Road Trip

I’m on the road again. This time I’m at the Heart of America Christian Writers’ Conference in Kansas City and I’m having a great time seeing old friends I haven’t seen since the conference last year. On the way down to Kansas City, I took an alternative route because I was picking up a friend in Topeka to bring to the conference.

The route I took was an old highway. I usually travel by interstate, which obviously is much easier to navigate, but I really enjoyed this trip. As I crossed the Nebraska-Kansas border, I started to see hints of clay and rock formations that are so prevalent in the Ozarks. It reminded me of the days when my grandparents took my sister I to Arkansas during the summer to visit extended family. Those are great memories.

I also drove by a lot of small lakes and fishing ponds. Something about being around water calms my nerves. This time was no exception. And during long stretches of my drive, I didn’t see a single car in either direction. I do some of my best thinking during times like these. I didn’t come to any life-changing decisions, but I felt like I was able to clear my head for a day—and that is a good thing.

What Are You Reading? Friday

I started reading a new book this week called State of Emergency by Pat Buchanan. Regardless of which side of the political aisle you find yourself on, little doubt exists that we have a huge illegal immigration problem in the United States. Here’s one paragraph from the first chapter called “How Civilizations Perish” that captures the essence of the problem:

“No one knows how many illegal aliens are here. The estimates run from 12 to 20 million. This is not immigration as America knew it, when men and women made a conscious choice to turn their backs on their native lands and cross the ocean to become Americans. This is an invasion, the greatest invasion in history. Nothing of this magnitute has ever happened in so short a span of time. There are 36 million immigrants and their children in the United States today, almost as many as came to America between Jamestown in 1607 and the Kennedy election of 1960. Nearly 90 percent of all immigrants now come from continents and countries whose peoples have never been assimilated fully into any Western country.”

I’m not anti-immigration. Our nation was founded by immigrants, but once it was founded, it established a rule a law—including certain parameters on how people become citizens. Without such parameters and without assimilation, we aren’t a united nation with commons goals and a common way of life. And without common universal goals, I don’t see how a nation can prosper.

What are you reading this week? I picked up the latest Nicholas Sparks’ novel a few days ago and I’m hoping to get to it in the next couple of weeks.

The Experience of Christmas

If you are here because you clicked on a link in the PCA News and Information e-newsletter, you can order a copy of my new book, The Experience of Christmas by clicking here.

If you'd like to know more about the book, just scroll down and look for the picture of the book cover in the right hand column of the page.

Thanks for your interest! I'd love to hear that families are using it around the dinner table each night during the Christmas season to assist them in experiencing the wonder of the season.

The Power of Place

My family recently had a small unplanned mini-family reunion. A couple of relatives from out of town (one was from out of country) decided to visit at the same time. I went to the airport to pick up one of those relatives and as I sat down to wait for her to walk up the ramp from her gate, I was struck by the number of people who were either hugging somebody good-bye or hugging somebody after not seeing him or her for a long time.

That one little area I was seated in must see hundreds of such emotional moments on a daily basis because loved ones are separated by many miles. And the process is repeated in airports throughout the world every single day.

In between all the hugs, I glanced over at the food court and remembered some of my own bittersweet moments—one of which included the last meal I ever ate with my dad before he died in 2000. We each had a mini-pizza. We were there to drop my brother off so he could fly home. Of course, I had no idea that my dad would die just a couple of weeks later. 

Isn’t it funny how a place can trigger such powerful memories? I love and hate that about places. I love it because it’s so much fun to remember and I hate it because memories can never replace the real thing. And places change and that makes the memories get fuzzier because you can’t sit down in the exact seat that a loved one sat in. Or you can’t walk on the same floor, or look out the same window. 

Thankfully, the food court at my local airport still looks the same, but I suspect that I’ll show up there one day and it’ll be remodeled. And it will bum me out for a while, but I’ll get over it because I have so many other great memories of spending time with Dad in places that still exist. I know that my memories shouldn’t be so tied to specific places, but for some reason, they are.

How about you? Are you memories tied to specific places?

Election Thoughts

How prophetic was this magazine cover that came out a few days before the election? And this isn't a magazine that comes from the left side of the aisle. It's the magazine that Pat Buchanan started several years ago after the neoconservative movement, namely President Bush, embraced empire building.

Twelve years ago, the Republicans had a night that looked much like the one the Democrats had last night. When the Republicans had the Congress, they hardly governed as conservatives. They started out well enough, but fizzled quickly, and they morphed into a movement I don't even recognize. And one that most American voters were apparently not in agreement with because they tossed them out of office last night.

Gridlock, here we come. In my mind that is a good thing because it'll keep both major parties from being able to force unwanted agendas upon us without a little consensus building.

Spears Files for Divorce

A couple of years ago, I signed up for a service through a local television station that sends an alert to the toolbar on my computer whenever news breaks in the world. I like the service because I can’t work with the radio or television on—it’s too distracting, but with this service I’m never fearful that I’m going to miss something big. But at the same time, I hate the noise it makes because it means that something has happened—and it is rarely good news.

Yesterday, toward the end of my workday, the alert sounded and I clicked on it. It said this: “Breaking News Alert / Report: Britney Spears Files for Divorce.” My first thought was, come on…if I got an alert for every celebrity who got a divorce, my computer would sound like a symphony of alert notices. While that is indeed true, my second thought was about her two children; Sean Preston (1) and Jayden James (2 months old). 

I went over to MSNBC.com and of course, it was the lead story. I’m not sure what that says about our country, but it what it is. MSNBC already had a live poll up and 12,475 people had responded. As of the time of this writing, 72% of the respondents clicked on “what took her so long?” and 16% clicked on “feel sorry for their sons,” and 11% clicked on “won’t be long before marriage #3.” Finally, 1.1% clicked on “shocked, I really thought they’d last.” That fact that only 16% felt sorry for her sons was amazing to me.

This post isn’t written to bash Britney Spears, or Kevin Federline, or our culture in general. It’s written more out of sadness for two more kids who will not have their father to love and guide them on a daily basis. And indeed that is cause for alarm.