SLAYING THE DEPRESSION DRAGON (Part 2) Laura L. Valenti

This is the second part of a two-part blog, the first being posted last week. If you haven’t read it, please flip back and do so (Of course, you can always go back and read any of my previous columns, too!) so that you can follow this week’s conclusion.             

And so the battle against the Depression Dragon began. Many times it was difficult but generally, “He” was just out there, skulking around in the shadows, like the Bible says about the Devil himself, waiting for a soul to devour. I kept watch, glancing over my shoulder and that way, I could always be sure of where “He” was.

                That was my survival technique for all the years from 1977 when my mother died to 1995, eighteen years later when Francesca graduated high school in 1994, and then it was her sister’s turn in the spring of 1995. Suddenly, as the old cowboys say, the wheels came off the wagon! I wasn’t watching “Him” close enough. “He” got free and came right for me. He had me in his clutches and it was just like 1977, I couldn’t breathe! We had 4 teenagers in the house, ages 16, 17, 18 and 19. The 16 year old ‘lost’ it and tried to jump out of our van as it was cruising down I-44, with Warren at the wheel, bringing him back from a counselor’s appointment in Springfield. It was determined his mental/emotional state was such he had to go to a residential care center. What we didn’t realize was that he and his sister, our youngest daughter had never been separated and just as she was about to graduate high school, she hit the ‘panic button’ and ran off with a boy we had never met. He was the older brother of a friend and the next we knew, she didn’t come home. She stayed with his parents and his sister for a time (After feeding them a line about us being abusive. If making your bed, taking care of your chores at home, insisting you talk with respect not only to us but to all in the family, is abusive then I guess we were guilty.)  She quickly got into ‘couch surfing’ where young people crash on somebody’s couch for a couple days or weeks, until those who are rightfully in the house, throw them out and then they go on to the next couch. Suddenly, two of our four kids were gone to places I did not want my children to be and I was devastated.

The Depression Dragon was out of the shadows, headed for my jugular with those big nashing teeth and that very same summer, our pastor, Larry Snow introduced us to a program called Camino. It had all kinds of Spanish names with Jesus right smack in the middle of it. I went that first summer as what they now call a participant, a new-bee, somebody who had never been there before. I’ve been going back almost every time they hold a weekend since, to cook, wash dishes and serve food to all the ones who have come through since. Camino saved my marriage and my life but like I said, Jesus is and has always been at the center of Camino so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this kind of Christian leadership program produces all sorts of miracles.

In 1995, the Dragon got away for a bit, wreaked havoc in my life, nearly took it from me again, but with Prozac and a good doctor, I made it through. (I was one of the lucky ones, a year on Prozac was an immense help.) We kicked that dragon back to the shadows and I made sure I got back on my guard. Watch him, watch him, watch him! If you don’t “He” will be back to capture your soul and take it to a dark and airless place.

                Now fast forward another few years to the present. I’ve taken Celexa off and on over the years to help keep him under control. And it does work but drugs like Prozac and Celexa, they round off the ends of the spectrum. In other words, you don’t spend all day in the bed, not caring, hiding from the world. That’s the bad (negative) side and that’s good. But it also rounds off the tears that come when you are happy and proud, like when the oldest daughter marries her best friend 20 years ago this December or your youngest finally marries her long lost love, after they’d both foolishly married other people over the years. (They’ve only known each other since they were in the fourth or fifth grade together.) They got married—basically when their 6 year old son told ‘em they needed to get married. There are no happy tears when your first (of seven) grandsons is born or your daughter graduates from nursing school with honors, or when you hear your words coming out of your oldest son’s mouth as he speaks to his teenage son and tells him to straighten up, behave yourself, and don’t embarrass your family. And you realize he really was listening to you all those years back. My happy tears were gone but that was the price to be paid to keep the Depression Dragon in the shadows.

Now, one of the youngest grandsons has been diagnosed with Celiac disease, the one in which the child has no tolerance for gluten. It means his digestive system is a disaster and has no ability to pull the nutrition from his food. It is as if he eating cardboard every day and nothing more. To rebuild his system, the doctors recommended something called The Whole 30 diet, easily found on the Internet. It truly is an extreme diet, done for only 30 days. Only 6 items are allowed….meat, fish, seafood, veggies, fruits and eggs, basically Biblical foods. That means no sugar, no artificial sweeteners of any kind, no breads or gluten, no grains, including corn, no dairy, and NO PROCESSED FOODS OF ANY KIND. Through an MRI, the doctors has determined that this child no longer had the fibers in his gut that take his nutrition from his food but with this diet, they believe he can re-grow them. That’s all fine and good except that he has a 9 year old brother so his dad (a doctor) determined the only way this is going to work is if the whole family goes on it together. Warren and I were there visiting at the time and he says to me, why don’t we do this with Tyson, to be one more support? Come on. We need to straighten up our own eating anyway and it’s only 30 days, we can do it. And so we begin….

Now for some of us, if there is no sweetness to the coffee, there is no point. Black coffee or tea are allowed but not for this girl. I can do the tea but not the coffee, so there’s the first big loss. And no chocolate, OH MY! And no corn???? We live on corn, corn tortillas and so, it is the 3 Big C’s--Coffee, Chocolate and Corn that bother me….for the first 3 days which were difficult but then after a few more days, it got easier and at the end of 2 weeks, it was a breeze, already a habit.

 I’m living on grilled chicken, steak, shrimp, grilled asparagus, red peppers, zucchini, and fresh pineapple spears (yum!) Strawberries, blueberries, big dark fresh cherries, scrambled eggs with homemade salsa, smoked salmon, tilapia sautéed in clarified butter…I mean, it’s tough, you know, eating all this good food and calling it a diet. I lost a few pounds but suddenly, “He” was gone. The Dragon was gone. I don’t know where “He” went but for the first time in 50 years, I am FREE! The only thing I can imagine is that it is the processed food. 

For more than 30 days, I have had no soda or liquor nor have I eaten any potassium sorbate, calcium disodium EDTA,  tert-Butylhydroquinone or tertiary butylhydroquinen, a derivative of hydroquinone, found in microwave popcorn, propyl gallate, potassium chloride or any of the other dozens of chemicals added to our foods every day and my head is spinning! Not from what I have ingested but from what I have not. Someone told me, Laura, you have so much energy, it’s like your “ON” something and I said, I know. It’s wild! I haven’t felt this good in years, maybe 50 years!

Think about it. It’s right out there for you today. On the net. It comes with a book for only $15 and my friends at Lebanon Books have it right here in Lebanon. Buy Local! It’s the best at $15 and it might turn out like me, the best $15 you’ve ever spent. I love the book’s opening line. Don’t Say This is Hard. Beating Cancer is Hard. This is only 30 days. It might just change your life, too. It certainly has mine! I know I sound like a brand new Christian…..YOU GOTTA GET JESUS IN YOUR LIFE! But this is incredible! I’m now past 30 days and we are adding foods back slowly. Very slowly and it is still so good. Because now God and I—not the sugar, not the chemicals—are in control and it is wonderful! God bless you. He certainly has me! And Tyson is doing better, too!

Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home, and

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting

Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

www.BetweentheStarandtheCross.com

We know that Jesus had 33 years Between the Star at his birth and the Cross at his death. We each have a time between our star and our cross. We just don't know how long that might be. The real question is 'what will you do with yours?'  Blessings, LV

SLAYING THE DEPRESSION DRAGON (Part 1) Laura L. Valenti

           

As a teen around age 15, I began my lifelong battle with depression. Now back then in the mid-1960s, no one believed teens really dealt with such things. Many folks in high school with me did so with their drug of choice—booze, marijuana, LSD, pills, even heroin—but none of those things held any appeal for me. First of all, I knew if I got involved with anything but booze (that was OK in my dad’s book) he would simply kill me, tell God I died, and move on. I was also terrified of all that stuff. I LIKED knowing what was going on around me. I had no desire to take anything that would jam up my faculties, make it harder for me to watch, listen, learn, and KNOW exactly what was happening.

 I did the best I could, hanging out with my best friend, Diane, working at the YMCA as a swim instructor/lifeguard—exercise kept me going a lot of days—listening to my radio (didn’t go anywhere without my transistor radio if I could help it, the precursor to all these IPODS and M3P players today) but it didn’t matter because it didn’t last long. When I was 16, my mother had what was called back then a nervous breakdown. They sent her away for a few days and when she came back, she was on some prescription routine of MAOI drugs, the depression drug of choice at that time. She was not allowed to have cheese or wine, fermented foods. Those were, in her book, two of the major food groups and that loss simply added to her depression. She continued to fight it, through a divorce from my abusive father, who left her the same year she turned 40, through an even worse second marriage, and through the birth of my father’s only son (She and my father had 3 daughters). Somehow she always believed if she could have given my father a son, he would have stayed. And as a second impending divorce loomed, three months after the birth of my half-brother, at age 48, when I was 26, she took her own life. Now certainly, no one, myself included, was paying any attention to MY depression anymore.

                And now I teetered on the edge. Three days after her death, I was ready to follow her. I lay in the bed, thinking about where all the pills were in the house. Everyone else was asleep. It wouldn’t take but a minute to slip out of bed and take care of business. I considered it very seriously and if not for the grace of God, the patience and love of a very good husband and the unconditional love of a 15 month old daughter named Francesca, I might have done just that. Instead the depression continued to overwhelm me.

At first, I simply hid from it, burying my head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. I began to realize what a monster depression really was and that it would eventually take me life, one way or another. Day after day, sitting around in a rental house in the snow in a town where I knew no one while Warren was gone to work all day,  I chased a little girl who still had to be fed, her diapers changed and entertained and thank God for it, because that is all that kept me alive. And for a long while, I didn’t care. Let the depression come and get me. It’s not like I felt like I had so much to live for anyway. I slowly realized it was a genetic thing, inherited from my mother, who got it from BOTH of her parents, so it was going to happen eventually, one way or another. And then a new realization—if it came after me, it might eventually come after my daughter, right down the genetic line. Now, I had a reason to fight. It could come after me and I shrugged my shoulders. But now the thought that this dragon monster I thought of as the Depression Dragon, might come to attack my child, was a whole different kettle of fish. Now I had to fight. Now I had to win, no matter what.

                I started with the research, reading everything I could. Phrases of the day—manic-depression, mania, finding out more about lithium and this MAOI stuff, two major sources of treatment with various results, from fair, not usually good to horrific.  There was electro-shock therapy which of course, was made over into more than one horror movie. There was confusion—hurt, men and women did not really talk to each, not like they do today. My father didn’t talk to my mother about her illness. She was his rock, she fell apart and he walked away. A great simplification, complicated by the economic crush of 1969 which under the Republicans damaged and destroyed many small businesses, like that of my parents, i.e., the money ran out and so did my dad. And my mother, with all her other problems, could not bear to abandon the customers they had served over the years and promised to continue their service contracts. The business bore my father’s name. He was the one who had made those promises, not her, to customers all through the 1950s and 60s but she was the one who stood firm on them. Her overwhelming sense of responsibility for a burden that wasn’t even hers to bear, was one more thing that led her to an early grave.

                I struggled on but the one thing that always killed me, that always made me cry no matter how much time had passed is when I would remember how much my mama adored the only grandchild she ever met, Francesca. My mama got the chance to know her for a brief 15 months but Francesca would never know her, would never remember the grandmother who loved her so much. It was time to fight this Depression Dragon, the biggest fight of my life.

(To be Continued) 
 

Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home, and

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting

Between the Star and the Cross: The hoice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

www.BetweentheStarandtheCross.com

We know that Jesus had 33 years Between the Star at his birth and The Cross at his death. We each have a time between our star and our cross.  We just don't know how long that might be. The real question is 'what will you do with yours?"  Blessings, LV

THE ANGEL FOOD CAKE by Laura L. Valenti

                Those of you who follow blogs regularly know they use Guest Bloggers from time to time and I am doing so today in a different sort of way. I just spent a fabulous weekend at a church retreat with an incredible group of women. One of my friends there, Jo Stair, sent me a story which she said went ‘round on the Internet some years ago. I’d never seen it and it tickled me so, I just had to share it.  Jo laughed when I asked her if I could use her as a Guest Blogger and said, “Sure. It’s not a very spiritual message perhaps but still pretty interesting!”

                Have you ever told a white lie? Alice, new to the community, was to bake a cake for the Baptist Church Ladies’ group but she forgot until the last minute. She remembered the morning of the bake sale and after rummaging through cabinets, she found an angel food cake mix. She quickly made it while drying her hair, dressing and helping her son, Bryan, pack for Scout camp.

                However, when Alice took the cake from the oven, the center had dropped flat and the cake was horribly disfigured. She realized there was no time to bake another cake and tried to figure out what to do next. This cake was particularly important to Alice because she did so want to fit in at her new church and community of new friends. Being inventive, she looked around for something to build up the center of the cake. She found a roll of toilet paper, plunked it in and covered it with icing. Not only did the finished product look beautiful, it looked perfect!

                Before leaving the house to drop the cake by the church and go to work, Alice woke up her daughter, Amanda and gave her some money. She also gave her very specific instructions to be at the bake sale the moment it opened at 9:30 and buy this cake and bring it home. When Amanda arrived at the sale, she found that the perfect cake had already been sold! Amanda grabbed her cell phone and called her mother. Alice was horrified. Everyone would know! What would they think of her? She would be ostracized, talked about, ridiculed.

                That night she lay awake, thinking about people pointing fingers behind her back. The next day she promised herself she would try not to think about the cake. She would attend the fancy luncheon-bridal shower at the home of a friend of a friend and try to have a good time. She didn’t really want to go because the hostess was a real snob who had more than once looked down her nose at Alice. Alice was a single parent and not from one of the founding families of the town. Having already RSVP’d though, she could not think of a believable excuse to stay away.

                The meal was elegant and the company definitely upper crust Old South. To Alice’s horror, the cake in question was presented for dessert! Alice felt the blood drain from her body when she saw it brought in. She started out of her chair to rush to the hostess and tell her what was about to transpire. Before she could get to feet, however, the Mayor’s wife commented, “what a beautiful cake!”

                “Thank you,” the snobby hostess replied. “I baked it myself!”

                Alice sat back down and smiled. “God is good!”  

Psalm 119:103

Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home, and

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting

Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

www.BetweentheStarandtheCross.com

      Between the Star and the Cross....we know that Jesus had 33 years between the Star at his birth and the Cross at his death. We each have a time between our star and our cross, we just don't know exactly how long ours might be. The more important question is, what will you do with yours?

