Christmas Memories

A friend on Facebook posted this question today: Which gift do you remember most from your childhood?

And I was taken back …

Christmas 1964, maybe it was. We lived in the house at the bottom of the hill on the Ogbomoso station so that places this memory in either 1963 or 1964 but since I remember it so clearly, I will go with 1964 when I was six instead of the year before when I was only five. That year, I got the grandest of presents!

I was used to getting one gift from Santa and maybe a couple more wrapped under the tree. The wrapped gifts usually came from my family's trip to the Kingsway store in Ibadan so I sometimes had at least an idea of what those gifts might be. But the gift from Santa was usually only one gift (often a baby doll or stuffed animal) that sat unwrapped on a couch next to a stocking filled with candy and small toys. That gift, I now know was often purchased ahead while my parents were in the US and carefully brought to Nigeria in the packed barrels. But that year …

On that Christmas morning, my gift, or rather our gifts because they were joint gifts to my two sisters and me, were spread out all over the living room. The room was filled to the brim with new things for us! And what were these abundant gifts?

My father, with the help of the hospital carpenter, had built out of lightweight wood, plywood perhaps, a toy refrigerator, stove / oven, and mini kitchen cabinet. My parents had brought a set of plastic dishes with them from the US and those were laid out--dishes, silverware, and pots and pans. To top it off, my mother has sewn mini dishtowels, pot holders, and aprons for us. 

My childhood eyes burst with amazement as I scanned the room and then walked all around it looking from one thing to another. Later when we had this all set up in our shared bedroom with our dolls that we already owned, sitting in little chairs in this play kitchen, I felt like I lived in a playland of my very own! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has rolled around again. Time seems to fly these days and frankly, that's one of the many things I find myself thankful for. I have seen days that drag; seasons in life that seemed desperate and I wondered when things would get better again. I'll take happy, busy blessed days that fly by instead, every time.

This year, like most years, I find myself looking back at Thanksgivings of the past. So many memories flood my mind from my childhood Thanksgivings in Africa, to the years my young family would drive to my mother's for Thanksgiving to the years I have cooked a turkey at my house.

Often others join me and my family for Thanksgiving dinner. How I treasure the years my friend and now co-writer in many of my books, Shirley Crowder and her precious mother whom I called Aunt Jeannie, came to my house to join me, my parents, and another missionary family for Thanksgiving. They did this a couple years in a row and shortly after the last time they visited, Aunt Jeannie passed away. I no longer have her in my life but I have those sweet and funny memories of her.

This year, a Nigerian family who attends church with us will come to my house and share the meal with us. My family has grown close to this family in the two years we have known them. They are here to gain a seminary education at Southern Seminary. Their little boy, about four years old, always runs to me when he sees me exclaiming, "Grand Ma!" He wraps his arms around me and then asks, "When can I come to your house again?" Well, Evan, the answer to that right now, is next week at Thanksgiving. :)

Happy Thanksgiving ya'll!

Book News

I started this blog long before I had a book contract. Once I got a contract, my publisher asked me to start another blog with my name in the title, so I did. You can read that blog at www.harrietemichael.blogspot.com I try to keep that blog mostly about the writing life--book news, articles I have written, etc. This blog is intended to be more about life. However, today I have some book news that I shared on my other blog, which I want to share here too. It's just too good to not share both places.

I have another book coming out in just a matter of days. This will be my 5th published book so far. (I have 4 more under contract that I and my co-writer, Shirley Crowder are writing--a year around devotional series. These will take a couple of years to complete and are scheduled to be released in 2019, 2020, and 2021.)

This book is heart-warming and I am so excited about it! My publisher is running a one-day special on it's release day, Nov. 6. The new book will be on sale for only .99 and the recently released devotional about prayer will be free that day only. Don't miss it!

Fall is Coming!

The calendar rolled over into September the other day. Where did the summer go? My family still has a trip to the beach planned for next week so it will still feel like summer to me for another week. Nonetheless signs of fall are all around me.

