Book Lust

On of the nice things about having a husband who works for an airline is that I can fly free. The down side is that I have to fly stand-b y and only get a seat if there is one available. It usually works out, but to ensure a greater degree of success, I almost always try for the first flight out of Tulsa to Dallas at 6:00 am.

Which means, like it did this past Wednesday, that if I have something scheduled in the evening, I have lots of down time. This makes me very happy. Because it allows me hours of guilt free time to read!

I read two books in two days--one great one called, "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls, and one good one titled, "The Guinea Pig Diaries" by A.J. Jacobs. I feel ahead of the game in regard to my self-imposed but extremely strict rule to read at least a book a week.

The first one was so good I finished it in a matter of hours. We were rain delayed getting out of Atlanta on the return trip, and I found myself in a quandary. I usually carry a smorgasbord of books to choose from so that, depending on my mood, I will have on hand just what I am looking for at the moment.

However, I just started carrying my laptop computer with me when I travel--primarily because I now have a laptop computer to take with me when I travel. But it takes up precious real estate in my carry on bag and significantly decreases my book space.

So on this last trip, I only took one book, foolishly thinking it would keep me fully occupied for both days of the trip. What I hadn't counted on was the "can't put it down" factor of Walls' brilliant memoir, and all the down time caused by weather delays on the return trip.

So there I was, stuck in the Atlanta airport, jacked up on Starbuck's coffee, with the whole day ahead of me and nothing to read. This was a much bigger inconvenience than delays. In fact, it was close to a catastrophe.

I wandered into the nearest airport book store and scoured the shelves, instantly dismissing anything with the word "novel" on the cover and severely limiting my choices. But that's okay. Americans have too many options on everything from toothpaste to salad dressing anyway. And I am purely a non-fiction aficionado.

I looked through several titles including Jeannette Walls' second book, "Half Broke Horses" and "Accidental Billionaires" about the two former friends who started Face Book which I'd read a favorable review about.

Having just finished the emotionally draining, "The Glass Castle," and knowing the brain expanding book, "Satan and the Problem of Evil" that was waiting for me at home, I decided I needed a little mental levity. So I finally decided on "The Guinea Pig Diaries" and headed to the check out counter when I decided to glance at the price tag. Instantly there was a problem. The book was $25.

I can't tell you the last time I spent $25 on a single book, but I can assure you it's been a while--ever since I discovered half.com, where it more than lives up to its name, so the price seemed a bit steep, to say the least.

I stood there for quite some time weighing it out in my mind. $25 for a book I could get for half that or less if I waited, or hours of boredom listening to talking heads on the television monitors or watching countless people talk too loud on their cell phones in public places. I'm surprised it took as long as it did because, naturally, the book won out.

I justified it to my inner self by convincing that inner self I would return it to Barnes and Noble in Tulsa and buy three books that were on sale with the store credit I'd receive.

This was merely a lie I told myself to justify my decision to buy the book. I know very well that once I read a book it becomes my life-long friend and I can't bear to part with it.

Whenever Jay and I get into an argument about all the stuff he collects and all the junk he can't seem to part with that needs to GO with a capital G (in my humble opinion) all he has to say is, "If you want to get rid of stuff so badly, let's just get rid of some of your books!" It shuts me up every time.

It's impossible to explain to a non-reader the power of a good book, so I don't even try.

I can't say I'd highly recommend A.J Jacob's book, though I thoroughly enjoyed his first book "The Know-It-All" about his quest to read through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. But I would highly recommend Walls' bittersweet memoir of triumphing over incomprehensible circumstances.

I'll even loan it to you so you won't have to buy it!

Taking Orders!

