Using a Magnifying Glass!

 by Anusha Atukorala

Recently, I had the joy of having a new friend over for afternoon tea. Beautiful Susie (not her real name), came bearing a warm apple and sultana cake she’d just whisked out of the oven. How Susie managed to bake a cake while caring for her three small children beats me! Amazing! Her cute treasures aged 4, 2 and 6 months were a delight. The cake was delicious. We enjoyed a happy time together, even if it lacked as much adult conversation as Susie and I would have liked.

 

I brought out some of my son’s old toys for her little girls to play with. Amidst cars and hand puppets, plastic animals and an assortment of paraphernalia, was a tiny magnifying glass. The two older kids were fascinated by it. They used it for a long time, gazing intently at everything around them. I was a little surprised at first how something so small and seemingly insignificant could have given the children so much pleasure, until I realised that I too still enjoy using one. Nowadays though, they are useful mainly to read the tiny print on medicine bottles or on items off the supermarket shelves!

 

As a disciple of Jesus, I could do with a magnifying glass, well … a figurative one! Don’t you think? And … whom can I magnify today? How about … Christian Writers Downunder? It’s the best place to start, isn’t it? Christian Writers Downunder began in 2011 with a handful of writers but grew very quickly and now boasts of 1350 members (when I last checked). CWD’s help and support to us Christian writers has been immense and far reaching and I am so grateful.

 

I was new on the writing scene when I joined CWD, having just published my first book. I remember the thrill of attending my first interstate Writing Conference in Queensland in 2012. It was lovely to be able to recognise many who came that year, the moment I saw them, because we’d already connected through CWD. A big shout out and THANK YOU to CWD’s current dynamic Admin duo – Jeanette O Hagen and Kirsten Hart. You do a fabulous job! And thank you too to Mazzy Adams (whose currently having a well deserved break)  God bless you three richly for all you do. We are very grateful!

 

I’d also like to magnify a few of the books I’ve drunk deeply of over the years, that have brought me closer to Jesus. 

Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster,  

7 Lessons from Heaven by Mary C Neal, 

Imagine Heaven by John Burke, 

Life without Lack by Dallas Willard, 

Satisfy my Thirsty Soul by Linda Dillow, 

Sanctuary of the Soul by Richard Foster, 

A Call to the Secret Place by Michel Ann Goll, 

Reclaiming Love by Ajith Fernando, 

Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich, 

The Way of Blessing by Roy Godwin, 

Prayer by Richard Foster. 

Appointments with Heaven by Dr Reggie Anderson. 

And these are but a small snapshot of a myriad assortment of books that have wooed me to our Saviour. I am so grateful for numerous great men and women of God over the ages and their writings that have grown my soul.

When times are tough, it’s easy to focus on what’s wrong rather than what’s right. We human beings are good at moaning about the bad rather than extolling the good. But God’s blessings abound. Daily, hourly, moment by moment. The jewel studded night sky that fills me with awe, the gentle sound of waves lapping on a sandy shore, a bright silvery moon on a dark cold night, the perfect yellow rose which displays my Creator’s magnificence, a colour splashed rainbow that thrills my soul, sunshine and cool breezes which that bring warmth and refreshment to my being. These are but a few of them.

 

And of course we are blessed, not only through material gifts. Paul informs us in the book of Ephesians that we have every spiritual blessing in Christ. Every spiritual blessing? Wow! Isn’t that something? Our lives are made richer through family and friends. We are blessed by circumstances both good and bad – even the tough times can be stepping stones to becoming more like Jesus. Thank You God. I magnify all the rich blessings You bring my way. Every. Single. Day!

 

I also seek to magnify the family of God – and as Paul urges us to do, consider their needs as more important than mine, their accomplishments as deserving higher recognition than mine. As a Christian writer, I magnify and showcase other writers. All of you on CWD! Thank you writers – your writing blesses our world. I won’t mention you by name in case I leave some of you out. But be assured … you do make a difference. And  … there needs to be a word for the good kind of gossip - talking behind another’s back of admirable traits we discover in others? I magnify the unique and wonderful people in my world – who make it a better place. 

Yes, you too dear Reader! You too!

Over the last few years, I’ve been struggling with an issue that often diminishes the joy in my life, like a mosquito that keeps buzzing in my ears. I realised recently that when I had turned 60, I desired one thing for my new decade. 

“One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” 

Psalm 27:4-5. 

Perhaps I need to make an exchange? Each time I am triggered by the one thing that trips me up … I can exchange it for the ONE THING I surely need. 

To behold the beauty of God!

Yes. There’s One we can’t help but magnify daily for all He is and He has done for us. Our Awesome Great Triune God. The Alpha and the Omega. Who is like Him in the heavens or the earth? No one. He stands apart. High! Holy! Creator! Saviour! Lord! King! Redeemer! Friend! Majestic! Infinite! One who forgives! Transcendent! Mighty! Faithful! Teacher! Wisdom!

