Wednesday, February 13, 2013

PRISONS OF THE MIND - CAN DEAFNESS SET THE CAPTIVE FREE: Devotional by Lorilyn Roberts



Recently a deaf person emailed me a letter that profoundly touched me. I don’t have permission to print it—hopefully, at some point, I will—but I wanted to share my response with her. I have a large contingent of deaf and hearing-impaired people who follow my blog. Her struggles are universal also, not just confined to those who are hearing disabled. I pray that my thoughts are Godly and thought-provoking. Salvation is a momentary decision but can take a lifetime of surrendering. Wherever you are in that decision, after reading this blog post, please share. This may be your moment….don’t waste it. 





By Lorilyn Roberts

Satan’s biggest deception is to masquerade as an angel of light. He wants to trick us into believing, if it were possible, that Jesus Christ is not the answer. The paradox is that God made us both strong and weak. We are strong in the sense that we fight for life at all costs, longing for what He gave us in the beginning – eternal life. We are weak in the sense that true happiness can’t be found except in our relationship with Him. If Satan can convince us we can be as God, our pride will make us reluctant to admit we need anyone or anything else. Humility lies at the beginning of the road to salvation.

There are many kinds of prisons and you’ve found one of them – the bottle. Prisons null our pain, but they also take away our freedom—most importantly, the freedom to choose. God also never takes away our freedom to fail but will never not give us what we need to succeed. The devil will give you what you think you want—God will give you Himself. Some prisoners will go to their grave having sold their soul to the devil—for this world and the next. For what? A lie. 

Ultimate freedom in Christ will never take away your freedom of choice. If you have made idols of your wants or lowered your expectations of what will make you happy, you will be imprisoned in your mind to false gods that will do nothing to save your soul. Sin feels good at the time, but a moment of bliss can bring a lifetime of regret. Ultimately, sin will destroy your ability to hear God’s voice. Don’t forget, eternity is forever. We will all spend eternity in heaven or in hell. The choice is ours.

You are strong in the sense you have found freedom by conquering your dependency on alcohol. God has blessed you with a spouse to love and cherish. As you have discovered, however, it’s not enough to be free FROM something. We need to find our freedom IN something.

There is not enough of anything in this world to bring us complete happiness. There is not enough power ball money, adoration of fans, cushy jobs, plastic surgery, or computer gadgets to fill our hearts. We aren’t made to have a relationship with idols. We are made for a relationship with Jesus Christ. Without Him, all other pursuits may bring partial or temporary happiness, but they are fleeting at best.

That brings me to the root of your quest for answers. Who is God? You were born deaf, and your whole life has been devoted to overcoming this limitation in order to survive in a world where nearly everyone else hears. You feel flawed, shortchanged, and your perceptions have influenced many of the choices you have made, both good and bad.

Has it ever occurred to you that God made you that way for a purpose? You might ask me, “Why would God do that?”

People ask that question in reference to their own “flaws” or “disappointments” or “lot in life” hundreds of time each day. I have asked myself that same question – I even ask it of others. Why did God take away my friend’s eyesight? Why did my beautiful adopted daughter from Nepal suffer for years with seizures? Why did God allow her to drink contaminated water from Nepal that gave her a brain infection? Why are there 150 million orphans around the world with little hope of being adopted?

My goal is not to make you feel guilty or to compare your disability with others. You have already done that plenty of times. We all have. That is part of Satan’s ploy, to guilt us into feeling like we are no good, or trick us into comparing ourselves with others with a legalistic yardstick—God does not measure our value in such a demonic, meaningless way.

We need to remember how much our sin grieves God. It took the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, to make it possible for us to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Can we know the evilness of sin and appreciate the price God paid in our fallen, depraved state? We can’t see it—except through suffering. We see sin when we see a young child die of cancer. We see sin on the battlefield during war, in a car accident that devastates a family, in a drug overdose that kills a young person, and in the sex trafficking trade in Nepal and India. We shake our fist at those things and proclaim the wickedness of man, aghast that any decent human being could rip out a young girl’s genitals and sell her as a slave. We cringe and become angry—angry at what we know is wrong and inhumane.

Our infirmities remind us of our need for Jesus Christ. We are driven to repent when we realize how weak we are in spirit to do even one good thing. Our blindness and deafness and diseases awaken us from an indifferent slumber and instill in us a longing for the day God will wipe away every tear. We don’t suffer in vain—we suffer for God’s glory. If we give our weaknesses to Him, something supernatural happens within us that is more powerful than anything man can invent or achieve. The Holy Spirit makes us bold and enables us to let go of past hurts and forgive. We are compelled to take our eyes off of ourselves and focus our hearts and minds on the one who created us. We remember once again we aren’t made for this world. We are made for eternity.