Football season has started. I sometimes write about my highschool cheerleader days when I had the privilege of cheering for the WV AAA State Champions. That is an experience of a lifetime that not everyone gets to have. That team, the Bluefield Beavers of Bluefield, WV has a strong football tradition and a part of that tradition is its season opener against its cross-town rivalry the Graham G-men. Graham is the school in Bluefield VA, just across the state line from Bluefield High School. That rivalry is now recognized as one of the great American Rivalries and last week it was livestreamed by a Facebook page of the same name ("Great American Rivalries"). I sat at home and watched it via my computer and so enjoyed seeing my hometown stadium. My team won, btw. 

And not to be out done, Christian Academy of Louisville, where I work has a strong team this year too. Our claim to fame this year is a senior who is the leading contender for KY's "Mr. Football". His name is Milton Wright and he's a kid I have known for years. His sister graduated with my youngest son. She was chaplain of that class. Milton is a great kid. This level of achievement and attention couldn't happen to a nicer person. 

Another sign of fall are the leaves which are already beginning to change. Soo, the world will be ablaze with color and I will need to pull my sweaters and jackets out. 

Welcome Fall!

School Days

"School days, school days! Dear old golden rule days. Reading and writing and 'rithmatic …"

It's that time of year again. The new school year is starting all over America. That means I will start back to work again, since I am employed as a substitute teacher in a Christian school system. I am available for work three days a week in high school and middle school at Christian Academy of Louisville, and Christian Academy of Indiana. I love my work. We have nice kids at Christian Academy and I enjoy interacting with them. 

I have always loved school. When I was an early elementary student (2nd-3rd grade) I attended school in a one-room school in the garage of the home of the teacher. That teacher, a missionary in Nigeria, like my parents, taught all grades from 1st - 4th for the missionary-kids who lived in the town of Ogbomoso. I don't know how she managed, but she did. I have such fond memories of those years in my life. 

In the 4th grade, my mom taught me and my other 4th grade friends. We had an unusually large class that year as mk classes went. We had 5 in our class, three girls and two boys. The girls made a mural on one wall out of construction paper cut-outs. We had grass across the width of that wall and spent any extra time we had all year making things to place on the grass, like flowers, an apple tree with apples, lady bugs on the flower leaves, worms in the grass, clouds in the sky, a large sun at one end, etc. Making that mural is one of my fondest memories.


As school starts again for the students I will encounter, as well as my own grandchild, I find myself praying that their childhood school memories will be good ones too.

Proud to be an American!

I am a TCK, or in other words, a Third Culture Kid. What is a TCK?

He or she is a person born and reared in a nation that is not the nation of their citizenship. TCK’s come in all shapes and sizes and happen for all sorts of reasons. They are military kids, children of foreign students, children of business people whose work has taken them to another country, and yes, missionary kids like me. 

All TCK’s have some things in common, including a deep yearning for a place they knew as home but where they no longer live. I am no exception. Deep inside of me is a little girl who still wants to wake up to the sounds of lizards scurrying around on my screened window and open my eyes to see a gecko in the corner above me where my wall meets the ceiling.

I miss these things. I miss the African dirt between my toes, and the refreshing rain that cools a very hot world. I miss picking guavas off the tree in my back yard and eating them straight from the tree. 

But if I had the choice, I would not switch my citizenship. I have lived in America for many years now and have grown to love it, and even more, to appreciate it.

Americans have an incredible heritage of which we can always be proud. We have a history of brave men and women who gave everything to keep America free and to help other nations be free too. We are not a nation with a history of waging war in order to conquer. We fight to keep what we have and to help others keep from being conquered as well.  

So, on this July 4^th, I want to say, “Happy Birthday, America!” May God continue to bless you and guide you, as the song says, “through the night with a light from above.”

TCK or not, I am a proud American and so thankful I get to live in this land—the greatest nation on earth.

Welcome Summer!

Summer is upon us!

Yay! How I love the summer. I work as a substitute teacher and today is the last day of school. I think I'm about as excited as the students. I didn't get called to work today so actually, my summer break started a few days ago, but I didn't know that then. Today, I know for sure that I won't get called to work for the next two and a half months.

I have big plans for the summer. I have two speaking obligations, one in June and one in July and have a lot of writing to do as I work on edits on two books and map out and start writing a third book as well as keep up with my freelance writing. I also plan to travel to my parents for a family reunion. (The picture is of our family reunion last year.) 

