At some point those will become full-fledged posts, and this blog will expand again to include more than just, "ooh, interesting!" and "ooh, pretty!" :D

In the meantime, I think crocheting is keeping me sane. It's so rhythmic and soothing. And the results are so satisfying:

I wasn't sure who this blanket was meant for when I started it. It was just an effort to use up odd bits and bobs of leftover yarn.

But as I finished it up this past week, my little Anna kept coming over and petting it, and talking about how pretty the colors were. So I think it's found its owner.

Working on this scrapghan has been very satisfying. You know how nice it is to use up the last can of something you bought ages ago that's sat in your pantry for forever? Or to finally drag out and plant the seeds that have been sitting in the cupboard since last fall? It's that kind of feeling. "Look! I took something that could have been tossed and instead found a use for it! I imposed order! I made room for beauty!" Honestly there's something right and proper about that. Something satisfying. It's not the same as internal order, and not as good, but I think sometimes that imposing external order - ordering the tangible - gives us the picture we need - the necessary example - for imposing order on our hearts. It's like this, whisper our crafts. What God wants to do in your heart is something like this. Let Him be to you as you are to this craft. Let Him have free reign to make the beautiful thing He can already see in the raw materials. Give over and watch. Give over and be made new.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

writing playlist

The most important thing about writing a book is, of course, to write the book. That is: to write. That is: butt-in-chair-fingers-on-keys.*

But it doesn't hurt to have a few tricks up your sleeve to convince you to get said butt and said fingers doing their thing when you're sure it'd be easier to climb Kilamanjero than to get your heroine to the end of her scene. And one of the tricks I've come up with is making myself a playlist on iTunes for each book.

I put in songs that put me in the same mood I hope the book evokes in my readers. So I have a very different soundtrack for, say, my historical romance and my sci-fi adventure. 

I think it works because art feeds on art, and all of it is a long, long conversation. Listening to music prior to composing story is like eavesdropping for a second or two before you "hem, hem!" in your throat to let your friends know you've arrived at the party. It reminds you about what's going on with this circle of people and puts you in the mindset to discuss their fascinations with them.

So here's the current playlist for my historical romance (which has a strong theological theme running through it - hence the hymns):

-Arise My Love - Michael Card

-Ave Maria - Josh Groban

-Dela - Johnny Clegg and Savuka

-Do You Dream of Me - Michael W. Smith

-Hope to Carry On - Caedmon's Call

-How Firm a Foundation - Fernando Ortega

-I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers

-In Christ Alone - The Newsboys

-La Pared - Shakira

-Over the Hills and Far Away - John Tams/Dominic Muldowney

-Rogue's March - John Tams/Dominic Muldowney

-Springtime Indiana - Sandra McCracken

-That Where I Am, There You May Also Be - Rich Mullins

-There Is Power in the Blood - Fernando Ortega

-Thy Mercy - Caedmon's Call

-Walk in the Dark - Wayne Watson

-When She's Near - Fiction Family

Of course, not every song works for every scene! "La Pared" is great for the scene when my heroine is afraid the hero has been killed by French soldiers and is facing a life alone without him.  "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" for when we switch to the hero's point-of-view and he's fighting his way back to her. You don't want to confuse the mood of those two scenes. :)

But all in all, I'm really happy with the playlist. And tweaking it helps me tweak what I'm going for in the story. And listening the songs helps me remember what I'm aiming for as I write. 

I use different playlists for stuff like housecleaning and exercising too. Anyone else view iTunes** not just as a toy, but as a tool? And what do you use it for?

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

*I finished another chapter today: joy for me! but sadness for my heroine. Poor girl. I swear I will give her a happy ending, but I don't think she'd believe me just now.

