1 Man vs. 2000 Demons

The man lived in the tombs. The townsfolk couldn’t control him; their chains no longer would hold him. Yup, that’s right, they often bound him hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. The strength he had was supernatural. Really. No one was able to subdue him and his tormented cries could be heard all day and all night as he roamed among the tombs. He would take sharp rocks and mutilate himself. Can you imagine?

The document I’m reading (Mark 5) says he was demon-possessed. And there was not just one demon, but two thousand!

One day he saw Jesus from a distance and ran to him, falling on his knees. The demons spoke through the man, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!” Aha! Right there you can see that it is the lying, deceitful demon who speaks. As if Jesus would torture the man.

Jesus calls out the demon whose name was “Legion” because there were actually many demons, so many that when Jesus agreed to send them into a herd of pigs, the 2000 pigs rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

Do you think the town’s people were happy to see the man dressed and in his right mind? Nope, they were angry and afraid and they begged Jesus to leave their region. Do you know what happened to the man? The next post will reveal an even greater miracle about his life.

In Harm's Way

I bent down to take a closer look at the strange plastic-like caterpillar or beetle or whatever it was that was in the middle of my path. I’m not fond of creepy crawlies, but I’d never seen anything like this before. I took a stick and gently (I thought) coaxed him to the side of the road. He curled up in defense, didn’t want to move, but hey, I was doing this for his own good. He resisted; I insisted. By getting him off the driveway he was no longer in danger of getting run over by a bike or a car or stomped under my foot on my return trek.

I thought how much he was like us: unwilling to accept God’s prodding, guiding, coaxing which is ALWAYS for our own good. Sometimes we wonder why bad things happen in our lives, why something is blocking our path, or why our plans are thwarted. Maybe God is just keeping us out of harm’s way. What do you think?

Sheltered: The Prologue

Next Wednesday

Emily knew the precise moment that Ben returned, she felt him in her scars. She watched him carry some things to the house, heard the door close; she smiled when she heard him call out that Santa was here. He did that once before, in early December, insisting that she accept the gift he held out, not wanting her to wait until Christmas to use the mittens he knew she needed.

She went toward her door now, wondered what he had brought, and then heard Megan’s voice below. Oh no, he probably brought something for her. She scuttled back to her nest by the window and stared outside, was still staring fifteen minutes later when she saw them walk down the street, Ben shouldering a shovel, his other hand knotted with Megan’s.

She touched the skin on her arms, lightly at first, making it tingle. The image of Ben with Megan multiplied across her mind in broken mirrors, a repugnant picture that reflected her own self-loathing. She scratched at her scabs, felt the pricks of pain force away the ticklish sensations. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them she saw a figure standing at her door.

“Who–?” she started, but the figment waned to less than a shadow. Still, though, there was something at her door.

She rose slowly and held her hand out.

Its face was more womanly now, friendly, motherly. Yes, she knew this face. Its pearly white skin so shocking against the ruby lips, the stringy hair a match to her own. Her mother.

She stretched her fingers toward the face. The hallucination faded then sharpened. The eyes began to blaze. She drew her hands back to her own face. What’s wrong with me?  The delusion grieved Emily; all around her fluttered a longing.

And a deadly fear.

 

(SHELTERED will be released in October. The NOOK and KINDLE versions are out now.)

Coming Soon: Sheltered

 

It's not the prettiest cover, but it fits the story.

 

Living together unsupervised, five troubled teens confront demonic forces and are compelled to deal with their problems in distinctly different ways. Paranormal meets psycho meets Goth in this story of a supernatural haunting and budding love. 

High school junior, Ben, hacks into his step-father's real estate holdings and provides rooms in an old two-story house to various outcasts: the schizophrenic kid, the angry Goth girl, and the homeless girl who worships him. When Megan needs a place to live she comes to the rooming house with a different set of problems and the ability to confuse and attract Ben.

One by one strange and mysterious occurrences stretch the teens’ beliefs in the supernatural. How they deal with demons, real and imagined, has tragic as well as redeeming consequences.



The paperback of SHELTERED will be out in less than a month, but the Kindle and Nook versions are available now for $3.99.