We will actually take our vacation in September when we spend a week at a timeshare we own in Hilton Head, SC. If I had chosen the week, I would not have chosen September but I did not choose it, my mother-in-law did. She bought it many years ago and we inherited it when she passed away. I have grown to love it as it extends summer for me. 

In the meantime, while summer is actually here, I will enjoy the days off. Ill keep my grandson a couple of weeks and hit the pool when he comes and of course, I'll enjoy my garden and post more pics of it in future blog posts. 

When I was a child, once we came back from Nigeria, my family always traveled to one of the beaches in South Carolina for a week in the summer. I have such sweet memories of family vacations at the ocean!

Let the summer begin!

How Does your Garden Grow?

I love to work in the garden! I have ever since I was a child in Nigeria and used to putter around in the garden with my Dad. He and Mom had a giant garden and I used to "help" them, often. I mostly remember puttering alongside Daddy. He even gave me a small section of land which he said could be my garden and I could plant anything. I had three siblings but I don't think any of the others took to it quite like I did. I loved digging in the dirt!

I still love it and have had a garden all nearly thirty-nine years of my married life.

This year, I am particularly excited about it because, with the help of my youngest son, I moved my garden from where it used to be to the other side of the yard which gets more sun. The house I live in already had a garden area when I moved here in 2003. But the neighbor's tree, just across the fence from it has grown and grown, blocking more and more of the sun over the years.

This year, I have a new raised garden and can't wait to see how it produces! So, today, I am sitting at my desk, sweaty, dirty, and oh so happy from a day of planting filled with high hopes for the growing season ahead. And all of this gardening makes me think of one of my favorite gardening-related Bible verses:

Sow with a view to righteousness, reap in accordance with kindness; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes to rain righteousness on you. Hosea 10:12

Rain!

“I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit.” Leviticus 26:4

Ah! The rains in their season! Anyone who has been to Africa in the rainy season will appreciate that verse! There is nothing quite as wonderful as the African rains--the way it splashes as it lands in huge drops on the dirt roads, the way it sounds as it pings down on a tin roof, and especially the way it smells! Yes, rain has a smell; one that is cool, refreshing, and full of promise.

The rainy season was the best of seasons. Everything was green and lush. The flowers bloomed, and the trees yielded their fruits. We had a guava orchard in our back yard when we lived in Ogbomosho. My father “gave” us children a few trees which we could eat freely from but he told us to keep our hands off of the rest. My mother made jelly and preserves from the other trees. The children’s trees seldom had ripe guavas on them since they were gobbled up before they could mature. Many times I have climbed high into the guava tree looking for the perfect guava; one that was large, smooth (no bug holes), and not quite ripe--the perfect color of yellow/green.

Rains in America are cold, even in the summer time because they usually accompany a cold front. In the states, when a cold front moves in, it can rain for quite a while, sometimes even days, if the front becomes stationary. African rains are quite different. During the rainy season, it rains at least once a day in a short refreshing burst of cool water. The rains bring a welcome temporary cooling of the hot ground and air. As a child, I played in the rains as often as I could. My siblings, friends and I would sense the rain coming, put on our bathing suits and meet in the dirt road that ran down the middle of the mission compound. We would play barefoot in the mud as we watched the downpour make little rushing streams in the road. The mud squished between our toes, and the smell of the rain engulfed us.

Once when my father was traveling home from a preaching engagement with my little sister and me along for the ride; a rock from the dirt road flicked into our windshield. This was before the days of shatterproof glass and the rock shattered our windshield. Fearing glass would blow onto us as we traveled the rest of the way home, my dad stopped and carefully removed the entire windshield, one little piece at a time. This would have been a good idea, except for the fact that it was rainy season. Sure enough a sudden rain storm blew up and my father had to drive with the rain pouring in on him. He told my sister and me to get in the floor of the back seat so the front seats would partially block the incoming water. I remember thinking it was one of the grandest adventures I had ever experienced. My sister and I hunched down in the back, each behind a seat and giggled at each other as the water pooled at our feet. I don’t think it was as much fun for my poor dad though. He drove slowly on ahead in spite of the rain in his face. When we arrived home, we took warm baths and then my mom made hot cocoa. That too was an adventure! I had never had hot cocoa in Africa before...or since.

