Jennifer Eifrig, Author
Find me on
  • Home
  • About Me
  • The Novels
  • The Characters
  • Blog
  • Interviews
  • Contact

Grace, Period

12/3/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
Like thousands of others, I drove home yesterday afternoon to the news of a mass shooting in San Bernadino, CA. As I pulled into the garage, I began a routine that's become so automatic it's not even conscious activity anymore:
  • 48-hour live-TV blackout - nothing except on-demand, Disney Channel, or DVDs on screen
  • Keep in touch with the outside world via Google News, but make sure the browser tab is only open when I'm alone
  • Think of how to explain in case one of the kids hears something
  • Pray for inner peace
  • Smile. Keep it together. Pretend everything's ok

This is what one has to do when one has a child with severe anxiety. She can't ever know, at least not until she's much older, that there is this kind of violence and uncertainty in the world. She struggles enough now. Sandy Hook was the hardest - it was so close to home, and the kids were the same age as the victims - but I managed. My kids know something happened, but they don't know the details, and that's ok.

Oh, and I did one more thing, after the children came home: I baked cookies. A new recipe for me, German Spice Cookies, but I used some vintage cutters that came out of my great-grandmother's house when the last of her children died.

I read recently that one's life is a hyphen, or more properly, an en dash, between two numbers: the date you were born, and the date you die. What you make out of that en dash is up to you.

The credit card companies call the en dash time your "grace period," the time between your purchase and when you have to actually pay for it without accruing interest.

(Cookies… punctuation… grace period… where am I going with this? Hang in there. It'll all make sense soon, I promise.)

As I rolled out those cookies to a perfect 1/8" thickness, I reflected on how powerless I actually am. Unlike my characters, I'm not magical, nor am I a brilliant inventor, nor a skilled fighter. If anything, I'm more like Max, who doesn't have any particular magical ability except a really big heart (his true name is "the compassionate one," after all). I don't have a huge fan base. I don't have money. I don't have a public voice to speak of. I'm basically one of millions of ordinary people struggling with ordinary lives in complete obscurity until the date on the other side of that en dash arrives. Until the grace period ends, and you have to settle your accounts.

Oh, but that grace period is filled with tiny little moments and words and actions that are invisible to almost everyone on the planet, except the people closest to us.

Those cookies are miracles.

They saved the day from misery and despair. They transformed a blah rainy Wednesday into a holiday celebration. They saved my children from feeling my grief and frustration, by turning them into spicy, crispy bites of love. Those cookies connected me to women in my family who are long dead, but who came alive when I used their cutters. My kids felt safe and warm and secure, and I had something to do with my hands.

Grace is best understood by looking at the adjectival form of the word, meaning, "to make something difficult look effortless." We call dancers and skaters "graceful" when we watch them perform. Sometimes, it looks so easy we criticize when they fail - "I can't believe she messed up that triple toe loop!" - as if we do anything close. 

Those cookies were grace-filled: seemingly simple, easy, ordinary, but in reality they accomplished what words and logic and science could not. And God's grace is shown in something so basic, so ordinary as the birth of a human child, and in one more violent death in a violent world. Just one. That's all it took, and yet that one life - that one date, en dash, date - was more gloriously impossible, to paraphrase Madelaine L'Engle, than we can ever understand. That's grace.

So here's the point: maybe I can't do anything about the violence and senselessness rampant in our country, let alone the world. Mostly likely you can't either. You're probably much like me, dear reader. But I can do two things gracefully: I can bake cookies really well; and I can use whatever skill I have with words to tell you what you can do to change the world.

I want you to bake cookies.

I want you to bake a dozen cookies for each of the lives whose en dash was ended by gun violence in the USA this year.

No judgment. No words. Just cookies. A dozen. Five dozen. Whatever you like.

When you're done, tell me how many you baked and what kind. I'll post a running tally. Who knows, maybe together we can bake 12,000 dozen? More?

Then, eat them, give them away, share them with friends. No explanations. Just enjoy the grace, period.

1 Comment

What We Do For Our Kids, or Why Aromatherapy Is Hazardous to My Financial Health

10/20/2015

0 Comments

 
Let me repeat, if I haven't already made this clear, that the life of a novelist is far from glamorous. 

I'm nowhere closer to being a runaway best-selling author. Connecting with readers is a bitch load of work, and while I have many gifts, effective promotion isn't one of them.