CAMP DAVID OF THE OZARKS: ALWAYS IMPRESSIVE Laura L. Valenti

I am working at Camp David of the Ozarks for the week as a Camp Granny for the 8^th summer in a row. This is, without a doubt, one of the most joyous God-drenched places on earth and most folks don’t even know it exists! Camp David is a Christian camp for the children of Missouri prisoners. If a child has a mother or father in jail or prison, they can come to this five day camp that offers crafts, horseback riding, skits, puppet shows, swimming, singing, sleeping in cabins, prayer, Bible study, field games, nature study, a campfire night and fishing—all the things we knew as kids at church camp plus a whole lot more.  And it’s all free, no charge to the kids or their families. The two most important things they’ve been teaching here for the past 12 years is how much each child is loved, by Jesus and all the people here and that their lives are their own, that they can choose the kind of life they want to lead. And to that end, after 12 years, they have many of their campers returning as camp counselors and support staff.  That, however, does not even begin to tell the story of this incredible place.

                Ben and Grace Smith are the director and co-director of Camp David and have been from its first year when they welcomed 18 campers. For the past several years, they have served over 200 campers each summer, boys and girls, in separate weeks, ages 8 through 16. In addition to the campers, there are support staff, like a mini-camp within the camp, young people, both former campers and Christian youth, many homeschoolers or missionaries’ children, who help cook, wash dishes, cut grass, care for the young children of the staff, and help out in a dozen other ways to keep the place, running. There are camp ministry folks who supervise the counselors, who are high school and college aged volunteers, who work for a pittance all summer long to lend their support to this program. And it is all run on donations and fund-raising that takes place all year long to make it happen again and again each summer.

                And then there are folks like me, Grannies and Aunties, who come, some for weeks at a time or others like me, just for a week or so, and write letters to campers, read bedtime stories, help with crafts and any other tasks that need done at the moment, from taking a camper with a sprained ankle to the ER, to helping bait a hook or take a fish off the line for a first time fishermen to helping a young lady on Princess Dinner night, dress up in a formal with high heels and make-up and get her picture taken, just like a real prom queen.

It is impossible to say who is the most impressive here, the directors who do this, year after year,  along with their five children, ages 6 through 19, who work just as hard as their parents all summer long, helping children who come out of situations, the horrors of which they can only imagine; the college students who serve in this ministry, young people already on fire for God and busy putting that desire to such a positive use even at their young age; the youngsters who have come through the camp themselves and now return to lend a helping hand to others whose families are also fractured by crime, drugs and dysfunction. And then people, like me who come to do what little we can and which often seems to be little more than the chance to rub shoulders for a few days with these saints in the making. I’ve been in law enforcement and rehab work for over 20 years now and I’ve never seen a better anti-crime fighting program than this.

Jesus walked this earth 2000 years ago and he taught us by example that LIFE is all about relationships. He rounded up 12 pretty rag tag types, taught them everything he could get into their thick heads in three years and then told them to go out there and teach it to everyone they met. THAT is still going on in a little place right here in the Ozarks called Camp David. If you would like to know more about Camp David of the Ozarks or contribute to their mission, just check them out on the Internet. I guarantee you will be impressed!

A LESSON FROM A SALVADORAN SAND CASTLE by Laura L. Valenti

     With the Independence Day holiday upon us, we will undoubtedly see numerous columns about patriotism, the cost of freedom and the like. It reminds me of an incident from over 40 years ago on a beach in El Salvador through which I saw a different view of America, courtesy of a Salvadoran college student.

     It was Semana Santa, Easter week and a group of us, Peace Corps volunteers had gathered at the beach where we were sitting in the sand with the gentle surf lapping at our toes. There were five of us, from Missouri, Kansas, New York, Connecticut, and California and without anyone saying a word, five sets of hands began digging, constructing a sand castle. One of the fellows worked at the national university in the capital city of San Salvador and he had brought a couple of his university students with him. As one of them watched us, he spoke up.

     “This is something I do not understand about Americans. No one said, ‘let us build a sand castle’ and yet each of you knew immediately what the others were doing and joined in. My country is much smaller than yours, only 160 miles one end to the other. I come from the capital, a little over 100 miles from here but if I sat down and began to dig in the sand, these local fishermen would not know what I was doing and certainly would not come to join me. How do you do that?”

    That gave each of us something to think about for several moments before we could formulate an answer to such an intriguing question. After much discussion, we decided it was a combination of America’s public education system—we all grew up reading about Dick and Jane and Spot, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys—and television programs, from Howdy Doody to Romper Room to Mighty Mouse,  The Lone Ranger, and Leave It To Beaver. No matter what part of the country we grew up in, that was our childhood and it gave us a number of common denominators.

    It was an answer we could all agree on and one that seemed to satisfy the student who posed the original question. He went on to share with us that although he and his countrymen lived much closer to each other geographically, they did not share the same educational advantages—many of the poorer fishermen had little or no formal schooling and certainly didn’t have access to television as children. At that time in the 1970s, I lived in that fishing village. There were only three known televisions in the entire town and one of them was in a well-known combination bar and brothel!

    It is food for thought in terms of what has united us and continues to make America work as a country. There are more countries in the world that struggle with the issues that have long plagued tiny El Salvador, divergent populations with educational levels that cover the entire spectrum and/or with different cultures and languages, such as indigenous populations, dialects vs. a dominant national language. Likewise, there are only a handful of countries with the geographical span and physical resources that have blessed America and still, we have managed to hold it all together for over 200 years.

    The question now as we face an uncertain political future and an increasingly bitter campaign, is how do we continue to do so? The answer is to watch and listen carefully. What exactly are these two campaigns actually marketing? We may not be in love with either of the major candidates but in listening to the campaigns, I hear one in particular marketing hate, just one step down from a now infamous campaign in Europe in the 1930s. Back then, the man at the center of that firestorm, concentrated on one particular ethnic group, blaming much of their country’s financial troubles on the businesses, the men involved and their entire families.  Today, Donald Trump is blaming various groups—ethnic, religious, and racial—for America’s problems as well as women in general. He may be spreading the blame around, but his promotional strategy is still the same as Adolf Hitler’s. Do we really want to put someone in the White House who blames everyone else, particularly entire ethnic, religious or gender groups, for the problems we face? History has shown us the results of campaigns built on hate, from Herod to Hitler, and they have always brought nothing but misery and heartbreak for all.

WHY ASK WHY INDEED Laura L. Valenti

                Discovering significant bits of philosophy in unexpected places, like movies or even commercials, has long been a fascination of mine. For instance, one of my favorites, ‘why ask why?’ may have originated with a beer commercial but it reminds me that sometimes we spend a lot of time, seeking an answer that is of no true value. My favorite application for this one is life with a teenager, why ask why indeed. It still doesn’t help much.

                A thought-provoking comparison this past week, pointed out that seeking Donald Trump as a solution to this country’s problems is similar to putting your brother-in-law (or brother or best friend) into a position of authority or responsibility where ‘you just know he would be great’. You are, after all, certain he is a smart guy, one who is not afraid to say what he thinks and who can come up with solutions that prove he thinks outside of the box, just by all the stuff he says all the time. On the other hand, he never sticks with any one job for any length of time, runs through money like nobody you’ve ever known, and can tick people off faster than rain evaporating off of a hot Ozark sidewalk! If he could just get into the right situation, he would be great!