Your ability to rise above your deafness can only take you so far—it can’t overcome that emptiness within you that only the Holy Spirit can fill. In fact, Jesus Christ is so much bigger than your deafness, that if you truly allowed Him into your heart, your heart couldn’t contain Him. You would burst with joy—not that you are deaf, but that He’d given you so much joy. You would thank your deafness for allowing you the privilege of bringing others into the kingdom.

God has given each person many gifts. He has given you a gift of writing. If you want God to use you to help others, you need to claim one gift which you have not yet unwrapped. You need to claim His gift of salvation.

You have figured out how to live in this world marginally happy, but you know there is something missing. You are using the freedom God gave you to reject Him—His love for you and His salvation for you—forever. Forever is a very long time. If you die as a believer, you will be given a new body with perfect hearing. The greatest gift you will receive in heaven will be your appreciation for what you never had here. I believe my greatest gift will be the unconditional love of Jesus—the assurance that He will never leave me—I fear being abandoned.

What we don’t have here for God’s glory will be magnified in heaven, poured out, given with such generosity it will be as the stars that shine down on us or the sands that cover the seashore. If God lavished us with those perfect gifts here, would we really appreciate them? How many people have died lonely and broken—seemingly who had everything? How many truly happy people live in Hollywood? It is out of our need that God fills us, for then we know without Him, we are needy. The nothingness is what draws us to Him and enables us to be used by Him. We become His witness, His voice, His legs, His eyes, His ears, and His servants. We become part of the Great Commission.

Ask yourself: How can I use my deafness to draw people into a relationship with Jesus Christ? Use the one thing you don’t have to glorify Him—and you will find that your greatest suffering and need will become your greatest asset and joy.

Remember also, God loves you. He loves you more than you can imagine. Someday you will stand before heaven’s gates—will they open and allow you to enter? Don’t let anyone take away your desire to know the truth. As the Bible says, the truth will set you free. The search for answers will lead you down paths that only God can answer, that won’t be found in bottles of wine or quick fixes that lead to death.

I want to share a short excerpt from my book, Seventh Dimension – The Door, about a young girl who spent her whole life bullied and rejected by others. She was imprisoned by her worthless and destructive self-image. Read what the King did and ask yourself, is this not me?

Then the king turned towards me. I now knew the king completely—as my heavenly father, the father who loved me, the father who would never leave me or forsake me.

“Your sins are forgiven.” He held out his hands and the fresh scars on his wrists overwhelmed me. Tears flowed freely. He said, “I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

A birdcage gently floated down from the sky and landed in his outstretched hands. He took the cage and hung it on an olive tree. A small bird sat inside the cage. The king opened the door to the cage and the small creature walked from its perch and alighted on his finger. He lifted the bird out of the cage, kissed it, and whispered, “You are a daughter of the king.” 

I realized at that moment, he was saying those words to me. I felt his tender kiss on my forehead. I gazed into the sky as the bird flew into the heavens. Before I could say anything, the king was gone.

In Luke 4:18, Jesus said, "The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for He has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free.”

You’ve been a prisoner long enough. Jesus, the King wants to set you free. He has opened the door to your heart, just as He opened the door to the bird cage for Shale and set her free. Don’t delay. Invite Jesus into your heart, ask Him to forgive you of all your sins, receive the Holy Spirit, and begin the first day of the rest of your life. You have a story to tell that only you can share. Someone needs to hear it, not the least of which is me. I want to know what Jesus has done in your life. Please share it in the comments below.


*~*~*


Tuesday, February 12, 2013

BOOK REVIEW OF SEVENTH DIMENSION - THE DOOR: A Young Adult Fantasy: Amazon Reviewer/Author Melissa Main: “Good Literature Combats Crippling Bullying”





Jasmine McClain, a 10-year-old student, couldn’t bear the bullying from her fellow students at Chadbourne Elementary anymore. She hung herself in her bedroom. Unfortunately, her mom did not find her in time to save her. Bryan Oliver, a 16-year-old student at Taft Union High School, escaped his torment by using a different method. He brought a shotgun to school and wounded one of the bullies and targeted another before being taken down by a teacher.

The effects of bullying plague our society. Death, violence, and depression destroy the fabric of our society and bullying destroys the self-esteem of individuals. How can people, especially teenagers, learn about the dangers of bullying? How can we prevent bullying in our society? How do we help bullied teens so that they do not commit suicide or murder?