It's been awhile, eh? So much for regular posting. I did exactly what I knew I would do which is probably why I did it....
But in my own defense, I have been pretty busy. Got Jacob off to Nashville and Jessie off to the University of Hertfordshire just outside of London.
We flew to Dallas together last Friday and she left for her grand adventure while I flew to Asheville, NC to drive to Staunton, VA with my cousin Bob and his wife for my cousin Susie's 60th birthday bash.
It was incredible! The Christmas tree farm where she and her boyfriend Bill live is absolutely idyllic. It was like walking into a "Country Living" magazine. Everything was picture perfect with lots of family and friends gathering for barbecue and croquet.
Later we all sat under a giant tree with tiny white Christmas lights strung through it and listened to Robin and Linda Williams of "A Prairie Home Companion" fame entertain us with endless songs that make for swaying, foot tapping and smiles.
My cousin Bob joined in with his congo drum and someone else played their cello. Honestly, the only thing that would have made it more perfect would have been having my family there with me. But Jay had to work, Jacob couldn't get away and Jessie was flying over the ocean.
Aside from all that, I have been very busy with the edits to the book and trying to make sure the two audio recordings and seven coloring pages will be available on the web site by the time the book is released.
We (we being the folks in Mobile) are also in the process of completely revamping my web site to include the downloadable audios, as well as the coloring pages. They are putting in a shopping cart so folks can order the book directly from the site if they don't feel like making a trip to the book store, though they will be available there as well.
Which brings me to the purpose of this post. If any of you faithful readers would like to preorder a copy of "The Rhyme & Reason Series: Genesis" you can let me know and I will add you to the growing list.
The books will retail for $15.99 which, after tax, will come to a grand total of $17.35. Let me know how many you want and I will make sure to reserve a copy for you and get it to you as well. For those of you who are out of state, I'm not sure yet what the ship- ping will be, but I will let you know just as soon as I do, or you are welcome to order directly from the website. The address is the same one: www.catherinezoller.com.
The journey continues and every day is more exciting than the previous one! I thank each of you for your prayers and encouragement, your belief in me and in this project, and your confidence that God would indeed finish what He had begun!
I trust that you will share this series with your friends and they with theirs and together we will watch God accomplish His great purposes for His kingdom and glory!

The Circle of Life

Jacob left yesterday for Nashville, Tennessee, to live the next chapter in this adventure called life. He rented a U-Haul and loaded up all his earthly possessions, 85% of which were books. Another 12% was clothes and the last 3% was a blender, a George Foreman grill, a laundry basket and a few sundry items for establishing a household. He will certainly need more.
He will be there for two years working with RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) as, essentially, a missionary to a college campus. The fact that he is going to Belmont, which is a Christian university, should scream something about the state of Christ- ianity in America, but I will save that for another post.
There is a distinct melancholy that is drifting around my heart and threatening to settle there. But I won't let it. It has been so won- derful having him use our home as his "base" for the last 15 months since graduating from OU. From here he traveled the world and went on incredible adventures in between waiting tables at a local upscale restaurant.
Which is one of the things that makes this so hard. I got used to having him around again! And now I am going to have to get used to him being gone. And not just to Norman this time, but to Nashville, which the last time I checked my atlas, is not exactly next door. He won't be popping in for Sunday dinner!
I must say, I am incredibly thankful to the Lord for how short the season was where Jacob was caught up in severe legalism and wouldn't speak to me. It nearly broke my heart.
But I have always said God redeems everything, and He redeemed that very difficult six months by allowing him to live here for the past 15 while he got ready for the internship.
We have had so many wonderful conversations and arguments (in the truest sense of the word, not the angry sense) about the theology and doctrines of Scripture. It fed something in me for which I am deeply thirsty and I will miss that most of all.
We have encouraged one another as we were both needing God to provide financially for our needs. His need was for the internship and mine is to increase the book order. Seeing him receive his provision has bolstered me to stand in faith for mine.
So I am sad. But only for myself. Not for him. It is as it should be. This, after all, was the goal all along! To raise productive members of society and children who love and serve the Lord. By some mysterious miracle of God's grace, we have done that. I always said my job as a mother was to work myself out of a job. Mission accomplished.
After all, if he were 35 years old, still living at home, still waiting tables, and had three children by three different women, with me doing his laundry and paying for car repairs and who knows what else this would be an entirely different blog entry! (My dad used to say, "You can come back, but you can't breed and come back.")
So we are finished for the most part with the task God gave us. Still, make no mistake that that doesn't mean the satisfaction isn't tinged with some sadness.
It won't last long. He will call. We will e-mail. I'll write. He will come home to visit even though he will likely never live under our roof again. He will meet a woman and marry and add another to the puzzle pieces of our family, and even more pieces when he has children.
I'll be busy and distracted with the books.
So mostly I am thrilled for the call of God on his life, for his obedience to it and excitement in it. I am curious how this chapter is going to influence the next one and so on.
He will be home this Thanksgiving for his cousin's wedding and again for Christmas, I hope. We have Jay's flight benefits so I can see him when our schedules allow. I know all of that. It's not goodbye for the rest of this life like it was with Jordan.
But still. It's going to be different from now on. And the way life usually works is once I get used to that change, it will be different again!
Thankfully these melancholy spells don't last long. And always, God is good.