                And so you (or someone else in your circle of family or friends) have at some point in the past, helped to set him up as a manager of a shop or store, a campground or hotel, or secured a spot for him in management training at your firm where he promptly imploded once again, as he has in the past. And so now, Donald Trump thinks as do many of his followers,  that he, someone who has never run for elected office in his life and who has managed to run several businesses into the ground or into court-action, would make a good president of one of the few countries in the world that has the capability of being self-sufficient.  Do we really want to give everything from the nuclear codes to sway over a significant portion of the world’s petroleum supply to a man with little to no diplomatic skills?

                We may love our brother, son, or brother-in-law who is the alcoholic, drug addict, or predictable never-ending proverbial screw-up and we’ve even seen him do well for years at a time, but when the pressure gets to be too much, he caves.  Donald Trump may have the ego for the job as POTUS (President Of The United States) but that is about the only inarguable qualification I’ve seen that he has for the job.

                Maybe he needs to go back and take a bit of philosophy from another American showman who spoke at the last Republication convention in 2012. Clint Eastwood as Detective Dirty Harry (Callahan) uttered the immortal words, ‘A man’s got to know his limitations’ in one of his movies from years ago. Now there’s a bit of philosophy Donald Trump needs to take to heart.

HATE, HATE AND WHERE IS THE LOVE? Laura L. Valenti

Is it just me or is there more HATE out there than in a very, very long time? We've had the Republicans and Democrats (or Conservatives and Liberals) at one others' throats for a couple of decades now but it has certainly gotten worse since (God Bless Him) President Obama came into office. As a friend of mine put it just this past weekend, "I am appalled at the amount of racism that still exists in this country! I thought we were past so much more of this by now." And then we have Donald Trump running around the country (and I'm sorry to say, with ample help from the national media) busy stirring up as much racism, xenophobia and misogyny in a few months as the KKK has managed to do in the past decade. And now in addition to the whole gay marriage issue, people are going nuts over bathrooms!

Now allow me to explain why I should be considered something of any ‘expert’ to speak on that last issue. First, as a ten year veteran of a county sheriff’s department, I can tell you right up front, I’ve seen more than my fair share of sex offenders, both those our department arrested and those who were required to register regularly. Sexual offenders come in all sizes, colors, religions, and ages, although the vast majority are straight white guys. WHY?  Because the majority of males in America are still straight white guys so go figure. Next, it is a fact that sexual predators do not care WHAT the sign says on the bathroom door nor are they particular about WHO might be using said bathroom. Sexual predators, from teenagers to decrepit old men, will take their opportunity for a new conquest wherever they can and an elevator is every bit as dangerous, if not more so, than any public bathroom. (And yes, I’ve been known to step off of an elevator at the last possible moment, when a man who just didn’t set right with me, stepped on as the doors were closing.)

Secondly, as a person who has traveled outside the United States and a friend to many others who have done so, I can tell you, public bathrooms in many other countries are much more open and unsecured than those in the US. I am thrilled to see so many more clean functioning public bathrooms, complete with toilet paper, in Latin America than when I was a child, teen and young adult there. So often back then, you were better off with ‘clean’ bushes! My friends who travel in Europe and Asia, tell me of same sex bathrooms everywhere and a lock on the door in many of those places, is a true luxury! And no, bathroom sexual assaults are no more prevalent there than here.

Finally, if a person is serious about protecting their child from sexual molestation, then look first within your own home! Literally, in ten years at the sheriff’s department, every case of rape, sexual molestation, abuse, and assault we dealt with, was perpetrated by someone known to the victim. Women, children, and adolescents, both male and female, were assaulted by their own—significant others, uncles, grandfathers, classmates, dates, stepbrothers and cousins—but more often than any other, by mother’s new boyfriend or husband. Yes, watch the nightly news, if you are in doubt. Mothers’ poor judgment or maybe just an incredible hunger for some attention for herself, is a greater threat to her child’s innocence than who is using the bathroom at school or the local Wal-Mart. Are there stranger sexual assaults? Yes, they do exist but statistically, a child is much more likely to be in a serious car accident than to be sexually attacked by a stranger.

So America, some, and certainly most in this area, like to claim we are a Christian nation or at least a nation based on Christian principles. The last time I checked Jesus’ principal message was one of Love. How does that jive with all that we are hearing from our politicians, from Donald Trump and the bathroom protestors?  If we are going to claim the name of Christ, then we must live according to what he told us…”go and make followers of all people in the world. Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Teach them to obey everything that I have taught you….(Matthew 28:19-20) That is not a message of HATE, by anyone’s measure.

WRITING & PUBLISHING, THE JOYS & PITFALLS Laura L. Valenti

One of the fun habits that several of us as writers enjoy is trading books with other authors when we find something of interest at a craft show or book fair. I've participated in several of these exchanges over the years, swapping a copy of Between the Star and the Cross or The Heart of the Spring for someone else's novel. As a result I've discovered some books that are real treasures, like Sage  by Debora Clark from Alton, Missouri and South Wind Home by Gerald Lewellen of Bolivar. Conversely, I've also come across a couple of books that I could not bring myself to finish. I simply didn't want to waste the time. After three or four chapters, they were boring me to tears and I placed them in my paper recycle box in that I did not to foist them on to anyone else.

Meanwhile, I received an email this week from a friend of a friend, and a fellow writer. A year or two ago, my friend had asked me to read his friend's first novel. I told him I would be willing to do so, but only with the understanding that in doing so, I would be free to be honest in my assessment of the writing. I told him, I would not be cruel but if his friend wasn't interested in my true opinion, good or bad, then let's not even go there. A few days later, I received an email that included the full novel. I'm sorry to say I no longer remember the name of the work. I was impressed with the fact that the author was quite knowledgeable about computers and espionage or at least, he was very good at convincing someone like me, who knows very little factual information about either subject, that he knew what he was talking about. Still, while the book was interesting, it wasn't a real page turner but since I had promised my friend, I kept reading.

And then suddenly on page 150, everything changed. The main character was on his way to see his best friend in Kuwait, whom he expected to meet him at the airport. Instead, he was met by a unknown colleague of his friend who promised to take him to meet his friend. His next stop, however, was not the hotel room he expected but a dark dank cell with no explanation of any kind. He found himself locked away in a foreign country, with his cries for help met only with silence. Now I was turning pages. I finished the rest of the book which turned out well and of course, I wrote back to my friend to say, this story really starts on page 150!

Ironically, I'd actually been given the same advice years before, regarding my novel, Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice.  My friend and mentor, the late Ellen Gray Massey, told me after reading it, "well, you know your book really starts at the beginning of the third chapter."  She immediately followed it with one of her favorite editorial phrases, "but of course, it is your book."  I wanted so badly to be done. I didn't want to re-write the first several chapters. I wanted to be done. But then I thought about the fact that I had asked her to read it and there certainly wasn't any point, if I didn't take her best advice. And so of course, I re-wrote it and she was right. It made for a much better book.