One way to change society and address the issue of bullying is through literature. Literature changes the way people see problems and helps them to become more sensitive to social issues. A famous example of a book changing society’s views on an issue is Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It changed attitudes towards slavery and fueled the abolitionist movement.

In today’s climate of bullying, our society needs books for teens and adults that help them become more sensitive toward this vital social issue. Seventh Dimension - The Door, by Lorilyn Roberts, is a book that takes readers into the mind and thoughts of a bullied teen. They see her torment and her anguish. They experience her loneliness, and they see how she struggles to cope with the taunts of her classmates.

Seventh Dimension - The Door: A Young Adult Fantasy is a coming-of-age story about a bright, but sensitive, fourteen-year-old girl named Shale who feels misunderstood and isolated from the other students at her school and in her neighborhood. Judd, a boy at her school, ruthlessly picks on her and attempts to get her in trouble with the school authorities. At home, she feels out of place because her mom has remarried and her dad does not have regular contact with her.

Feeling alone and confused, she wanders into the woods and finds a seventh dimension. This fascinating land parallels her life at home but takes place in the first century during the days of Jesus Christ, a key character in the story. This beautiful, yet violent land forces Shale to face her inner fears and choose a new direction for her life, including making choices about her relationship with a handsome young man.

Facing dramatic action and spiritual warfare, Shale completes her time in the seventh dimension and becomes a stronger woman. She learns how to face bullying and how to find inner peace during difficult times.

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  TO PURCHASE SEVENTH DIMENSION - THE DOOR, CLICK HERE





Tuesday, February 5, 2013

LORILYN ROBERTS BOOK REVIEW: “Mission Possible,” even on Valentine's Day, a Spiritual Covering, by Deborah L. McCarragher


Mission Possible Spiritual Covering (Paperback and Kindle)
by Deborah L. McCarragher


Valentine’s Day is a day for celebrating all kinds of love –and especially for husbands and wives. Mission Possible is a wonderful read for any Christian woman who loves her husband, especially for a wife who is determined to pray her husband into the kingdom.

Prayer makes all the difference in our relationship with God. I prayed my mother into the kingdom—at least I felt like it gave me the assurance of her salvation. It took many years, but today she is a walking example of steadfastness in prayer.

While I didn’t pray my ex-husband into the kingdom, I take comfort in the fact that I did pray anyway—and even hid a prayer letter in a book that my ex took with him following our divorce. The outcome is always in God’s hands. As long as my ex-husband is living, there is hope he will be saved. May all married women find comfort in this delightful Valentine’s read that will help them to keep on keeping on—don’t give up.  Eternity is forever.

  


Review by Lorilyn Roberts
The Value of the Praying Wife for the Unsaved Husband


Mission Possible is a well-written book that should encourage and instruct any wife who yearns for a Godly husband--who loves him enough to pray for his eternal salvation even when she doesn't see any fruit in the present. Ms. McCarragher's insights into how to be a Godly wife and "helpmeet" are supported with Scriptural references that give profound wisdom to help anyone struggling in this area.

Even though I am not married, I found much Godly wisdom as a single woman to apply in my walk with God, knowing these kernels of truth have application not just in marriage but in all relationships--including children and friends. We never know how God is working to bring about a miracle in all the lives we touch. This book is a must-read for anyone who is committed to prayer, steadfastness, and faith for a Godly marriage and home.

Valentine’s Day is all about showing love to your spouse, parents, children, and those you care about the most.  As a Christian woman, there is only one way to love your husband… with the love of Christ.  This Valentine’s Day give your Heavenly Father a gift that will keep on giving – namely – the decision to love your husband as God intended while you are living in a spiritually mismatched marriage.

********


Introduction to Mission Possible

Women, are you in an unequally-yoked marriage?  Are you tired of attending church alone? Do you yearn for a relationship with your husband that’s spiritually satisfying?  You can influence your home for Christ even within a spiritually mismatched marriage.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to stand in the gap for your mate’s soul. This small book is a powerful tool for any woman who is married to a man who does not share her passion for Jesus. It will encourage and challenge the reader to embrace God’s promises for their spouse and future together.

Mission Possible was awarded the Readers Favorite 2010 Gold Seal Best Christian Non-Fiction book.

In Mission Possible you will:

-- Discover how to believe with radical faith for your spouse’s salvation.
-- Learn the secret to “staying the course” while you wait for your promise.
-- Find out why many women don’t like to share their “secret sorrow”.
-- Overcome your own fears and doubts about your husband’s future with God.
-- Join other women in the knowledge that God has a perfect plan of unity for you and your spouse.