**Or other mp3-playing device. My husband would faint if he thought I thought iTunes was the only thing out there.

Links! many, many mostly-unrelated things

I recommend this post by Fred Sanders on Cyrus the Great, which, in addition to explaining why that ancient king is important and providing one more good apology for classical education, includes many interesting quotations from Dorothy Sayers. ("Sayers" = must-read, yes?)
If you, like me, have a secondhand bread machine sans manual, you might find this post from the Hillbilly Housewife as helpful as I did. She goes through - in great and welcome detail - exactly how to use and figure out the quirks of your new-to-you appliance.
If you know who Fitzwilliam Darcy and Mark Darcy are, and if you have seen the Harry Potter films, you just might find this imagined conversation as funny as I did (it had me laughing out loud). (Also, I want to see the movie they're promoting. The trailer looks great.)
Speaking of Harry Potter, I'm pretty sure I need a "Make Love, Not Horcruxes" t-shirt.
I wrote earlier about using coconut oil as a moisturizer. If you want to read more about something similar, check out Kelly's post about using jojoba oil. She adds a "steaming" step to her routine, which sounds interesting.
Here's a neat blog post passed onto me by my sister-in-law called "Liturgy of the Home", comparing the rhythm of the author's home to the liturgy of the church, and looking at a few of the connections between them.
I really like this hairstyle tutorial (I'm wearing my hair this way right now, in fact!). It's quick and easy, but it looks very elegant.
This post, by a mother who has recently lost her son, is amazing and terrible and sad and all about the love of God. I don't have better words to describe it, but go read it. And pray for her and her husband, please.
Emily has a post about making your own bouillon which is intriguing.

I hope this week's links didn't give you too much whiplash! Not many of them are very related, but hopefully they provide you some good reading.
Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

true love and Truer Love

I have a few other blogs percolating, but here's a quick one for right now.
Someday, I want to get a nice print of this, and an equally-sized print of this, and hang them above my writing space. It's to remind me of what love looks like.
Here's the story: once upon a time, back in those halcyon pre-marriage days, when I was blissfully twirling around in the delicious winds of possibility, having yet to discover the more satisfying delight of actuality, I was in my college library, flipping through an electronic file of Bouguereau paintings.
And I saw this one. I admit, I stared at it for minutes on end. It was exactly everything I was dreaming of. (Remember, I was about 19.) I don't know if I was more enchanted by the enthralled feminine form (what I wanted to be!) or the smooth, perfect masculine body that held her (what I wanted to have!).  But that picture is pure, romantic bliss. It's aesthetic perfection and utterly captures the abandon that I was so carefully keeping myself from (and so hoping to someday lawfully experience).  I admit, upon seeing that picture, I was spellbound.  Especially by the perfection of Cupid's body, as Bourguereau painted it. I thought, that's what love looks like.
Really.  Those were the words going through my head. (Remember: young!)
But, eventually, I felt self-conscious staring at the picture for so long, and I flipped to the next one. And I saw this.
And, immediately, I knew I was wrong.  Oh, I thought. That's what love looks like.
I've never forgotten. And now especially, as I pursue a career writing romance, I don't want to forget what I've learned. So I want both paintings, hung up next to each other, like a diptych, to remind me of the lesson I learned.
There's love. And then there's Love. And the one only looks all-consuming when you look at it in isolation. Once you put them next to each other, there's no question which is greater. I don't want to forget.
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell
p.s. I'd add that you also realize that the lesser love has to imitate the greater, or it won't survive.
p.p.s. Finally, and someday I might have to get this to hang over my diptych, I need to remember that love looks like this.  And like this.

An Oppressive Week and God's Love

Last week, my family and I went camping in the Sierras (grand and breath-takingly beautiful), and I hope to write about it soon, but before I did, I wanted to blog about something that happened just before we left.

What Happened First
The week before vacation, I felt like I had a hangover from General Convention. We’d left church after arguing with one of the deacons about whether GenCon mattered or not – he seemed to think nothing of the fact that they’d declined to pass a resolution stating that Christ was the only way to the Father. We, of course, saw this as denying the heart of Christianity itself. (To be fair to the deacon, I think he meant that it didn’t matter politically, not theologically. I’d argue about how entwined those two are. Still, not how you want to leave mass.)

Anyway, the week got harder as it progressed. By Thursday, I felt like I was in the middle of a storm. I hadn’t had a day that bad in ages – I felt like I did back in the days when I had a baby or two awake at all hours of the night and inconsolable during the day. I felt like I was getting beat up all day long – really. I remember standing in the kitchen feeling like I was trying to remain upright while someone was hitting me.

It did occur to me at one point “this feels like spiritual warfare.” And I managed several times to cry out to the Lord Jesus, asking for His help. And I believe He did help me: otherwise, I would not have bit my tongue as many times as I did. It would have been a lot worse without His help; I believe He kept a rein on my temper that day, when I was no longer able to. I think He spared my children a lot of yelling and granted them more kindness through me than was in my heart to give.