To this day, I love a summer rain. My sisters and I have talked about the fact that we enjoy watching it rain. A house I once lived in as an adult had a screened porch and I would always sit out there when a storm was blowing, though my husband thought I was crazy. My sisters say they like to go outside just before it rains too. I have talked with many of my childhood friends and have come to find that loving summer rains is a common trait among people who have experienced the tropical rainy season.

5-Book Contract!

I am so excited to let people know that my childhood friend, Shirley Crowder and I have just signed a 5-book contract for a year long devotional series! The books include a re-vamping of our original holiday devotional titled. "Glimpses of the Savior" and four more books that will cover devotions for winter, spring, summer, and fall These books will be released by Pix-N-Pens Publishing late this year, as well as in 2019 and 2020.

A little about Shirley and my writing journey:

A few years ago, Shirley, a lifelong friend, contacted me suggesting we collaborate on a devotional book. We ventured into the unknown world of indie publishing. At that same time, I had a contract

on Prayer: It's Not About You but it had not been released yet. Shirley and I learned a lot about writing a devotional book, including the fact that we work quite well together.

After my book on prayer was released by Pix-N-Pens, the nonfiction arm of Write Integrity Press, Shirley wrote a study guide to it for use in her own work as a women's Bible study leader. She sent it to me to ask permission to use it since she quotes my book in it. I loved the study guide and sent it to my publisher who then contracted with Shirley to publish it.

After that Shirley and I began working on two other prayer related books which our publisher also contracted. One, a devotional book titled Glimpses of Prayer, was released last fall and the other, an anthology, will be released later this year.

By now Shirley and I have learned that we enjoy co-writing so we moved into a discussion with our publisher to write devotional books, including re-working our original one and bringing it under the PNP name. Today that venture begins.

We each have books we have written or co-written independent of each other and will in the future but I'm pretty sure we will also do more co-writing. Certainly, we have a lot of it ahead of us right now!

God's Love

This is a repost from Feb 3, 2013. It was posted by my friend and fellow writer, Linda Jeffrey in her blog:  www.thegriefexperience.wordpress.com  with her permission I am re-posting it here.

A hundred years ago in an old-fashioned camp meeting, the evangelist told about a man who died alone in an insane asylum. Scrawled on the wall of his room were these words,

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,

Would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.

A song writer in attendance that day wrote down the words and added other verses, but none so powerful as this metaphor. I cannot tell you about God’s love and I will never be as eloquent as the anonymous sufferer who wrote those words on his wall, but I know the love of God was more than words in a Bible for him. Some day he will tell us how the love of God carried him home.

The love of God is greater far

Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

The saints' and angels' song.

Devotions

There’s no Place like Home
Read: Hebrews 11:9-10, 13-16

“… they desired a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.” Hebrews 11:16 (NASB)

The forecast called for snow, snow, and more snow! Sure enough, the snow didn’t stop falling for two days after 13 inches had accumulated. Schools canceled classes; businesses closed, and only emergency services stayed open. My family was snowed in for days! Fortunately, I had paid attention to the forecast and purchased enough food and milk for a week. We were also fortunate that our electricity stayed on.

So that week was spent at home. Each day we slept late, the children played in the snow and I was still able to wash their wet clothes and give them warm dinners each evening. The big snow that shut down my southern city was many years ago now but I still recall it as one of the most pleasant weeks of my life because I and mine were safe at home.

We all have the instinctive desire to long for home. Hebrew 11 talks of men and women of faith who longed for a better home – one that is built by God Himself. Verse 16 amazes me. It says of these people that God was not ashamed to be called their God. What does it take for God to be pleased to be called your God? Do you have to do some mighty deed or achieve a high level of spirituality? No, you simply have to have a longing for a better place – a heavenly place, a city whose architect and builder is God!

Prayer: Heavenly Father, You have placed deep in our hearts a longing for home. Help us to realize this is because you are preparing a home for us. Help us to understand that we are truly strangers on this earth making our way to the city whose builder is you. In your Son’s name, Amen.

Thought for the day: There’s no place like home!