“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy…For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband whether you will save your wife?”   (I Corinthians 7:14,16  NKJ)



Deborah McCarragher began her journey of creative writing soon after coming to know Jesus as her personal Savior in 1989. She enjoys using her spiritual gifts of encouragement and teaching.  Deborah served on the board of a local intercessory prayer ministry, and has been active in her home church and various women’s bible studies for years.  Her primary goal is to share her personal testimony with others while bringing hope and practical help through her book.

Deborah has been a small business owner for over 25 years and formed Alabaster Box Publishing several years ago as a vehicle for producing and promoting her Christian writing projects.  She is a devotional contributor to the E-zines "Ruby for Women” and “Living Better at 50+” as well as for the print magazine "An Encouraging Word".  She and her husband have one married son serving in the U.S. military. They reside in northeast Florida.



Links to Purchase:

Deborah’s Website


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Saturday, February 2, 2013

A CARD OF GRATITUDE - A HEART OF THANKFULNESS: Devotional by Lorilyn Roberts


Can we give thanks in all things? There is a time I would have said no. I used to ask with the wrong attitude, why didn’t God take care of this? Why did He allow that to happen? I felt smug in my self-righteousness. After all, I was a victim in many situations—receiving injustice when I didn’t deserve it. If God really loved me, He would fix this or solve that, unless He abandoned me, too. A thankless heart grieves the Holy Spirit, hurting not only our relationship with God but also others. We feel it in our emotions—bitterness, anger, and depression.

Gratitude is a strange gift. The more we are thankful, the more we remember things for which we are thankful. One of my most memorable moments of gratitude came when I was in the eighth grade. I lost my notes for a major term paper. I didn’t know the cards were missing until my final class and the bell rang to be dismissed. I panicked. I ran down the hall into one class after another, checking my desk for the missing notes. Each time when they weren’t there, more tears filled my eyes. The dozens of hours of work I had put into those cards flashed before me and redoing all that work sickened me. Inside the last desk I checked, I found my stack of notecards.

I wrapped my arms around them and smiled, thanking God for helping me to find them. Tears flowed—not tears of sadness but tears of joy. I was a straight “A” student and the thought of those cards being lost forever was enough to send me into a tailspin of deep depression.

Recently I got to thinking about those cards. Much has happened since that day almost forty years ago. Now that I am a little older and a little grayer, I have accumulated many notes—for different kinds of term papers. We are living notes for God’s Book of Remembrance. Some of those notes I didn’t want to write and would gladly have thrown them away. They were about topics I never would have chosen, but God had different plans.

My notecards have included lessons about disappointment, heartache, failure, worry, depression, fear, and insecurity. Why couldn’t God have given me easier topics—like how to live like a millionaire? I would have donated lots of money. I could handle that one. As the years have passed—and they go by faster the older I get—missing from some of those cards written long ago was one important word—gratitude. Did I really want to thank God for the husband who abandoned me and married his pregnant girlfriend? Did I really want to thank God for my barrenness? Did I really want to thank God for the twenty years I spent in a profession I hated?

God has taken me down many paths I didn’t like. During most of those years, I did not have a heart of gratitude. I needed to learn that before God could use me completely, I needed to surrender to Him completely. Anything we hold back in our lives and put before God is an idol. God can’t use us as He would like to if we don’t surrender all to Him in obedience. Otherwise, we will not be able to glorify Him fully but we will be too busy seeking our own selfish ambitions. We may not even realize it or do it intentionally.

Look at Hollywood, scan the self-help books, listen to the news, read the top stories on the internet—what blessings can the world give us with its self-centered, “I”-focused mentality? If I had continued to be like the world, to which I was drawn, I never could have glorified God, and you wouldn’t receive a blessing for God’s work in me.

I am thankful God didn’t give me all that I wanted when I was young. I would still be an insecure, fearful, performance-driven individual, seeking my self-worth from the world. How could God use me with that kind of mindset? The hard things God put in my life did great work once I surrendered to Him. He humbled me and showed me His omnipotent power and infinite wisdom.

I cringe when I think of what kind of a mother I would have been to my kids if God had given me children when I was married—a co-dependent, insecure wife seeking all her self-worth from her husband. Talk about dysfunctional in today’s psychological terms—I was clueless about what it meant to be a Christian wife or a Christian mother.

Today I thank God for the divorce that brought me to my knees. I honestly think I loved my husband more than I loved God. I just didn’t know it. I recommitted my life to Jesus Christ. God became my husband and my provider.