                          Light of the World. Jesus.

"Oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good; 

for His steadfast love endures forever.” Psalm 118:1

               “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, 

              slow to anger, abounding in love.” Psalm 103:8

                      "O magnify the Lord with me. 

               And let us exalt His Name together.” Psalm 34:3

 

Would you like a peek through my magnifying glass?

Anusha’s been on many interesting detours in life, as a lab technician, a computer programmer, a full time Mum, a full time volunteer, a charity director, a full time job chaser, until one golden day (or was it a dark moonless night?) God tapped her on her shoulder and called her to write for Him. She has never recovered from the joy it brought her. She loves to see others enjoying life with Jesus and does her mite to hurry the process in her world through her writing and through her life. The goodness of God is her theme song through each season, as she dances in the rain with Jesus.

 

Her first book Enjoying the Journey contains 75 little God stories that will bring you closer to your Creator. Her 2^nd book ‘Dancing in the Rain’ brings you hope and comfort for life’s soggy seasons. Her 3rd book, ‘Sharing the Journey’ is a sequel to 'Enjoying the Journey' and was released in March 2020.

 

Do drop in on her two websites to say G’day! She’d love to connect with you.

Dancing in the Rain 

Light in the Darkness

 

Thanks for reading!

God bless you!

Little Seeds, Big Clouds and a Clock About to Strike

Habits. Good habits. Bad habits. You need discipline to create good habits and discipline to destroy bad habits. 

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Discipline. How do you get it? Some people seem to be born with it. Others struggle to maintain it. And still others don’t much care one way or the other. Me?  It depends on the situation. Sometimes, I really just want to see if I can achieve a goal and discipline comes naturally. Other times, I just can’t seem to create that same sense of excitement and my discipline has heads for the hills on a long vacation. 

At the beginning of this year, January 1st to be exact, I decided to do a challenge. A 75 Day Challenge. 

THE 75 DAY CHALLENGE 

Morning Cardio workout

Afternoon strength workout 

Eat 850 calories

Drink 4 litres of water

Read 10 pages of a non fiction book

Every. Day. For a total of 75 days. 

Now I know what you’re thinking. ‘Are you insane?!’ Yes. Well, probably. But all the best people are, aren’t they?

When I heard about the challenge, at first I thought, ‘HA! Yeah right. I wouldn’t last a week!’ I’ve been suffering from a sore lower back for a good year now and thought I’d maybe get through the first three days before pulling my back out again. Then I’d be in bed for a week and back to the Physio. But what if I focused on exercises that didn’t use my back and supported it as much as possible? Was I really going to let my fear of failing and getting hurt get the better of me?

My fear. How many times has it beat me down? It doesn’t feel like that at the time, does it? It keeps me safe. I mean, I don’t want to get hurt and I don’t want to fail.  But what if I succeed, then what do I do? It’s the unknown that my fear keeps me safe from. It’s nice. It’s comforting, but all those big ideas, all the story outlines I jot down for when I have time to come back to them … they just wait. They gather dust. So what my fear has done, is kept me stationary. Never growing, never evolving into something more than what I am. 

So, what’s the point?

I sat down with a lovely couple about a month ago and we were discussing the current issues - the pandemic, emergency mandates, talks of war. We moved to Revelation and how everything looked pretty grim. They said they believed we had maybe another ten years left before the Rapture.

‘Excuse me? I don’t think I heard you correctly. Did you say ten years?’

I hadn’t misheard. Now, don’t get me wrong. No one knows when it’ll happen, but just think about it for a moment. Ten years. That’s all you have left. One hundred and twenty months. Five hundred and twenty weeks. Three thousand, six hundred and fifty days. Eighty seven thousand, six hundred hours. And so on, and so on. But you get it. Ten years left of your life.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

I don’t know about you, but should I even be bothering to do a Bachelor Degree that will take me six years to complete part time? And all those story ideas I have, do I just give up on them? It has taken me over a decade to write the story for one of my ideas, what do I do with the other thirty two I have outlined on my computer? All the other things I wanted to do, wanted to see … I don’t know, but ten years doesn’t seem like enough time, especially when procrastination and anxiety are such good friends of mine.

I just don’t know … but then again, I think I do.

It starts with a little seed.

Without a little water, a little dirt, a bit of sunshine, little seeds won’t grow. But if you put in a little effort and don’t mind getting your hands dirty, that seed will sprout roots and habits will grow. 

First things first. Show up. Nothing ever gets done if you don’t first begin. This builds habits. Things you can improve upon. You cannot improve if you don’t have a foundation.