Random Thoughts on Murder and Forgivness

I get on these obsessive/compulsive jags where I read a certain author or genre until I have exhausted the supply. Rick Riley, the writer and columnist for Sports Illustrated and Mike Royko, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, were particular favorites. Then there was the summer I worked my way through every word Lewis Grizzard ever wrote, laughing 'till my sides split. I was actually angry when he smoked and drank himself to death and deprived the world of his incredible, insightful and hilarious talent. I have a penchant for columnists because they always exhibit such a delicious way with words.
At one point I was heavily into true crime. Ann Rule was my primary author of choice, though there were others. This particular jag was deeply distressful to my husband. He was sure I was trying to plan the perfect murder. His.
But the truth is, I have always been fascinated by human nature, the mind, psychology and what causes things to go wrong in the heart and psyche of some people. It is assumed the deviant, murderous, sociopathic or pathalogical minds are frightening abberations of "normal" and I have always viewed them with a terrified fascination. I have often wondered if they aren't really just the extreme consequences of living in a viloently fallen and sinful world, and if each of us, given the wrong circumstances or upbringing woudn't be capable and vulnerable of becoming what is the worst of mankind.
My interest within the interest centered on serial killers. I find them morbidly and repulsively fascinating. I love the three legs of a crime story. First, the psychological make-up and motives of the killer; secondly, the painstaking work of detectives whose passion for justice is almost always equal to their suspect's passion for murder; thirdly, the preparation of the trial lawers whose job it is to see these people brought to justice and prevent added atrocities.
In that place where the nonsense of your dreams gradually give way to the first conscious thoughts of the day I often have my most enlightening moments. I always wish I could stay there longer, but those little vacations last mere moments.
One morning not long ago I had a powerful awarness of the deep depravity and consequences of sin we can never completley divorce ourselves from. I understood on a deeper level than I ever have just how far we have fallen from God's original idea of who we should be and of how truly monsterous the crowning glory of His creation can become.
There are people who beat, rape and kill their own children. Children who murder their partent. A smorgasboard of exual deviants. On a slightly less extreme but just as spiritually lethal level there are people who lie, cheat, steal, have abortions, commit adultry, are addicted to drugs and alcohol, have anger issues or are bitter and unforgiving.
How tragically far we have fallen from the plans of the God who longs to walk with us in the garden in the cool of the day; who made the vastness of creation for our pleasure; whose vast imagination and creativity are beyond comprehension.
I started thinking about all the kooks out there and the hundreds of miles I hitchhiked as a teenager. It was the only way for me to get from one place to another and at one point, from McCloud, Oklahoma, to Monore, Louisanna, where I was picked up by a country preacher driving a brown Mavrick who shared the Gospel with me and changed my life forever.
I will never know how many times God protected me from harm. I could easily have been beaten, raped or murdered. It happens to people all the time and all the more so to runaway teenagers who the depraved prey on.
I began to worship God in that semi-conscious state and thank Him profusely for His care and proteciton when I was oblivious. It occured to me that not only did He spare my life as a teenager, He spares it every day. After all, how many people die in car accidents every day? Or lose their minds to Alzheimer's or their bodies to debilitating diseases?
I stand guilty before God of many grevious sins. I live in a fallen world. I have a sin nature. But mostly, I have consciously and deliberately made wrong choices and shot an arrow into the great heart of a righteous and holy God. Some of them have had physical, emotional or psychological consequences. All of them have had spiritual consequences.
But I serve a God whose love for me is greater than the vastness of space. The plans, promises and blessings He has planned for me outnumber the stars.
He longs to fill my mind with the same creativity He expressed at creation. And the same power that brought into being everything seen and unseen and that "holds all things together by the word of His power," sets me free.
I understood that in a way I never had before and I wept myself into wakefulness.
God's word is true. It cannot fail. "Whom the Son sets free is free indeed." God wants to-longs to- set me free from the sins that so easily beset me. He wants to take the life He has preserved and the gifts He has given me and use them to be a beakon of the light of glory in the darkness that envelopes the world.
I understood Paul's cry, "For me to live is Christ, to die is gain." I want my life to be lived for God's purposes and pleasure, one of which is to be my best friend. I want to anticipate heaven, not as a windowledge I hope to hang onto my by fingernails, but as my true home where I will one day be in the presence of the God who dwells there and where I will live with Him in glory unimaginable. Where everything He has trained me for here will have purpose there.
I understood in a more profound manner that when the light of Christ enters a person they are truly catapulted into another kingdom. A kingdom of life, love, hope, peace and perfect communion with the living God.
We see through a glass darkly, but one day we will see face-to-face.
My heart was overwhelmed with thanksgiving and gratitude to God for who He is, what He has done, what He longs to do and for His mercies, grace and forgiveness which are new every morning and extended to me as surely as Xerxes extended the scepter to Esther.
The same power that caused Jesus to burst forth from the grave and overcome death and Hades is at work in me and for me and through me and is setting me free! My only job is to respond to all He has already done for me. To tap into it and allow Him to completely rule and reign in every thought, action and detail of my life.
The best part is that I don't have to beg and plead and cry and "try." I just need to ask and God, who is able to do "above and beyond all I could ask or think" and He will show up and do what only He is capable of doing. Which is everything!