Growing up in a single family without a father was hard. Being fatherless opened the door for my stepfather to adopt me when I was ten. His adoption of me paved the way for a deeper understanding of what it means to be adopted by my heavenly Father.

My barrenness became a blessing—I adopted two beautiful daughters from Asia, and the only one who loves them more than I do is God Himself.


I could never see the value of my job as a court reporter. How would God ever use all of those words I wrote involving lawsuits that had no lasting or eternal value? Why didn’t God allow me to pursue my dreams of becoming an author? Did He not put those dreams in my heart? Only when I prayed to God to make me more thankful for the job I hated did God give me something more fulfilling. Those court-reporting skills gave me the foundation for a later career in broadcast captioning, allowing me to work from home while raising my two adopted daughters. Now that I have time to write, I can pursue the passion to write God gave me—but in His timing, not mine.

When I was young, I looked at the destination, not the process, but it is in the process we grow and become like God. If the process had no meaning, God could have snapped His fingers and made us perfect right away. Wouldn’t that have been much more efficient and saved a lot of time? But God didn’t want to do it that way.

Why? It’s in the process that we glorify God. What is more beautiful than to see a man or a woman who has overcome great adversity give praise to Jesus Christ? We’ve all seen it—and we stand amazed. How easy it is to forget God’s passion. He sacrificed His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, so why would God withhold anything good from us? There is a mystery in it, but at the center is God. The joy is in the journey itself and all the opportunities He gives us along the way to glorify Him.

If our attitude towards the hard things glorifies God, we will be fulfilled. As Paul says in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” In the end, we are most content when we’re filled with God because our true joy can only be found in Him—not in this world. Everything else not of God will fade away and soon be forgotten.

It is in the struggle and my inability to do anything without God that I see His power at work. I am like a helpless worm, but God comes alongside and lifts me up when I fall. More than once, He has sent friends to me when I needed encouragement. Scripture instructs me each day, and prayer draws me into sweet communion.

When I enter heaven’s gates, God will wipe away my tears. Until then, I will write, hoping to use those cards of suffering to point people to the One who is the Source of all Hope and the Giver of all Joy. The cross is my symbol of remembrance. If I had not given my “all” to God, I never would have seen redemption in the hard things. Perspective is everything. God never wastes anything.

As it says in  Philippians 4:8, “…Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”


Only through God’s grace could I find hope when I had no hope. Thankfully, God never gave up on me even though I tried to give up on myself. He changed my perspective, showed me His unconditional love, and helped me to be thankful for even those things I hated. God lessened my pain and brought Godly friends into my life. In Jesus I found freedom to love and forgive. With a grateful heart, I found God at work in all those things I once despised, and for that, I am thankful. 

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

CLOSED CAPTIONING: “Captioning for the Deaf - Creation Station Contest Winner for the Jan/Feb 2013 Christian Women’s Voice Magazine,” Broadcast Captioner Lorilyn Roberts







I’d Rather be Writing Books but Captioning is What I do for a Living

by Lorilyn Roberts

I fire up the computer, turn on the modem, punch the TV remote control, hit the on-button on my other computer, flip the button on my stenograph machine, open the file—wait, I remember this is on iCap. I don’t need the modem for this show. I turn off the modem.

I am captioning golf tonight, 11:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m., from Melbourne, Australia—the Talisker Masters. I’d better pull up the leaderboard on Google and check the spelling of those Asian names. I glance at Spark, the National Captioning Institute Messaging System – 37 captioners online captioning television shows all over the world. Only a handful will still be online when I finish my assigned show in the early morning.

I sit in my office chair in cotton pajamas alongside my bed, a candle burning on my dresser. A bag of Cheez-its and mug of coffee is close by—but not so close to my equipment that if I knocked it, it would be a disaster. I swallow a quick gulp in between strokes on my stenograph machine.

I have a long night ahead, but golf is easy to caption compared to hockey. I can see my captions on the Golf Channel without having to rely only on an audio feed (more commonly known as a telephone).



Such is the life of a closed captioner. I have been providing closed captioning for television for the last fifteen years. I work from my home—which has allowed me to stay at home and raise my two daughters—a good thing since I am a single mother by choice. I adopted my two daughters, 14 and 21, from Nepal and Vietnam. I also homeschooled them (my ninth grader is in a private school-home school program in high school now, which is nice).

I feel blessed to have the job I have, which pays well, but I hope to launch a new career as an author. I just finished my Master’s in Creative Writing and published my fourth book, Seventh Dimension – The Door, A Young Adult Christian Fantasy. Writing books is my passion, but closed captioning pays the bills. At fifty-seven, I continue to follow my dreams, knowing God will lead me and show me His perfect will, and for that, I am grateful.