Those big clouds you see in the sky above you. The ones you’ve imagined into dragons and castles and mushroom houses; they are your spark. They are the reason you want to write their stories. Don’t let fear stop you. Don’t let your doubts get the better of you. They are your past, not your present you. You woke up this morning as a blank canvas. Don’t let the negativity of yesterday paint the opportunities of today.

Today is day zero of my 75 Day Challenge. For the most part, I accomplished a lot. I will admit, the ten pages became a little too overwhelming - exhaustion and a heavy non fiction book do not mix well - and I didn’t continue with this aspect of the challenge. But I’ve now built up a few good habits and who knows what the next seventy five days bring. Even if the clock is about to chime - today, tomorrow, one year form now, ten years, twenty … I have an opportunity to learn more, see more, do more and it doesn’t matter how much I accomplish,  as long as I show up in the moments that matter and know God has everything in control.

Kirsten Hart (aka A.T. Richmond) is a born and bred Territorian who moved to Queensland and had no choice but to stay after her assimilation into the Toowoomba's infamous, collective known as Quirky Quills. Since then, A.T. Richmond has had two stories published. Stone Bearer, appears in Glimpses of Light and Tedious Tresses, in the As Time Goes By Mixed Blessings anthology. She is currently writing a fantasy trilogy.

FIRSTS (We all start somewhere)

Mazzy Adams

Like any worthwhile endeavour, becoming a writer begins with firsts.

Lots and lots of firsts.

First sentence, first rhyme, first story, first chapter, first re-write, first risky reveal, first rejection, first encouraging response, first submission, first blog post … 

(Speaking of which, have you considered joining the CWD blog roster yet? Note: I’m smiling sweetly, dusting my ulterior motive as a member of the CWD Admin team with optimistic innocence. 😊)

Firsts. We all start somewhere.

Strangely enough, becoming a confident writer begins with …

More firsts. Lots of ‘em. 

And the willingness to embrace those frustrating, fiddly, finicky, fickle, sometimes foolhardy, but always brave, seconds, fourths, fifths or fiftieth factors and phases which facilitate and finesse one’s development as a writer. I acknowledge that confidence will always be an elusive beast—it’s in the nature of writers to doubt and second guess themselves and their work—but please don’t let that stop you because, ultimately, the rewards are amazing and often unexpected.

For some of us, the first of our writing firsts happened way back when we were children.  

I wrote my first truly memorable sentences in Year Five: 

Montague Meringue was a quiet but intelligent fellow, small of stature, with an olive complexion and hazel-brown eyes. Around his oval face was a mop of shiny black hair, and his button nose was just like that—a button.

I use the term ‘truly memorable’ because, fifty years later, I can still remember those two sentences verbatim. I doubt my year five teacher gave them a second thought once she’d left her tick at the end of the story—which my ten-year-old self considered a masterpiece of ingenuity when, after numerous failed attempts, Montague, my intrepid scientist discovered the cure for hypervitaminosis after a storm smashed the window of his laboratory and blew a Moreton Bay Fig (the fruit, not the tree) into his test tube. I’ll admit my conclusion lacked plausibility but, at 2:55pm with the school bell about to ring, I needed a quick exit strategy for both story and me.

We all start somewhere.

My first brief flash of poetic brilliance arrived when I was in Year Seven:

Rushing, like a fiery dragon,

Tongues of flame leaping from its mouth,

Stronger than Orion with his mighty bow and arrows,

Conqueror of Leo the Lion,

Swallowing the stars and the moon,

Chasing the darkness away,

Dawn has come.

With some trepidation, I showed this to my older sister. Rose had, for years, thrilled me with her own creative writing (my favourite being a scripted ‘radio play’ where the listener’s faulty radio randomly flipped between channels, creating a hilarious compilation of absurd sentences like … ‘My heart bleeds for / Parsley.’ 

Given my undisputed admiration for her writing skills, receiving her tick of approval was a massive encouragement. Sadly, my secondary school writing efforts produced more spurious, ignominious results. 

 Compilation of StockUnlimited Images ID2047567 and ID1891056 (Licensed)

Like the day we had to write a song parody and an epitaph during a Year Nine English class; I came up with:

How tasteth that froggy in the dinner? (Croak Croak)

The one with the waggly chin, (Croak Croak)

To put that dear froggy in the dinner, (Croak Croak)

Is little better than a sin. (Croak Croak croaked!)

And:

Here lies my English teacher.

Before she died, she had the hide

To ask me to write an epitaph. 

Not my finest work, or hour, I admit, though my English teacher (whom I adored) did stifle a grin. When it comes to spontaneous creativity, my first drafts (then and now) have been decidedly hit-and-miss. I choose to see my firsts as steppingstones; the shakiest ones invite a dunking, but others lead me (even precariously) towards a delightful destination.

We all start somewhere.

James A Michener, author of over forty books, said, “I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.” Considering his first book, Tales of the South Pacific was adapted as the popular Broadway musical South Pacific, by Rodgers and Hammerstein—one of my all-time favourites—I’m glad he kept writing, and rewriting, many firsts. 