New Cover Reveal

 

It was time for a new "edgier" and creepier cover for EDGE OF ESCAPE.

 

Emotionally impaired yet clever, Eddie obsesses over the most popular girl. He drugs her, abducts her and locks her away. She escapes, but that is part of his plan as he pretends to be her knight in shining armor. Will she accept his special devotion or reject his fragile love? Stalking gets a sympathetic twist in this story of fixation and fear.

A young adult psychological thriller: PAPERBACK $11.99 and KINDLE or NOOK just $3.50.



Building a Log Home, Final Pictures

Whew, what a wonderful time we had building our dream home. We are so happy here and contented that we can’t imagine living in a house with flat, painted walls ever again. The logs are more than comforting – they exude life and warmth and calmness. It seems as if we are on a never-ending vacation, too.

Some final pictures:

Big Pine Lodge - ta da

A view from the back in the winter- which no one ever sees because we're in the middle of the woods.

This was taken in the winter with no flash. South facing windows are important.

Having glass front doors allows the light to stream through, too, even though that's north.

Looking down from the loft you can appreciate the 6 tons of rocks we gathered from the property.

I scrunched down on the floor to try to capture the high-ceiling lofty feel of the kitchen.

See how closely the logs fit together.

 

I'm standing in the sunroom looking through the kitchen and into the great room through that archway. For some reason blogger won't upload the pictures of the sunroom or the bedroom, but there are more pictures in the little slideshow bar on the left margin.

 

Thanks for coming along on the journey with me. It was fun to organize a few of the hundreds of pictures we took of the year-long building process into these 30 or so blog posts (which allowed me to schedule all these posts and free me up for the summer).

Building a Log Home, chapter 30

Our goal was to be in the house by Christmas and though we hosted Christmas dinner here we didn’t actually move in until the day after Christmas. There was still work to do, though. Some of the plumbing wasn’t finished until January and caulking the home had to wait a year until a lot of the settling had tightened the logs.

It took an enormous amount of caulk and weeks and weeks of work for the guys from North Arrow Log Homes to laboriously channel thick beads of the stretchy stuff between every single log. There was much more work on the inside because of all of the interior walls. They had five gallon buckets, but they had to fill their caulk guns continually. They went up and down the ladders like mountain goats. This picture shows Alex Rivers, the owner of North Arrow Log Homes, balancing on the very top of the ladder. I was afraid to use a flash when I took the picture.

Building a Log Home, chapter 29

Because the logs are round and will settle around six inches the kitchen cabinets couldn’t be nailed directly to them. The installers first put up boards which were attached to the logs with sliding bolts and then the cabinets were nailed to these boards. That way the logs could shrink without buckling the cabinets.

I had a list of 13 things I wanted in my kitchen like varying cabinet heights, a couple of glass doors, lattice doors under the sink, deep drawers, a coffee garage, a bead board back splash, a counter depth refrigerator with cabinet doors, uba tuba granite, and most importantly, an Elmira stove. We took our plans to three kitchen designers who drew up sketches and priced out standard, stock, and custom cabinets. Amazingly the lowest bid came from the custom cabinets by North Country Cabinets. Scroll down their page and you’ll see that our finished kitchen made it onto their website.

 

Building a Log Home, chapter 28

We did a lot of research on flooring when we decided to go with in-floor radiant heating. Tile conducts the heat better than wood, but wood is aesthetically warmer. We tiled the bathrooms, laundry room and sunroom, but everywhere else is wood. (I’ll never have carpet again – this is so much cleaner and easier to care for.) We chose hickory as a nice contrast to all the pine walls and ceiling. Because of the in-floor heating, nailing the planks down would be catastrophic, hence we went with a floating floor. A special material was laid first and then the planks were fitted together. There are no squeaks, but in a few places there’s a little bounciness. We call that character.

Unfortunately we had a problem the following summer when the humidity caused the floor to buckle up about 8 inches high right about where you see the top guy in the picture. The flooring people returned and cut the edges back under the windows to refit the planks. This left more space for expansion and contraction and we haven’t had a problem since. The gaps they left are hidden by the overhang of the first course of logs. They had simply installed the floor too tightly the first time. Live and learn.