To learn more about Lorilyn Roberts, visit http://lorilynroberts.com.

Be sure to check out my newest book, Seventh Dimension – The Door, a YA Christian Fantasy.








REMEMBER: There is no pit so deep, no hurt so painful, no secret so horrid that God can’t cover it through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. Open up your heart to the infinite possibilities of living a life of love, no longer warped by bullying or scarred by deceitful words. Where there is life, there is hope—and healing! 




Wednesday, January 16, 2013

BOOK REVIEW: SEVENTH DIMENSION – THE DOOR: A YOUNG ADULT FANTASY: A Critical Analysis Based on a Critical Review






The Reviewer is Stefan Vucak (3 stars). Here is her unedited review:

“With her mother divorced, foster father away and after a series of troubled experiences at school, Shale Snyder encounters a strange white dog who leads her through a portal into another dimension. In a strange kaleidoscopic world, she meets a talking donkey and a rabbit. Descending into a village, Shale is told that her real father is a powerful Roman official and she is transported 2000 years into the past. Always busy, her father doesn’t have much time for her, working to suppress an uprising in Jerusalem. Her foster mother is jealous of her, banishing a boy Shale was friends with, but ends up getting her comeuppance. Shale joins with the king, discovers God and returns to her own reality.

I liked the start to "Seventh Dimension". Lorilyn Roberts portrays Shale as a real person with real problems, and I was waiting to see how her life would develop. When she slips into another dimension and encounters talking animals with which she can converse, the story loses much of its appeal as the discourse with them often doesn’t have much relevance to anything. Shale is searching for something and I thought it was family and fatherly love. When she observes the ‘king’ being tempted by the devil with its allegorical reference to Christ’s life, the book turns into a twisted bible story and everything becomes predictable. Lorilyn Roberts has allowed her imagination to soar with the "Seventh Dimension", invoking haunting images of magic and childish delight. Her writing is evocative and the dialogue crisp, making it a pleasure to read. As a religious fairytale with magic thrown in, the book will have a big audience, especially young readers.”

Here are my comments from Ms. Vucak’s review which I hope readers will find evocative. I welcome the opportunity to expound on some of the issues this reviewer raises. Be aware, that if you have not read Seventh Dimension – The Door, you might find this a spoiler.


Thank you for reviewing my book Seventh Dimension - The Door.

First, there are some important factual errors that are important in understanding the theme of Seventh Dimension – The Door.

Shale’s foster father was not away. In fact, there was no foster father at all. Shale was “abandoned” by her birth father when she was young. He left Shale’s mother penniless. Shale and her mother were forced to live with strangers for years and the young girl Shale lived with when the story begins was a bully and hated her.

Two years later, after the “accident,” Shale's mother remarried. The man she married became her stepfather, though he had not adopted her.

This is important, and crucial to the story because the theme of the book is: You are a daughter of the king.

I bring this up also because Shale's family was not “fixable” until something significant happened - mainly until Shale changed. This happened when she went back in time into the Seventh Dimension where she was forced to confront her own demons, her dysfunctional family, the father who left her, the boy who molested her, her wicked stepmother, her brother who needed healing, as well as meeting a young man from her future, and a powerful king.

You missed another very important point. Here is a quote from your review: “When she slips into another dimension and encounters talking animals with which she can converse, the story loses much of its appeal as the discourse with them often doesn’t have much relevance to anything.”

The animals are important. First, they represent parts of Shale’s personality – fearful, insecure, bossy, and yet pristine with a kind heart. Can you identify which animals these were? Worldly Crow was the betrayer – how you could think the animals have no relevance is strange to me.

The animals move the plot forward: The dog, in the beginning, spelled backward is symbolic of God reaching down and drawing her into His world. When we have a spiritual encounter, we enter into another world. I called it the seventh dimension. The animals introduced her to the King – her eternal heavenly father. The animals accepted her unconditionally and had faith in her. Shale gained strength from them and grew in maturity as she cared for them. She learned to put their needs ahead of her own. In the beginning, Shale was really very selfish and self-absorbed, as are all young adults who have been abused. It’s a matter of self-preservation.

I could say more about this. There is a lot of symbolism – the bird in the garden was the first to tell her she was a daughter of the king – like a prophetic foreshadowing. In the end, the king set the bird free, allegorical of Shale being set free.

Shale learned obedience through suffering, through imprisonment in her private quarters. You will remember toward the end, she locked herself in the room willingly. Obedience is part of the Christian life.