It took me decades to discover I had a knack for writing song lyrics, drama skits and puppet plays which opened opportunities to rope in and nurture budding performers of all ages within our church. 

When an acquaintance from the local Speech and Drama Teachers Association pressed me to compete in a local bush poetry competition to boost competitor numbers, I agreed to have a go, had a lot of fun, and met an affable, genuinely encouraging group of Aussie bush poets from all walks of life who welcomed me into their fold. Even the most competitive among them took time to befriend, encourage and nurture the newbies. When you’re starting out, a little derring-do, and a spark of encouragement, can ignite a roaring fire if you’re willing to give it some passion, time and nurture. To my surprise, later that year, the Australian Bush Poets Association included Welcome to the Brotherhood—a poem I’d written commending the good-humoured camaraderie of the writers and performance artists I’d met—in their magazine. Literary larrikins one minute, serious purveyors of powerful words the next; those contemporary balladeers continue to break new ground whilst keeping the Aussie spirit alive.

Like I said, we all start somewhere. Even when we doubt our own preparedness to put our words out there, God can, and does, use our willingness to try, to bless others. Yes, we need to hone our skills, but the sharpest sword, if left in its scabbard, remains ineffective. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton has been called “one of the worst writers in history”*, his most notorious example being the opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night ...” Yet we're inspired by his (oft-quoted) line from Act II, Scene II of Richelieu: “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

 

More than a decade after my bush poetry dalliances, I started formal degree studies in creative writing externally through Tabor Adelaide. The encouragement of Christian lecturers cemented my passion for literature and creative writing. In 2012, my submission to Tabor’s “Christmas Tales” anthology (Pantaenus Press) was accepted and Twelve Miles to the Sea, a rhymed and metered ballad inspired by my eldest sister’s recollections, was published in a hold-in-your-hand, real life print anthology. That was an exciting first.

Then in beach clothes dressed and ready and excitement high and heady

‘n Grandad driving, slow and steady, they’d set out upon their way,

though the road was dirt and dusty and the car was old and rusty

and the springs of that old trailer had seen brisk and better days.

... 

So they splashed and sploshed and spluttered while the beach umbrella fluttered

with the Grand-ums and Aunt Lottie perched precariously underneath,

wearing long sleeves, hats and stockings, (was it melanoma mocking?)

in the tradition of the English, never minding Queensland’s heat. 

(From Twelve Miles to the Sea; Stanzas four and six of twelve)

Thanks to sporadic but timely early encouragement, the ongoing, mutual encouragement of writerly friends, several slightly more forceful and persistent nudges from a true friend, and the often-dull-but-daily decision to nurture the call and persevere, I'm still tackling firsts. And fiftieths. My novel edits have probably exceeded that number; blurb is still a first to be facilitated. Firsts are still scary. But …

Start here. Go there. We all start somewhere! Or we go nowhere.

While it’s exciting to hold a printed book in your hand, online opportunities give writers other ways to reach an ever-increasing audience. Our CWD blog roster provides opportunities for both guest bloggers and regular contributors who are active, engaged members of the Christian Writers Downunder Facebook group to make a positive difference. (Nudge, nudge.)

 

I added my first tentative contribution to this blog, Writers are Artists, in November, 2013 (before I adopted my pen name). As a naïve newbie daring to join bloggers with greater skills and experience and wisdom and knowledge than I, I needed a solid nudge. I’m glad Nola Passmore (who was, at that time, a CWD co-ordinator) nudged, because it is a privilege and a blessing to contribute to this encouraging writing community. It’s a privilege to share words that inform, inspire, and encourage others to grow in their writerly gifting and pursuits. It is a grace empowered by the knowledge that it is not our perfection (or lack of it) that matters most, but our heart’s desire to diligently pursue our God-given calling to write and be a blessing to others. 

Is this a privilege, a blessing, a grace you’re ready to receive and use? If so, please let us know by commenting below or in the Facebook group; we really do want others who share the vision and values of Christian Writers Downunder to join our blog roster as guests and regulars. 600 - 1000 words. That's all it takes. No need to be longwinded (as I've been today - reputedly one of Bulwer-Lytton's worst faults). 

As for those ‘firsts’, anyone else dare to share some of their famous, or infamous, writerly blunders and beauties in the comments? Go on. After all, we all started somewhere. 😉

* see http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/03/pen-is-mightier-than-sword.html

Mazzy Adams

Author, Genre Rebel

Intrigue and Inspiration with an Upmarket DownUnder Vibe

A contented Aussie wife, mother, grandmother, business manager, creative and academic writing tutor, and encourager, Mazzy maintains her passion for words, pictures, and the positive potential in people.

www.mazzyadams.com

maz@mazzyadams.com