Building a Log Home, chapter 27

Since it was a bit too cold to bathe on the front porch the plumber got right to work on attaching the feet to our clawfoot tub and moving it into the master bathroom. Why didn’t we get an old fashioned cast iron tub? Well, because a cast iron tub is far heavier than this fiberglass beauty and more expensive. I’m glad we got the largest size as this is deeper than any tub I’ve ever been in before. With all its advantages I do have one tiny complaint: it doesn’t hold the heat like I’d hoped. I duct taped some bubble wrap to the underside (no one can see it) and that helped.

As you can see from the picture we put up a Christmas wreath after Thanksgiving and hoped we’d be moved in before the holidays. It would be a pretty tight time crunch considering that the logs were delivered mid-June and most log home projects take one to two years. Acting as our own general contractors and expecting to get it done in 6 months was very ambitious. Did we make the goal? I’ll tell you later.

 



Building a Log Home, chapter 26

By the time the snow started falling the windows were in and the heat was on. We went through a lot of propane that first winter as our heat escaped through a hundred little holes that would later disappear with the tightening of the logs and the eventual caulking. We learned that if a mouse dies in the tiny crevice between logs it only stinks for about three weeks. We trapped quite a few the first year, but now we’re buttoned up tight as any other house.

Okay, so occasionally we get a bat or two, but all we do is open a window or door and they fly right out.

Oh, and that flying squirrel that suddenly appeared on the sofa to watch Sunday night TV with us . . . well, that was pretty entertaining. Did you know that they’re about the size of a chipmunk, have really black eyes, can climb up your rock fireplace, and will get swatted to the floor if they try to glide through a ceiling fan that’s running? True. They’re also pretty easy to catch because flipping on every light in your house blinds them.

Are You a Fool?

Psalm 14 must be pretty important since it is repeated almost word for word in Psalm 53. Both start with “The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” Is that you? Or someone you know? Let’s look at just the first three verses. They are quoted in the New Testament in Romans 3: 10 – 12 where they are used to emphasize that we are all sinners; sin is universal.

The fool says in his heart “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.

The Hebrew word that is here translated as “fool” denotes one who is morally deficient or morally perverse. These 3 short verses touch on his heart, his mind and his will: the fool’s deeds are corrupt; he doesn’t understand or even look for God. He has turned aside. Is that me? You? Someone we know?

The Psalm continues with several clues as to the differences between “evildoers” and the “righteous”. Evildoers never learn, do not call on the LORD, and are overwhelmed with dread or fear. They frustrate the plans of the poor (the humble/the needy/the afflicted) . . . BUT . . . God is their refuge. God is present in the company of the righteous.

How can I be righteous? I am made righteous through belief on the Lord Jesus Christ whose Hebrew name, Yeshua, is clearly revealed in the last verse of Psalm 14: Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!

What? You didn’t see it? Well, you would have heard it if you understood Hebrew. The word for salvation in Hebrew sounds exactly like Yeshua. This last verse gives a prophecy of rescue, restoration, and rejoicing and affirms Yeshua as our salvation.

Building a Log Home, chapter 25

Acting as our own general contractors was a piece of cake for us. After all, as teachers who handled 150 students a day each, coordinating 29 sub-contractors was easy and pleasantly satisfying. If a student was late to class, missed an assignment, needed a reminder or a phone call home we were on top of it. We used the same hovering attention in regards to the tradesmen whom we scheduled in overlapping succession. Many log homes require a year or a year and a half to complete after the logs are erected, but we did it in six months. My number one piece of advice to others who want to build is to be on site daily. If there are ten ways to do something and you’d be happy with nine of them, trust me, if you’re not there on the day the sub-contractor has to make a decision, he will pick the one way you didn’t want.

In this picture you see the tile guy grouting the 14 inch slate-like tiles in the sunroom. The choices are seemingly endless, but the hardest part is deciding on a grout color. With different choices of tile and grout for the sunroom, bathrooms, and laundry room, we watched closely to make sure there were no mix-ups.