You made this statement in your review: “Shale is searching for something and I thought it was family and fatherly love. When she observes the ‘king’ being tempted by the devil with its allegorical reference to Christ’s life, the book turns into a twisted bible story and everything becomes predictable.”

Sadly, many kids will never receive love from their families. They will receive judgment and conditional love. Conditional love comes in many forms.

To be honest, I would be hard-pressed to believe you could have known what would happen from the temptation in the wilderness until the end of the book. If you did know, you are a genius and you should be able to make some big bucks with that kind of intelligence. My utmost respect for you if that is true.

The biggest issue for Shale was she had to learn forgiveness to be able to receive the king’s unconditional love. When she returned home, she brought the rock into the house and took it up to her room, even though her mother didn’t understand. Shale at that point had enough self-worth to overcome her mother’s lack of understanding and begin anew. She was no longer bound by other people’s opinion of her. The word Ebenezer means “new beginnings.”

I get the impression, though I may be wrong, that you are not a Christian and do not understand the power of this story in Biblical terms. The message here for kids is one of hope – that you can rise above your circumstances and your difficult family situation and succeed in life, but you don’t have to do it all on your own. In fact, you can’t in human terms do it all on your own. The king of kings will help you. Shale entered into a search for answers and she found a Savior. She realized who her father was—a king who would never leave her or forsake her.

I hope my extensive comments here will help you to see this is more than just a story – it’s my life told in fable and allegory. I was Shale Snyder, and this is my testimony with lots of creative storytelling. And I will leave it to the reader to wonder which is true and which is fiction.





Tuesday, January 15, 2013

BOOK MARKETING: New Book Cover for Seventh Dimension - The Door: “Meet Great Book Cover Designer Lisa Vento”






Meet professional book cover designer Lisa Vento. 



I was having difficulty uploading my book cover for Seventh Dimension - the Door to Create Space. I had recently "met" Lisa on another book project she did for me and so I asked her if she could help me. 

Lisa had originally been recommended to me by Jerry Jenkins for How to Launch a Best-Selling Christian Book, and I was extremely pleased. My cover had recently been finished on Seventh Dimension - The Door by someone else, but I had some technical issues. The lettering was too close to the edge and Create Space kept rejecting my book. I had spent several hours ineptly trying to make it work and realized I couldn't, so to speak, put a round screw in a square hole. So I asked her if she could help me with it. 

Lisa took my book and performed magic on the cover. I know I am partial, but I believe it's the best cover I have ever seen!  

Making a good book cover is not easy. It takes skill and talent. Anyone who has some PhotoShop knowledge can make a simple cover cheaply, but it takes more than that to make a great one--and great artists in any creative field don't come cheap. I guarantee, however, that at least when it comes to book covers, you get what you pay for. 


What did Lisa do with my original photograph?  

She put clothes on Shale Snyder, my protagonist (I didn't realize when I bought the licensing agreement that she wasn't wearing clothes. Someone pointed this out to me and that it might be problematic for observant Christian buyers. It really is a good thing I don't do my own book covers).  

She made Shale's hair shorter. 

She added the waterfall in the background. The original photograph had a white blurry background. 

Lisa added the golden nuggets to the water (which is important to the story). 

She added detail to the bird and made it more visible. 

She added the sparkle. 

She added plants. 

She darkened the front of the photograph so your eye is drawn to Shale. 

She made the color deeper in tone, more soothing. 

She centered the cover so everything in the photograph is balanced. 

And, of course, she chose the font for the title and my name, as well as the layout. She even added the little stars inside the word "door." 

She sized the cover perfectly. I uploaded the book seamlessly to Create Space. 

She also added extra touch-up work around Shale's face so if I ever wanted to blow up the cover for a banner, the girl wouldn't be blurry. 

I know Lisa did even more than this, but hopefully, I have helped you to see how someone can make a beautiful book cover that will stand out above the rest. 

In this case, I had already picked out the photo I wanted to use, but normally, Lisa will search the web and send samples to you and make suggestions. This is very helpful if you have no idea what you want or you haven't come up with any creative book cover ideas. 

With my other book, Lisa took several photos from a website and merged them into a composite cover. I can't imagine how complicated that might get.

Lisa also designed the back cover of Seventh Dimension - The Door using a photo I found on the web (you must buy the license fee for the photograph or reimburse her for it), added some additional layers, and then edited my picture to make me look better (which was really nice). 




