Irony: Opening and running a Christian bookstore has been the biggest challenge to my faith. It trembles, it questions, it screams, it huddles in shambles in the corner. My faith survived the loss of my husband, my life goals, my marriage better than running this business. I've started to doubt almost everything about how I feel about God and the relationship I have had up to this point in my life with Him. The image of gold being purified, melted down to a flowing, shapeless liquid mass to bring out the sludge to create a finer more perfected end result: I identify with the extreme heat necessary to melt a prior image into something with an unknowable future. I have no idea what I'm supposed to look like at the end of this process, and it's wearing thin on my spirit; I'm losing vision of what the result is supposed to look like. I beg God to show me at least a shadow of hope for what my future holds, only to be shown silence. More important lessons are learned in the delay rather than in the deliverance, but hope deferred is weighing down my soul. So I step out for another day of inventory, accounting, scheduling, marketing, ministering with a raw soul, weak, ineffective bandages on the wounds, hoping that my Savior will be right by my side even if I don't feel Him right away.

Oh the irony. As I sit down to blog about my upcoming commitment to read only Christian authors for my next 5 books, Amazon sends me the announcement that the just-released Dark Monk has now downloaded to my Kindle. I've been on the pre-release list for this followup to The Hangman's Daughter for MONTHS. (Which will you find more offensive: that my reading time is spent more with secular works, or that I use a Kindle?) I've struggled to find Christian fiction that really excites me, that keeps me hungry for more rather than reach for the next secular book on my bookcase because I want to read 'something good' next. So here's where you, our faithful Facebook family, come in: send in your suggestions of authors/series that you've come to love, and help me choose the next 5 books to read. You can recommend fiction, biographies, historical - almost anything but romance series. You'll be given an opportunity to vote for which of the five books you believe will give me fresh hope for a future as a Christian fiction enthusiast, and one of you will win a gift basket to start off your summer right!

Does He really call me perfect?

I know; there's an explicit version that no self-respecting Christian bookstore owner should ever commit heresy by listening to. But as I walk to my car, arms fully loaded, the tears and fears threaten to falter my steps as I leave the store after over 12 hours. How could I have been so busy for so long a day, feel this exhausted, and feel like I accomplished nothing? The lies flood my mind. I don't deserve to run this place; I'm failing to stay on top of orders, to return emails and voice messages, to make the right marketing decisions, to give wise advice to those coming in for guidance for difficult life-circumstances. Just today, there was a string of multiple ruined marriages; a sibling recently coming out of the closet; a 20-something daughter struggling as a single mom; a homeless man that wanted to hang out in the kid's jungle hut to finish his meal. I'm so ill-equiped to minister to these needs, and I feel guilty when impatience rears its ugly head because my to-do list is being further delayed. All I can fixate on is the un-dones of the day. The attack is soul-smothering and I let the tears fall as I hear the lyrics that, to me, ring true from the throne of God:

You're so mean
When you talk
About yourself, you were wrong
Change the voices in your head

Make them like you instead
So complicated
Look how we all make it
Filled with so much hatred
Such a tired game


Pretty, pretty please
Dont you ever, ever feel
Like you're less than,
Less than perfect

Pretty, pretty please
If you ever, ever feel
Like you're nothing
You are perfect to Me.

Whose idea was this? Oh right. God's.