The author of this book wrote back this week to say he had never finished his book due to his age of 85 and his wife was now having health problems. He said he would really like to find a co-author and then perhaps self-publish. I encouraged him to look for a co-author through local writers groups but to be very careful when looking into self-publishing. While I have independently published all of my books (except the first one, The Fifteen Most Asked Questions About Adoption in 1985 which I was fortunate to have picked up by a traditional publisher), I've met up with several other authors over the years, who have told me, "It only cost me $3000 to get my book published and I'm so happy with it!" And while I'm trying not to go weak in the knees or let my eyes pop out of my head, all I've ever been able to think to say at a moment like that is, 'I'm so glad you are pleased."  Because what I'm really thinking is, my husband would kill me if I spent that kind of money on publishing a book as well as, how do they ever plan to make that money back?

The truth is I tell anyone who is considering self-publishing to research that as carefully as you would anything else. (Isn't that what the Internet is really there for?) I've never spent more than $500 for the initial cost of publishing one of my books and as a result, it doesn't take long to make that money back. For anyone who is looking into publishing, be careful. Do your homework. Make certain you have a good product to offer, re-write even when you don't want to and then find a reliable professional publisher so that one day you can truly enjoy holding your very own book in your hands. And best of all, you'll not have to worry that someone wants to slip it into their paper recycling box!
Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home, and

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting

Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

PITFA





  

THE SOURCE OF OUR PROBLEM Laura L. Valenti

 A column in the May 4, 2016 edition of The Lebanon Daily Record  bore the title  "Drug Problems in Ozarks Start in Mexico". The article went on to claim that Mexico is the source of the drug problem in the Ozarks.   I’ve been in the writing business long enough to know that sometimes the columnist writes the headline and sometimes it is actually the editor.  Regardless, the FACT is that Ozarks drug problems originate in the Ozarks.  Mexico, China, and even California, are three of the country’s largest drug providers, who simply supply the DEMAND.

For ten years I worked for the Laclede County Sheriff’s Department, including running the county jail from 2001 through much of 2004. Since then I’ve been working as a volunteer board member of the New Life House, a Christian transitional housing program for women coming out of jail or prison. In other words, for more than 20 years I’ve been in the business of fighting drugs, through law enforcement and rehabilitation, usually right on the front line, person by person. And the simple truth is our drug problems are based right here at home, in a single four letter word – PAIN.

A child, an adolescent, or an adult of any age, who believes in their value as a person, who has been raised and supported to believe that, by at least one person—their parent(s), a grandparent or other relative, even a teacher, family friend, or neighbor—is much less likely to get involved in drugs or other high risk behavior than one who has not. As we see more families abdicate their child-rearing responsibilities, abandoning their children or letting them raise themselves more than not, we have seen an increase in the number of people of all ages who turn to drugs and alcohol in an attempt to dull or wipe out the emotional pain they struggle with. 

In 2006, Dick Dixon of Bolivar and I co-authored a book, Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance, in which we interviewed 30 methamphetamine addicts in sustained recovery, all residents of southwest Missouri. (We updated and re-released it again in 2013, including re-connecting with eight of the original interviewees.) They told us how they got on, how they got off and how they stay off meth. They also told us WHY and every one of them told us, one way or another, of the pain they were dealing with at the time. Whether it was the breakdown of a relationship with their significant other, the loss of their job, livelihood or place to live, each related a story that involved pain, fear and an overwhelming sense of loss and hopelessness. Ironically, almost every woman we spoke with, got involved with drugs because of the man or boy, she followed into the drug life. (Not incidentally, when we asked each how they managed to stay out of the drug life, once they broke free initially, 28 of the 30, told us the only way “to get out and stay out is called Jesus Christ”—their words, not ours.) These folks came from different communities and did not know one another. While 17 were arrested, 13 were not. Some went through Christian rehab and others did not; in other words, they were a diverse sample of folks in the Ozarks who get involved in drugs.

While there are those who will read this and say, well, this is all pie-in-the-sky because we can’t fix everybody’s problems BEFORE they get involved in drugs. That is true but we can realize that the source of the problem is not simple and while it is convenient to blame another country or culture, the basic problem is still ours.

Dick Dixon states that there are 4 steps to fighting drugs in America--education (pamphlets, classes), intervention, treatment, and interdiction (arrest). In America, we are really good at and have spent billions on Steps #1 and #4 but pennies on the two in between. And the reason? Because those two require getting involved. Intervention--stepping into someone else's life to say, 'hey, this isn't right. Something's got to change. I (we) know you are in trouble....' It goes against everything we believe as John Wayne-lovin' Americans. We don't need anyone to tell us how to run our lives and we don't like stepping into someone else's. Meanwhile, getting someone to treatment borders on the same territory. The bottom line is they both involve risk on the part of the rescuer. They involve relationships, getting involved face-to-face, person-to-person whereas handing someone a pamphlet or even arresting your basic drug user, does not. As Dick put it, the 'wrong' relationship is what gets people involved into drugs, the 'right' relationship will keep them out!

The first words against drugs are not to educate a child at age 8 or 10 about stranger-danger or to attend anti-drug lessons in school. The FIRST words against drugs are the ones a child hears before age 2—the ones that say, ‘you are a precious gift from God--to us, to me. We love you and can’t imagine life without you.” A child who hears and comes to believe those words has what is called SELF-ESTEEM. That is the real anti-drug. While it may seem an impossibly long term solution, it is obvious that the last 40 to 50 years of “A War On Drugs” involving everybody from the DEA, the FBI, and every local law enforcement agency in the US as well as billions of dollars has NOT worked. Maybe it’s time to try something different!

Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home, and

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting

Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

www.BetweentheStarandtheCross.com

THE JOYS OF WRITING Laura L. Valenti

The general population gathers its ideas on the writing life, like so many other things these days, from television and the movies. A book signing means a line of eager readers, waiting to have their new purchases signed. A royalty check comes regularly in the mail, bearing generous figures. And of course that all the world adores a writer's latest work. Well, in the read world, not exactly.

Book signings do not generally engender a great deal of interest. I've been to some that brought out only a very few people and one in which no one came at all. Now that hurt! Royalty checks are few and far between and at the rate of 10-15% of the price of a book, for instance, do not make for much excitement in the bank account. And in the past, my husband at work and even my kids in school, took flack for some of my columns. But if a writer is blessed, then from time to time, they do receive favorable comments in reference to the words they have put on paper.

I've been told that there are writers in the state of Missouri who have signed off on major publishing contracts with New York publishers. (And as of last week, I can say I've actually met one!) I've also been told there are folks in Missouri who have won major amounts of money in the lottery. I suspect that their numbers are similar. The truth is that 95% of the writers (and artists) in this country and probably in the world, do NOT earn their living or even a major portion of their livelihood through their art. The do it on the side.

Some would wonder why but the truth is we do it because we have to. We have to let 'it' out, put our thoughts, our beliefs, our hearts down on paper or we will explode, or at least, that's the way it feels. I remember a quote by Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, to the effect of  'when I was looking for a place to write this book, I felt like I was pregnant with eight characters, and I had to find a place to start writing and quickly, to let them out.'

I am reminded, maybe more often than most, WHY I do it. While a paycheck is obviously quite the incentive, I, too, am motivated by those gotta-let-it-out emotions. But beyond that, I have benefitted from 30 plus years as a freelance writer, working with nearly a dozen different editors over the years. That has helped to mold and shape me as a writer. And the result is that I have been blessed in many ways.