I enjoyed working with Lisa on my book and now have a real appreciation for what's involved in making a great book cover. Lisa sent me sample covers for my second and third books in the Seventh Dimension Series. I immediately wanted to sit at my computer and start writing the second book

God works in amazing ways, connecting us with people we need and otherwise probably would never meet. I always appreciate it when people take the time to help me make my books better.

If you would like to visit Lisa Vento’s website and see more of her book covers, go to LisaVento.com. You will find lots of other products she sells for authors like bookmarks and banners 

I tell members of the John 3:16 Marketing Network: There are two things you shouldn't skimp on: Hire a professional editor and a good book cover designer. 

Buyers are attracted to beautiful covers, and once they grab your book and open it, you want to make an impression in those precious few seconds you have. Whether you need a book cover today or in the future, bookmark Lisa's page for future reference. 


Friday, January 4, 2013

GUEST POST BY PAM HILLMAN: For the Love of a Child: An Ode to Will



For the Love of a Child: An Ode to Will
By Pam Hillman




Will Woods was our milk man when I was a little bitty squirt. And by milk man, I don’t mean he picked up those small 5 gallon milk cans. He drove a milk tanker and transported a gazillion gallons of milk every day.

We lived down a long dead-end country road, and I could hear a car coming from a mile away. So it was no wonder that I could hear Will comin’ long, long before he got there.

Will gave me my first tricycle. Mama said Will didn’t have kids at that time, so I don’t know where he got the tricycle, but I distinctly remember that he brought it to me in the cab of his tractor-trailer for my birthday. I loved Will with all the passion of a pre-schooler who didn’t see anybody other than my parents and older brothers all week. Since my parents both worked on the farm, I didn’t go to pre-school or daycare: the dairy was my daycare; my brother, the dogs, cats, and newborn calves my playmates.

Will picked up our milk every other day, but I was too young to process how often “tomorrow” really meant, so I’m sure I drove Mama crazy asking when Will would be there. But I was old enough to know that if Mama and Daddy were done with the milking, it wouldn’t be long before Will showed up.

I have a good imagination (I’m a writer, after all), and this is kind of hazy, but I seem to recall sitting on the cement steps at the barn many a morning on those off days, and then trudging to the house when I realized Will wasn’t going to show up that day.

One Sunday morning, Mama was getting us all ready for church, rushing around as only a farm mother can do after getting up at five am to milk a herd of Holstein cows, and next thing she knew, I came flying out of the back room like a wild cat. She made a grab for me, but I tore out of the house toward the barn, yelling “Will’s comin’! Will’s comin’!”

She hadn’t heard a thing. But I had.

I’d heard that big motor and those big wheels bringing my friend to me. And it didn’t matter that on some days all he brought was a tootsie roll or a piece of gum. He’d remembered me, and I was happy.

While I had a loving, Christian family with roots deep in the red clay hills of Mississippi, my friendship with Will reminds me of Jimmy Denton’s relationship with Slade and Buck Donovan in Claiming Mariah.

Jimmy’s home situation isn’t the best: His pa is a drunkard, and they live in a shack that is falling down around their ears. Slade and Buck Donovan see a bit of themselves in the little boy, and they befriend Jim. Eventually, the caring and acceptance of the Donovans touch the entire Denton family, allowing healing and family to mend. Jimmy’s story is not the main thread in Claiming Mariah, but it is an important part. Jimmy weaves himself into Slade and Mariah’s story and finds a home there. Right where he belongs.

Back to my friend, Will Woods. In my young mind, I assumed Will lived far, far away. As I wrote this blog post, I couldn’t remember his last name, so I called my mother. Mama told me she’d recently seen Will at a Wildlife Jamboree in our community. Over forty years after he ran the route as our milkman, some little nugget prompts me to write an article to honor the attention a man showed a little girl who lived on the backside of nowhere, only to find out he lives right here in my community, and not far, far away as I’d always thought.

That God. He’s amazing, isn’t he?

And so are the men and women who take time for a child.

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Pam Hillman was born and raised on a dairy farm in Mississippi and spent her teenage years perched on the seat of a tractor raking hay. In those days, her daddy couldn’t afford two cab tractors with air conditioning and a radio, so Pam drove the Allis Chalmers 110. Even when her daddy asked her if she wanted to bale hay, she told him she didn’t mind raking. Raking hay doesn’t take much thought so Pam spent her time working on her tan and making up stories in her head. Now, that’s the kind of life every girl should dream of! Claiming Mariah is her second novel.

Pam is thrilled to announce the release of her second novel,

Claiming Mariah



Pam Hillman’s Author page on Facebook and/or sign up for Pam’s newsletter.




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