My boss still laughs at how excited I was after my first 5K several years ago. This was a big deal for me at the time; 6 months later, he had thrown me into a 50K - and I survived. So I guess it's not that big of a surprise when, as a person who never desired to be her own boss or own her own business, instead of working my way up by, let's say, an on-line store, a small in-church store, or even going through a franchise, I decide to build my own Christian bookstore from the ground up myself. But reality hadn't set in; not with the first meeting of our new s-corporation officers; it wasn't opening the first box of business cards, receiving my first book order from the distributor, having an official logo worked up by a graphic artist. It wasn't even the $9500 check I wrote for a deposit and first month's rent on a rent space. It wasn't opening a bank account with 6 figures to start on build out and inventory. The reality of opening a bookstore from scratch came from my incomplete triathlon. Many of you have followed Iron Girl Traveling. Needless to say, blogs have not been updated recently due to other more urgent priorities. But my alter ego took a dual hit: a mandatory week vacation left me stuck in Sacramento for nine days straight and I didn't go further than 16 miles to Roseville. The kicker is, I had tickets to Alaska and Hawaii that went unused. HAWAII, PEOPLE. Then the following week, a sprint triathlon I had been braving near-drowning experiences to at least moderately train for suddenly showed up on my doorstep, and I hit a wall. Demands of building a brand-new business while continuing to work full-time and meet other day to day responsibilities left me completely unprepared when I slept through my alarm the morning of the triathlon. I scrambled to get out the door, knowing I'd never make it on time for the starting horn. I had to be ok with cheering from the sidelines. That was the first time the enormity of what I was trying to handle sunk in. My travel bug ungainly on its back, legs vainly thrashing to upright itself, my wanna-be triathlete identity suffering schizophrenic episodes. Now it feels real.

Notes from August

This is the point I start to doubt that I'm hearing God's voice. For my birthday, I received a plaque with this definition of FAITH: It's not that you believe that God CAN do it, it's that you believe He WILL do it. And that's where my deepest struggle lies. Of course, the God who created all we see, raises the dead, splits the seas CAN do it; the doubt is I'm worth His attention. What if we start this bookstore and nothing goes right? What if all the money we (and I mean, my mother) invests in this goes right down the drain, and I'm still on the hook for a high lease rent for the next 5 years? What if all the hype about this being my calling in life is really a fleeting attempt to pull myself out of a dark stretch of years surviving a failed marriage, an upside down mortgage, a job that is very clearly not my passion in life? What if this is a misguided attempt to find value in my life through the disguise of starting a ministry worthy of the rich heritage of my parents' missionary lifestyle?

Sweaty Feet

There have been many comparisons of the faith walk and a marathon, all more profound than anything I have to offer. But it's in the dark recesses of the mind when the body has bonked, or hit the wall, that spiritual parallels become its own glucose source to where I am traveling spiritually. Besides, trail runs are such a different beast from marathons run on smooth, ankle-friendly (but joint-destructive) pavement. So here are a few thoughts that ran through my mind during my latest trail race:

1. Take the downhills in a healthy stride. If the path is gracefully sloping downwards, I open up my stride, let gravity and my body weight carry me down on a wave of free energy. God allows stretches of merciful downhills in my spiritual walk; rather than use it as an excuse to coast, I take full advantage of this "easy" stretch to gain as much ground as quickly as possible. These are excellent times to gain ground by increasing prayer/devotion time, encouraging others on their uphill stretch, joyfully shouting His praise. Yes, I am still aggressively cautious enough to slow down on the hairpin turns and rocky stretches, knowing that if I let my momentum get beyond me, I'll overshoot the next turnoff and end up in the poison oak.

2. Be sensitive to when it's time to follow at someone else's pace and when it's time to pass on the left and set the pace. Going downhill, I was stuck behind two novice trail-runners and was forced to shuffle painfully slow a long stretch that I really needed to blast out while I had the momentum. I've known times that it is a better growth experience for me and for the other runner if I stay at their slower pace, encouraging and giving tips along the way. I'm usually the slower one that is receiving the benefits of a faster, more experienced runner slowing down their pace to mine and am immensely grateful to those both spiritual and physical mentors. Conversely, there are sections of the spiritual trail that God calls me to pull ahead and use the skills and energy He has placed in me to run a pace that is set by His Spirit alone, even if it draws me out of the pack.

3. Have sweaty feet. After the race, a rep for Asics was analyzing my gait and testing my shoe fit. Kneeling at my feet, poking and prodding my 2150s, he grinned up at me and said, "wow, you have sweaty feet!" Already red from the sun and the final sprint to try to get in under an hour (sorry, Kiley and Pamm, I didn't make it), I must have blushed a deeper crimson because he hastily added, "no, that's a good thing -- that means you ran a hard race." Indeed. I hope when I reach my goal, my Abba grins proudly and happily down at me and says, "wow, you have sweaty feet!"