It was also a swimming-through-molasses day. Every time I looked at the clock, I was dumbfounded by how little it had moved.

Finally it ended. The next day was Friday, and Adam was home, in preparation for our vacation. That day was hard too – I kept wanting to snap at him as well as the children – but his presence was, as always, a grace, and things went a little better.

But that night, one of the babies, Anna, cried for hours after she had fallen asleep. We kept comforting her, telling her it was okay, but she kept waking us with her cries. Then, I myself woke up from a nightmare.

It was a demonic nightmare. It was easy to tell, because it was saturated with that particular feeling of hate and terror. That message of “we are going to kill you; be terrified”. Also it was easy to tell because as soon as I realized what it was, and spoke the name of Jesus in the dream, the demons revealed themselves, jumped at me and I woke up. They always end that way. No demon can withstand the power of Christ.

When I woke up, Anna was crying, and I realized that she might be being oppressed by the same things I was, so I prayed properly, and prayed for her, and told them to leave in Jesus’ name. She slept soundly the rest of the night, and so did I. (I prayed for the rest of the children too.)

What Happened Next
Now, here is where it gets interesting.

The first interesting thing is the dream itself. In it, I found myself in the company of other people who had left the Episcopal Church. Adam and I were living with them, and we were surrounded by the enemy. Once I woke up, I realized that this dream confirmed what my horrible week was about: it was spiritual warfare, and it was about what’s going on at church.

It sounds strange, but having that dream ended up being a relief! Even as I fell asleep afterwards, I was laughing in my prayers, laughing at the cleverness and the frugality of our Lord: He let me be oppressed for a time, but He made even the oppression serve His purpose, by making His enemies reveal why they were oppressing me. (And, as always, by letting the presence of my enemies remind me to hold myself closer to Him.) Truly, He is the Lord of all – even the wind and the wave obey Him, even the storm, even the fallen angels. Jesus is Lord of Heaven and Earth.

The second interesting thing is that back in the middle of that oppressive week, I got a very encouraging email from my mom. I didn’t think much of it at the time – its compliments on my mothering seemed very far removed from my then very cranky self – but it was a bright spot in a hard week.

But on the weekend, I told her about my weird week, and about its culmination in my dream, and she laughed and said, “Oh, that’s why the Lord told me to pray for you! Do you remember that email I sent you? He told me when I sent it that you wouldn’t be able to hear what I was saying, but that I should send it anyway, and not say, ‘you might not see yourself this way.’ That I should just send it. You were on my heart so much, and I prayed for you a lot.”*

Do you see what this means? It means that in the midst of that dry, horrible time, when I felt like the worst of sinners, and was struggling just to take a breath without cursing, trying to be faithful when it felt like there was no point, that AT THAT MOMENT, the Lord Jesus was seeing me and loving me. He was prompting someone else to pray for me. He had not forgotten me.

I know this is true all the time, but it is so rarely I am shown it so concretely. This time though, He gave me the privilege of seeing His love for me. Looking back I can see that in the moment when I felt the worst, when I felt dry and beaten and discouraged, He saw me, He loved me, He helped me. And He was kind enough afterwards to show me that it was so.


I know it’s corny, but I’ve loved that poem Footprints since I was a small child. A beach house we stayed in once had it on the wall of the bathroom, and I read it over and over. And that week, I got to see that the idea I loved as a child was true: in our darkest of hours, when we feel most besieged, our Lord is not just with us, He carries us.

Call on His name, for He cares for us.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

*When I was talking to my mom, and asking her what she thought about my experience, she told me she was going to answer like we were back in the village she worked in as a missionary. In that village there was a lot of witchcraft, and things that are usually hidden here in the States were much more open there. (You can read more about the reality of spiritual attacks in Jen's post here. My own take on it is still there in the comments, and the discussion following that post of hers was really good, I think.) Anyway, Mom pointed out that spiritual oppression is exactly what you ought to expect in a church that just coporately denied Christ. Leaving individuals (and even individual parishes) aside for the moment, at GenCon, the coporate church declared that they didn't need Jesus to save them. To be frank, when you take yourself out of the protection of Christ, you're vulnerable to the forces of evil.
-And because of that, I add my second note: please, when you think of it, pray for my friends who are still in the Episcopal Church. The Christians who remain there remain on hostile ground. They are beseiged. It's a dark place to be and they need your prayers. Thank you.