Westminster Confession of Faith

The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave, for a season, His own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and decietfulness of their own hearts, that they may be humbled; and, to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon Himself, and to make them more watchful

Lessons From Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician and a genius who made tremendous contributions in the area of mathematics.
He had a dramatic encounter with the Lord at the age of 31 which he expressed on a piece of parchment and sewed into his coat where it was found eight years later when he died as a young man. It read:
"Year of grace 1654, Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement. From about half past ten at night to just about half an hour after midnight, fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars. Certitude. Heartfelt joy. Peace. God of Jesus Christ, God of Jesus Christ, my God and your God. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy! Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, may I never be separated from him."
Later in one of his writings, he made this observation: "All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war and others avoiding it is the same desire in both. This is the motive of every action of every man. Even of those who hang themselves."
Another time he wrote: "If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in Him, while if He does exist, one will lose everything by not believing."
I never really liked math. I prefer words. But I think I would have liked Blaise Pascal.

Encouragement in Trials

I am in a prayer group with three other women. We try to get together at least once a week, though that doesn't always work out. When it doesn't we pray over the phone.
Over the years, as each of us have faced extremely difficult circumstances and we have prayed steadfastly and been each others Aaron and Hur, the Lord has knit our souls togther.
However, it is by the "washing of the water of the Word" that our spirits are nourished--even more so than through prayer--because this is what God Himself declared would nourish us.
Prayer is one of the most powerful forces in the universe and corporate prayer is that power multiplied. But it is the Word of God that changes, teaches and instructs us.
And so for anyone who is facing any kind of difficulty I would encourage you to not only lift your concerns before the Lord in prayer, but to cling to His Word and let it revive you.
Here are four of my favorite, life-giving Scriptures when facing the difficulties and trials of life:

"Consider it all joy, my brethern, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James 1:2-4

"Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things wich are not seen are eternal." 2 Corinthians 4: 16-18

"For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Abba! Father!' The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Chirst, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him." Romans 8: 15-17

"Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain wateing the earth." Hosea 6:1-3

As faithful servants of God Most High, the King and Creator of all the universe, when we encounter the difficulties and trials of life, let us soak in His Word, bask in His goodness, trust in His gentle- ness, believe in His character, and cling to His promises like a drowning man clinging to a life perserver in the tossing sea.