Actual writing is real, hard work, and the time in which to do it is preciously scarce. Because I'm not able to live on my royalties (see above), I have to spend the majority of my working hours in my "regular" life, which actually yields income. And that income is really important.

A recurrent theme on this blog is how I'm dealing with my elder child'a anxiety. I tumble through the proverbial hoops, arranging activities, visits to professionals, and just plain hanging on by my fingernails during the hell known as homework hour. I'll do whatever I can possibly do just to make the child's life a little bit easier, and by extension, the entire family's.

All of it costs money.

Yesterday, I gave up a birthday present for myself in favor of a lovely new gadget, the GeoSpa Aromatherapy Diffuser. Clocking in at $35, this wonder uses ultrasonic vibration to create water vapor and diffuse therapeutic essential oils into the air, for supposed health benefits. The child had asked for one of these. I have no idea how she learned of such things, but I've ceased to be amazed at the breadth of her knowledge. All I knew, when I saw this lovely in a discount department store near home, the only one on the shelf, was that bringing it home would make her happy, if only for a little while, and it might, just might turn a bit of the tide against the battle with the ever-present anxiety monster.

How ridiculous is that?

Of course, it came home. I'm trying to get rid of clutter in my house, not acquire new, but it came home. I'm trying to pay down debts and be responsible, but it came home. I have absolutely no indication that it actually has any value other than making the air smell nice, but it came home. She wanted it. 'Nuff said.

Looking back, I see the foolishness, but I also realize that I could no more have left that silly GeoSpa in the store than I could cut off my own arm. How many times have we done foolish things out of simple blind adoration of our children?

And now, as I write this, I hear in my head the words of scripture: "The foolishness of God is beyond all human wisdom." And I know that someone loved me in that completely foolish, crazy, blind, adoring way, enough to buy me a gift worth more than any aromatherapy diffuser - worth more than anything imaginable.

The things we do for our kids, right?

​Peace, lovelies.
0 Comments

Time enough

6/4/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
I like fortune cookies. I mean, the actual cookie part. I find their subtle (at best) flavor and crunchy texture appealing. My kids do, too, especially my elder daughter. So occasionally I'll buy a box of them at the store as a treat, rather than wait until there's a cooking disaster or mommy just plain goes on strike and we're forced to order Chinese food.

Some people tell me that's "cheating." It's not a fortune cookie unless it's presented as a gift of purchase by the underpaid food service worker who packs up your takeout order. I say, they're never "fortune" cookies, anyway, they're proverb cookies, so pffft to you. I'll buy them in the box if I want to.

I'm telling you this because we happen to have such a box in our cupboard right now, and I happen to have eaten two in succession that yielded the following "fortunes" a.k.a. proverbs:
"There is yet time for you to take a different path" and "The limits to your abilities are set by you."

Heavy stuff.


Read More
0 Comments

The Utter Irrationality of God

9/19/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
Those of you who've read DR might be surprised to learn that I don't, in fact, know the lectionary by heart. Not even close. So when this past Sunday's Gospel lesson was read, I was pleasantly surprised by it. You see, I based an entire, almost-completed sequel to DR on its premise: that not only does God work in mysterious ways, S/He is, by human standards, completely insane.

Yep, you read correctly. Insane. Wacko. Freakin' no sense whatsoever. Don't try to apply logic to the Almighty. It just doesn't work.

Calm rationality is touted as the way to solve human problems, especially interpersonal ones. I get that. Nothing happens except hurt and maybe violence and bloodshed if two people or groups or nations are screaming at each other so loudly they can't possibly hear anything, let alone a dissenting voice. And when leaders make decisions that affect a larger group, they have to make choices that will do the most good for the most people. I get that, too.

But we, as human beings, are limited by space and time and available resources. We need to be rational about our decision making. Not so God. God is infinite, without limits. Therefore, God doesn't need to abide by rationality.

So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who need no repentance. 

"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Read More
0 Comments
    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Jen Eifrig

    is a Christian urban fantasy author by night and a mother and non-profit consultant by day.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    October 2011
    April 2011

    Categories

    All
    All
    Bad Grammar
    Book Signing
    Deb E Howell
    Free
    Getting It Right
    Greg Mitchell
    H.G. Ferugson
    Indie Authors
    Interviews
    Irrationality Of God
    Laura Popp
    Morgan L. Busse
    Nathan Hale
    Next Big Thing
    Rl Copple
    Sequel
    Steampunk
    Trailers
    Twitterature
    Witches & Witchcraft
    Writing The Novels

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly