In the first chapter of his devotional book, The Fulfillment, Timothy Tennent describes our human condition as made in the likeness of God, moral, relational, and representative. Unfortunately, our human condition also includes sinfulness. Tennent explains that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was put in the garden as a warning sign. It is God’s acknowledgement that the reality of evil exists. God offered mankind the choice of obeying Him and not eating of the tree or disobeying Him. He knew one-third of His first created beings, the angels, had disobeyed, and He knew that men were likely to disobey, as well. He had a plan. The Bible explains God’s plan for redemption of our wrong choices. One-third of angels were lost, but the desire of God’s heart is that not one of mankind should be lost.

We are made to be in relationship with God, and holiness is necessary if we are to have such a relationship. Tennent said well what I want you to hear, “Choices are vital if we have a doctrine of holiness, not just innocence. Holiness must be confirmed by real acts of obedience in the presence of real choices.” Real choices exist because evil exists.

Our nature as fallible human beings is such that not all of our choices are right, so I am grateful for God’s plan. Living in joy and at peace with ourselves, our world, and our God is possible because of that plan. In the immortal words of the ancient knight, “choose wisely.” But when we don’t, reading the plan of redemption will help.

On April 5, 2016 The Lexington Herald published an article about Saving Jane Doe, and my struggle with the abortion issue (see the link on the media page.) Two people commented with sharply different opinions. One said 55 million babies would not be able to comment on the article. The other said they were not babies until they were born. They both missed the points I was trying to make. First, making abortion illegal does not prevent it. Second, an unborn child is still a child.

Many people do equate the right to choose with the right to abort. That is at least part of the reason the abortion rate doubled in the first seven years after it became legal. According to the Guttmacher Institute the abortion rate per 1000 women age 15-45 was 16.3 in 1973 and rose to a high of 29.3 in 1980. After 1981, the rate has gradually fallen to almost exactly the same as in 1973, 16.9 in 2011.There are likely a number of reasons for this decline, including better contraception and better acceptance of single parenting, but I suspect another factor is that women have come to the realization that making abortion legal does not make it right. They may know someone who still suffers from having made that choice. The point is at least 16 of 1000 women choose abortion whether it is legal or not, and they have in every culture since the hunter-gatherers.

I simply cannot understand how anyone can argue that a fetus is not a human being. If a 26-week baby is delivered prematurely, every effort is made to save it and the likelihood of success improves each year. Should we make all of that effort for a “wanted” baby and allow an”unwanted” baby at the same gestation to be electively aborted? I don’t think so. When a baby can survive outside the womb, it has rights of its own, and when a baby’s rights and its mother’s rights are in conflict, then we need to talk about responsibilities, both society’s and the mother’s. The baby probably has rights prior to viability, but at that point it is not society’s responsibility to interfere.

I once told a friend I would like to be able to give enough money to be called a philanthropist. I had only seen that word applied to people who were wealthy and generous. My friend told me I was already a philanthropist. That made me think about what is the actual meaning of the term. Philanthropy is not about an amount of money; it is an attitude that seeks the betterment of mankind. One can give no money but spend time volunteering in some way to relieve suffering, help disadvantaged children, or feed the hungry and those activities would make him a philanthropist.

I have often said that having enough money is not about an amount. Some people will never have enough. Beyond meeting basic needs, having enough money is about our attitude toward money and what brings us peace. But I had made the same mistake in thinking that giving a lot of money would make me a philanthropist. One can be wealthy and not be  a philanthropist and one can be poor and be a philanthropist. I will donate a lot of money if my novel sells well, but my desire to write it to help women who suffer after having abortions is what makes me a philanthropist.

As often happens with quoting the Bible, sometimes we get it wrong. I have heard people say that money is the root of all evil, but the Bible does not say that; it says that the love of money is the root of all evil. Again, it is about an attitude not an amount of money. So let’s all be philanthropists, both rich and poor alike. We don’t need money; we need to love mankind and be committed to its betterment. Next to loving God first, according to Jesus, loving our neighbor is the second most important commandment.

As a Christian, woman and Obstetrician/Gynecologist, I have struggled with my conflicted opinions about abortion for over forty years. I wonder at people who are so sure of their position that they can be one-issue voters on the subject. I am both pro-life and pro-choice. What do I mean by that? I think abortion is an evil, immoral act that should be legal, at least early on. In other ways, I am neither pro-life nor pro-choice. What do I mean by that? While abortion may be sin, it is not the only nor an unforgiveable sin; it is equally sinful to judge others. And while a woman may have a right to have an abortion, that does not make it right; life begins at conception and a fetus is human as the Doritos super-bowl commercial so cleverly depicts.

I have seen women so desperate that they have tried to abort themselves. I have also seen women judge themselves harshly when their circumstances changed after having chosen abortion. A few women may use abortion for birth control, but for most it is difficult both to make and to live with the decision. The pro-choice position does women a disservice by trying to deny that there is a moral issue to be considered. After an abortion women often feel regret, shame, guilt, and grief and they don’t know how to handle it when they have been lead to believe that there is no moral consideration. While the pro-life position may have the moral high ground, it also does women a disservice when it tries to block resources that would help poor women prevent unplanned pregnancies.