In recent years, I have written and published six novels and they have been wonderfully received by readers and reviewers alike. I've also worked for eight years as a writer for a regional farming newspaper, Ozarks Farm & Neighbor. And it is in those two that I have found the greatest rewards for my writing.  The first is in meeting so many people--farmers and ranchers, artisans, young people, and other writers--whom I would never have met otherwise and the vast majority have been such a delight. As I've said more than once, 'my job is often to go for a beautiful drive in the country, have a charming conversation with some new folks and go home and write about it.' And they pay me to do this!

Best of all perhaps, and closest to my heart is when someone tells me 'I just love your Bennett Spring books;'  'your column last week was right on!' or 'I cried at the end of  your book, Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice.'  To know that something I've written has touched another person, made someone think or brought joy or tears...that's what keeps me writing!


Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home, and

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting

Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

www.BetweentheStarandtheCross.com

A NEW BOOK Laura L. Valenti

Two weeks ago, The Heart of the Spring Everlasting came out in print. This is the fourth in my series of Bennett Spring historical novels and my sixth novel so I find it all pretty exciting. The first of the Bennett Sprint novels is set in 1924, the year Bennett Spring State Park was established. It was also Missouri's first state park so that makes it even more special. That first book entitled, The Heart of the Spring, centered around an 18 year old Bennett Spring resident named Becky Darling and her family. I also share bits and pieces of the park's true history, including real people who were present when the park began. And although we may not know a lot about them, one can still imagine a great deal about an individual simply by knowing the times and their particular situation. For instance, Josephine "Josie" Bennett-Smith was running the Brice Inn, a small hotel located near the site of the present day Bennett Spring Park Store. In my first book, Becky is enjoying her first job, working for Miz Josie. While I didn't know Josie Bennett, history does tell us she was a divorced woman, running a business in a tiny rural community in 1924. That took more than a little grit back then. Add to that the fact that I've met very few hotel folks who weren't real 'people types', the kind of person who really cares about others. Combine those characteristics together and you've got a sassy lady who loves the people in her town and can hold her own in any kind of situation. And that is how you create an engaging, feisty historical character.

The next book in the series, The Heart of the Spring Lives On, picks up the narrative 11 years later, centering on Becky's little brother, Ben. Historically speaking, this book also shares the story of the Civilian Conservation Corps, also known as the CCC, and the years they devoted to building features we still enjoy at Bennett, like the Dining Lodge and the triple-arched bridge. Because I needed to bring a female character into the story while telling of the all-male CCC, I had to get creative but once again, the history was already there. During the Civil War, which took place just 70 years before the CCC, there were 250 documented cases of women who disguised themselves as men and joined their husbands and brothers to fight for both the North and the South. Generally, they were not discovered unless they were wounded and taken to a field hospital. I decided if a young lady had a really good reason to sneak into the CCC, she could arrive at Bennett Spring as part of their CCC unit, masquerading as a man. That is exactly how Jessica comes to the area where she meets different members of the Darling family, including Ben.

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home continues the Bennett Spring story in 1946 just as World War II had ended and follows Esther, Becky and Ben's youngest sister who was born in 1924, the same year the park was founded. This part of the story also highlights the history of the Bennett Spring Church of God, the only building left from the town of Brice, Missouri, which in 1924 occupied the area now known as Bennett Spring State Park. It is also the only church located in the middle of a state park. The church has its own interesting history begun in part by the Bennett family who insisted the church would be able to stay, when they made the contract with the state to sell the land in the first place. Before all is said and done, Esther, a former Navy nurse and her family end up fighting to keep their church from being taken over by the state at the end of the war. At the same time, Esther must find her own path back to life at Bennett after her experiences in a foreign war.

And now, The Heart of the Spring Everlasting continues the saga of the Darling and Shine families. In 1967, Tabby Shine, Becky's youngest daughter, runs away to Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco's famous district of flower children and the Hippie lifestyle and finds it is not all that she expected. She returns home to Bennett Spring, just as her family takes in a Cuban refugee and a childhood family friend returns from Viet Nam in a wheelchair. Tabby quickly finds herself caught up with a new friend in the building of the Catholic Sportsman's Chapel at Bennett Spring as she also struggles to find her very own place in a world that is changing fast. 

After nearly 40 years of living at Bennett Spring, it has been a great joy to share this special place through a series of novels, designed to impart not only the history but also the beauty and charm of such an exquisite picturesque location. If you have never had the pleasure of visiting Bennett Spring yourself, I hope you'll take the time to do so soon. You will not be disappointed.

Blessings,  LV

Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home, and

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting

Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

Catching Up On All Those Blessings Laura L. Valenti

First, I begin with an apology for missing the last couple of weeks of blogs. I left for El Salvador on Thursday, March 17 with an electronic tablet, thinking I would email the world from Central America, but sad to say, upon arrival I discovered for some reason, I couldn't get the thing to work. Instead, I texted folks, called a few times and let the email and blogging slide. The blessing, on the other hand, was being back in my beloved second country, one named for God's son, The Savior (El Salvador) and staying with our original Peace Corps family. Elena and Fito are now nearly 90 and 87 years of age, still living in their own home and while his health is starting to fail, we--their daughter, Carmen and I--struggle to keep up with Elena when she takes off walking fast! We went to Catholic Mass on Palm Sunday, shopped 'til we dropped at the local artesian markets (buying cool souvenirs like brightly colored towels, blouses, and painted crosses) spent a day at the beach and ate lots of fish, shrimp, rice, beans and tortillas. For me, that is una vacacion perfecta!

My husband and I were Peace Corps volunteers  there, 1973-1976 for over three years and I cannot explain the joy of being back there, except to say, it is like 'going home' to where I was raised. And I was in part, in Latin America, specifically traveling with my parents in Mexico many years in February and March in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. My father was a natural-born gypsy. Not the Romanian variety with dark curls and a ring in his ear, but a Missouri boy who literally read about Guatemala in the National Geographic in 1957 and said to my mother, 'Let's go!' and we did, year after year. We never made it as far as Guatemala, something about a border war in a place called Chiapas. (And you thought that was a new thing, right?)  Years later, our Peace Corps family was a great deal like an American family who hosts an international student here, but in our case, we all bonded in a way that has now lasted over 40 years. Carmen was 13 years old when we moved in with her family and today she has lived in Lebanon, married to a local gent, Brian McCulloch and raised two kids of her own and even has a young grandson. She and I have now made three trips back together to see her family and other friends over the last few years and before that, I made it back to El Salvador several times on my own.

Then we both came home to welcoming husbands. Both Brian and Warren showed up at the Springfield airport to collect us and seemed pretty happy to have us back. That was a big blessing in and of itself!

And then this week, my sixth novel finally arrived. The Heart of the Spring Everlasting is the fourth in my historical series on Bennett Spring. The first, The Heart of the Spring, is set in 1924 and tells how Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri's first state park, was established. The Heart of the Spring Lives On comes next and takes place in 1935. That was when the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was at Bennett Spring, building the Dining Lodge and the triple-arched bridge, features we still love and enjoy 80 years later.  The Heart of the Spring Comes Home continues the story in 1946 as people come back to Bennett Spring immediately after World War II and fight to save their church. The Bennett Spring Church of God plays a central part in this fictional story that is based on the church's actual history. And now, The Heart of the Spring Everlasting picks up the narrative of the Darling and Shine families in 1967. As our nation struggled at that time with major issues such as a divergent youth population, Viet Nam, and a Cuban refugee crisis, the lives of those even in remote places like Bennett Spring were also touched by such things.

And so while I was off the blogging trail for a couple of weeks, my blessings have continued to multiple, en espanol y ingles, los dos. In my lifetime, I have been blessed to live in two of the most beautiful places in the world, a five mile stretch of pristine beach (fishing village where we worked) in El Salvador and Bennett Spring. It is good to be back at Bennett Spring, my home for nearly 40 years now, but it is also good to go 'home', and see la familia once in a while, too.

BASIC BLESSINGS Laura L. Valenti

I was invited to Lebanon High School this past week for a special showing of  He Named Me Malala, the story behind the Pakistani young woman, now 18, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Her father named her after Malalai, a Pashtun heroine of a bygone era. Some have said that Ziauddin Yousafzai, her father and a teacher who is also not afraid to speak up for the truth, pushed Malala into her current position as an activist for girls' education. Malala adamantly refutes this and says all he did was show her where the door was. It was her choice to walk through it.

As I watched the account of this extraordinary young woman, Malala Yousafzai who at age 14 stood up to the Taliban, who run her country by various decrees including the idea that women should not be educated, I was struck by her incredible courage. For speaking out, she was shot in the head, by order of the Taliban and nearly died. She still has some significant loss of nerves to her face,  hearing and other basic functions due to her injuries and yet she soldiers on. She and her family now live in England and do mourn the fact that they are not able to return to their homeland. And it makes me wonder...how many of us could have stood up to those threatening our lives when we were still just teenagers? How many of us could do it now, as full-fledged adults?

Even more basic, as I watched, I thought once again, as I have many times, of how blessed I am simply to have been born when and where I was. In a large portion of the modern world, girls and women are still subjected to incredible prejudice and abuse, simply because of their gender. It is not something we spend a lot of time thinking about. As a matter of fact, if we start fussing about sexual discrimination, it is more likely to have something to do with finances--such as hiring practices, a substandard paycheck or the cost of health care. It is not to say that any of those are unimportant but they have to get in line behind basics like education, the right to choose who you will marry, or not to be traded off for a few goats or these days, flat out sold for cash or drugs directly into the sex trade.  It is not something we think about often and yet, for so many of our sisters around the world, it is a daily reality.

And from there, my mind wandered a bit closer to home, to some I've met along my way as a writer, including a young lady in Bolivar, born with no legs and no hands. She still gets up every day, faces the world with an incredible Christian spirit and has excelled as an artist, a writer having already penned her own autobiography before age 30, a college student and a world traveler. Or the farm wife and mother of four I found most recently just a short way up the interstate highway, who was severely injured when hit head-on by a drunk driver. She left the scene that night with internal injuries, a fractured pelvis and crushed ankles. Today, after multiple operations, she still struggles to keep her balance when she walks with the aid of braces and lace-up boots, yet she is back working as a farm wife, tending to cattle on a daily basis. And like the lady in Bolivar, she does it with a joyful heart and an overwhelming attitude of Christian love and forgiveness.

As one who has a family history of depression and has fought that monster many times over the years, I try to remember these remarkable sisters of mine and many others on days like yesterday when I'd like to just stay at home on a cold, gloomy, rainy day and have my own 'pity party'. No reason for it, mind you, except my own fouled up bio-chemistry, but still if I can remind myself to read my Bible and remember ladies like Malala and many others, I have a better day. Yesterday, I spent the day at home, reading and writing, curled up warm by the fire. I didn't go out but it was still a good day, a day of remembering blessings of all kinds, especially the basics. I'm so glad I accepted the invitation to go see a movie earlier this week. God bless the many Malalas in our world!

WHAT YEAR IS YOUR VEHICLE? Laura L. Valenti

Recently at a Weight Watchers' meeting, we were discussing overall health as well as weight loss, such as the benefits of exercise and drinking more water. I shared a view I've long held about the vehicle each of us is issued at birth and it struck a cord with several of the ladies.

Think about the year you were born.  You were issued a vehicle at that time and today that is the one you are still driving. We all know it takes more maintenance to keep a 1951 model on the road than say a 1976 model and if you want to keep going, you have to do that maintenance! Many times, we tell ourselves, we don't have the time to exercise or to eat right. I can tell you it is a little more expensive many times to eat right or it takes more time to fix a salad rather than to pop pizza rolls or a hot pocket into the oven or microwave, but the benefits do outweigh the disadvantages, if we will just make the effort! We know that water is better for us than soda, especially for organs like kidneys and bladder, but so often we think of it as more comforting to reach for that extra blast of caffeine. And don't even talk to me about energy drinks!

We all know what happens to the vehicles that are not properly maintained. You see them broken down on the side of the highway, sometimes with the highway patrol's little orange sticker on them, showing they've been there for a day or two. And after that, they land in the salvage yard, many times never to leave there again. For us, that is called the nursing home or the funeral home, for that is where our personal vehicle lands if we do not take proper care of it.

In this world, we are issued only one vehicle. We can do the maintenance and there are certainly cosmetic procedures available (aka a new paint job) and some repair parts, new knees and replacement hip joints, but there are no trade-ins. This is the ONLY vehicle you get so you better take care of it....or else!

When I get tired of exercising, walking in the cold or the heat here in Missouri, trying to convince myself I don't have time to go to the YMCA and swim my laps, I remember my old neighbor, Jack. Jack was a great guy (a good Democrat) and we had many a lively conversation. Jack liked to smoke, he enjoyed his liquor and his idea of exercise was walking the 150 feet from his mobile home to the highway convenience store he ran with his wife, Barb. One winter evening, Jack slipped on the ice on his front porch and broke his ankle. (They were having a big family spaghetti dinner and Jack had run back over to the store to get a couple bottles of wine. My understanding is when he fell, he was trying to save the wine!) Within weeks, the doctors had to amputate Jack's foot because his circulation was too poor to keep blood flowing to his foot. Jack was not yet 70 years old and today, his widow lives near his grandchildren, where she has had the opportunity to watch them grow up. So, on days when I get the 'lazies' and think 'enough!', I don't want to do this anymore, I think of Jack and remember I don't want to start losing parts off my vehicle before it is time to report to the salvage yard that one final time.

So what year vehicle are you driving? And what kind of maintenance are you doing on it? Remember....no trade-ins!

READING THE GOOD BOOK THROUGH by Laura L. Valenti

The lyrics of one of Tim McGraw's songs speaks of a man who gets the chance to "live like you were dying". He relates how in the next several months he tried sky diving, mountain climbing, went a few seconds on a rodeo bull and read the Good Book. Well, I chose to skip the first three but I have enjoyed the adventure of reading the Good Book and just finished it again this week.

Years ago, I went to a church that offered the opportunity during the first week of January to "make this the year you read the whole Bible." They encouraged their members to do so by passing out monthly reminder papers that showed exactly which and how many chapters to read each day to accomplish this feat. Like many others, I eagerly took one of the papers at the beginning of the year but with four kids at home, by the end of January or the beginning of February, when the next paper was handed out, I was so hopelessly behind I could never catch up.  After 'failing' at this endeavor a couple of years in a row, I figured out, getting the whole Bible read in a year's time, was not the important part. The real accomplishment was reading it through, no matter how long it took. So about the third or fourth year, the church offered this challenge, I took my papers but didn't worry when I couldn't finish within the prescribed time limit. I just kept reading, little by little and finished the Bible for the first time, within about two years instead of one.

In doing so, I read chapters I never knew existed and discovered many more I'd heard quoted often but never really understood their context, exactly where they came from or what they were all about. I found quotes I never realized were Biblical, things I'd heard my late mother say many times over the years, and realized once again, how much better read and educated she was than I had ever known during her lifetime.

I learned about the 'writing on the wall' as written about in the book of Daniel and that while the Scriptures did instruct women to 'submit to their husbands', the very next verses cautioned the husbands to 'revere their wives' and lay down their lives for them as Christ did for his church. I learned once again that what Jesus asked most of all was that we love God and love one another and that if we did that, everything else would fall into place. 

Since then I've heard of another way to 'read the Bible through' and I've followed and enjoyed it, completing another complete reading three or four times through. Using three book marks, place one at the beginning of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, one at the beginning of the Book of Job and one at the first chapter of Matthew, the first book of the New Testament. Then, on the first day, read the first chapter of each of those books and continue to read three chapters daily, from these three very different portions of the Bible and the lives and history of the Jews, from which all of Christianity comes. In doing it this way, when you find yourself reading a part of the Bible that tends to make your eyes cross--like parts of Leviticus or Chronicles--you know the next chapter in another book, will be much more interesting or at least, understandable! In doing so, I've read the Bible several more times and look forward to doing it again.

The Bible is an amazing compilation of history, rules to live by and perhaps, most significant of all, the stories of other people's lives and how their experiences can impact the lives of others, even thousands of years later. I once heard it said, if you know someone whose Bible is falling apart, like as not, their life is not. I like that. I think it's time to look for three brand new book marks and start reading again.   

Defining Myself by Laura L. Valenti

A friend I hadn't seen in a couple of years mentioned as we were catching up that she wished someone she loved didn't work such long hours. I told her that several years ago, I had to re-define myself because like so many working in law enforcement (and various other careers) I had come to feel the long hours, stress and hard work had taken over my life. It struck me that one day I would no longer be a jail administrator and then what? A great many of us face this realization, sooner or later. And for many, the picture is not pretty, with results ranging from depression to alcohol abuse to loss of long-term relationships. I decided I needed a definition of who I am that is permanent, that won't change because of a job or because it is dependent on someone else, like a spouse or a child. It is not that those designations are not important but I didn't feel like they should be the primary description of who I am.

After a bit of thought, I realized that first and foremost, I am a child of God. No matter what happens tomorrow, that will not change, and that prayer and Bible study will sustain me throughout anything that does. (And as my mother used to say, the only constant in this life IS change.) Secondly, I am a child of the three cultures in which I was raised. Most folks are raised in one or maybe two cultures but when I really think about it, my childhood included three different ones. My parents raised my sisters in St. Louis, an American Midwestern city and yet, we spent a great deal of time on my grandparents' farm in southeast Missouri, which was much further away than the 120 miles of highway that separated the two geographically in the 1950s and 60s. They were truly two different worlds. I remember my father having water put into my grandparents' farmhouse as a gift when I was 11 or 12 years old.  I also recall the installation of their first telephone, their particular signal being two long rings, differentiating them from the many neighbors up and down the eight party line. One room school houses were still in operation throughout their county while a decade later, I was graduating in the city from one of the largest high schools in the state, with a senior class of just under 1000 others. Two very different cultures. And then there was the whole Latin culture as we often traveled as a family in Mexico, adventures I relished, which along with later years in El Salvador, have had a dynamic impact on all the rest of my life.

After that, I define myself as a wife, mother and grandmother and finally, as whatever my job of the moment might be. That has included a lifeguard, a position that leaves life long results including training in first aid, CPR, crisis management and the ever present 'don't run' at ANY pool; a Peace Corps volunteer and school teacher; an Ozark trail ride guide, and as I tell folks, I'm still better at saddling a horse than I am at wrangling a computer; a bi-lingual secretary and office manager as well as a jail administrator and most recently, a freelance writer and novelist.

Those job titles are fun, fascinating but ever-changing, more so than any other definition and well they should be. These days, it's all about the writing, another different sort of life, I find myself thinking about in  a most serious way, with the upcoming debut of my sixth novel.

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting, the fourth volume in my Bennett Spring historical series should be available in just another couple of weeks. (Yes, I've become impatient waiting for it, too!) Set in 1967, the latest member of the Darling family, Tabby Shine ran away from home as a teen to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco but quickly found out that California dreamin' is not what she thought it would be. She, too, finds she has to re-think who she really is.

What would you say if you were asked to define yourself? Write and tell me your answer. I can't wait to hear it!


 Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home,

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting (March 2016),

Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

www.BetweentheStarandtheCross.com

A Valentine's Day Love Story        by Laura L. Valenti    

In our household, we refer to February 14 as VALENTI ne's Day since not many families can claim their own world wide holiday.  As such, I thought about a couple of the great love stories, I've been blessed to find along life's way so I thought I would share one here.

My father was number five in a line of six kids and he and all of his older siblings were married multiple times as none of them seemed to be able to stay with their original spouse. One aunt was actually married eight times to seven different husbands; she married one of them twice. The youngest, however, my Uncle Ronnie was married to my Aunt Clara. They were known throughout the family as the ne'er-do-wells, moving due to mounting debts, chasing three boys the whole time, as Ronnie tried his hand at various jobs and trades. Clara finally took a job about the time the boys were grown, as a dispatcher at a local sheriff's department. She seemed settled there, doing well for a year or two, until the day she came home and told my uncle that she had fallen in love with a deputy, a man younger than her. She told her husband of over 20 years that she was leaving him and moving in with her new love, who had custody of his three younger children.

My uncle contemplated his wife for several moments before responding. When he finally spoke, it was in measured quiet tones. "Clara, more than anything in the world, I want you to be happy but I just can't see how moving in with this man is going to do that. We raised three boys together who are now more grown than not. This man claims to love you but he is also desperate for someone to take care of his young ones. I will not discuss divorce or even legal separation at this point. What I will say, is pack a suitcase and go. Anytime in the next six months, if you want to come home, just do so. We can talk about it or not, your choice. At the end of that six months, we can talk about what comes next but I won't discuss any great changes before that."

Clara angrily packed a bag and left and Ronnie along with his two older teen-aged sons came to visit me the next weekend and told me what was going on. I told him how sorry I was that she was following our family line and that I hoped she would change her mind. I received a phone call about three weeks later from my Aunt Clara. She was almost giddy with excitement as she told me she was home with Ronnie and her boys. "You know," she said. "He did just what he said. I told him I really didn't think I wanted to talk about it and he said that was fine."

I saw Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Clara about once a year or every other year after that, when my father, Ronnie's brother, would come to visit from California or when I would stop by their home in Thayer, near West Plains when I was down that way. They were the only ones of my father's siblings who celebrated a 50th anniversary, a few years before Clara died last year.

Jesus talked about love and forgiveness, for our enemies and for our brothers and sisters. Without a doubt, my uncle's patience, forgiveness and plain old-fashioned forever love, preserved his marriage and his family for another 30 years after that incident. Happy VALENTI ne's Day to you and yours!

 Laura L. Valenti, author

The Heart of the Spring,

The Heart of the Spring Lives On,

The Heart of the Spring Comes Home,

The Heart of the Spring Everlasting (March 2016)

Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and

Between the Star and the Cross: The Election

Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon

www.BetweentheStarandtheCross.com