I have come to peace with my conflicted opinions. I can live with being both pro-life and pro- choice, pro-life choice if you will. One position is about legality; one is about morality,  and I can see where both are right. I can also see where both are wrong. I am at peace with my opinions because I have more need to be compassionate than I have need to be right.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, in an airport hotel in Minneapolis getting ready to fly home from vacationing in Minnesota, my friends and I watched as the second plane hit and the towers fell. Within minutes every plane in the skies over America was grounded and we, like thousands of others, were stranded. I’ve never wanted to be home so badly. After calling the rental car company for two hours, we drove home in the car we had planned to return that morning. During fourteen hours in the car we listened to radio news, saw Airforce 1 with its accompanying fighter jets flying from Omaha to Washington, DC and tried to get our minds around what had happened. In shock, I watched the news constantly for days after I got home. Then I got the opportunity to serve at Ground Zero with The Salvation Army.

After driving to New York City and working for a week at Ground Zero, I did something I had never done before. I started waking with night terrors: racing heart, calling out for help, and feeling that I was going to die, usually falling, sometimes drowning. In my conscious hours, I did not feel afraid; I felt angry and sad that people were willing to kill themselves so that they could kill thousands. I just do not understand that kind of hatred, but these night terrors went on for two or three years which meant the terrorists had succeeded.

Then one day as I was reading my Bible, I found Psalm 4:8. “I will lie down and sleep in peace for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” I haven’t had a night terror since I began repeating this affirmation of trust when I go to bed. The war on terror is an inner battle. I may be killed by a gun-wielding or bomb-toting terrorist, but I do not have to spend my days and nights in fear of that. I choose to trust my loving God, who takes away fear.

I confess I’m not sure why God made prayer so important, but I believe it is. It changes us; it changes our world, and it changes how we see our world. In September, 2001 when I volunteered for disaster relief with The Salvation Army, I thought I was going to do grief counseling in the morgue. I asked my church to pray that I had what I needed to help the people I met. I thought I needed things like the right words and emotional fortitude.

When I got to New York City, the Army decided that only officers would work in the morgue, so I was assigned to a supply station at ground zero. The first night I worked, you could see the air and breathing it without a mask for even short periods caused sore throats and coughing. Our station provided those masks along with countless other things from boots to bottled water. Perhaps more important than the supplies, we provided a listening ear to everyone who needed to tell and re-tell their story of 9/11. No one liked wearing the masks and on the third day, a heavy rain cleaned the air almost miraculously. One young man who worked for the Port Authority asked me if I could sew a button on his shirt. I had no needle and thread but told him I would send a request for a sewing kit and he should come back in a few hours. We got new supplies several times during a 24-hour period. In a few hours word came that no sewing kits were available from the warehouse. I felt disappointed and withdrew to our supply tent where in my free time I organized the boxes on boxes of donated stuff that filled the space, so much stuff that we knew neither what we had nor where to find it. In the bottom of a huge box, filled with everything from sweatshirts to ibuprofen, I found a little hotel disposable sewing kit. When that young man returned, I sewed his button on his shirt.

Without having prayed to have what I needed to help the people I met, would I have recognized the masks, the rain, and the sewing kit as blessings from God? Probably not. Would I have found the sewing kit? I don’t know but since I did pray to have what I needed, I recognized those things for what they were, answers to prayer.

In philosophy of religion class at seminary, I learned that the best argument a non-believer has against a loving, personal God, as Christians understand Him to be, is the problem of evil. How could a loving, all-powerful God allow evil in the world? If he is all-powerful, He has the power to prevent suffering of innocents. If He is just as He is said to be, how can He allow serial killers to prey on their victims? Why should pedophilia, rape, murder, abortion, lying, cheating, and suffering exist?

The problem of evil is a good argument for the non-believer. At times in our lives, even believers ask these questions. Sometimes the pain is so great that believers lose their faith, like when a child dies and the parents are left to grieve. Often, people explain suffering by blaming someone or asking who sinned as in the New Testament? Jesus answered that no one sinned; in that instance, the suffering was so that God’s power could be shown. But the best known sufferer in the Bible, Job, did not lose his faith but rather learned an important lesson. Who was he to question God?

So, why does God allow evil to exist? The answer: free will cannot exist without the possibility of evil.  Good is not good unless there is the possibility of evil. Love is not love without the possibility of hate. Joy is not joy without the possibility of misery. God values our right to choose enough that He allows us to suffer for it. We value our freedom, too. God could have made us believe in Him, love Him, worship Him, but where’s the fun in that?

Feedback from the few hundred people who have read pre-release copies of Saving Jane Doe has revealed one common comment and two common questions. The comment: I love Uncle Henry. The questions: Is Uncle Henry real and are you Cara Land? The simple answer is no. I do not have an Uncle Henry or an uncle just like him with another name. He is bits and pieces of several people and some of his own making. Likewise, I am not Cara Land. Even though we had similar professional education and careers and people who know me will hear me in her voice, we are very different in many ways, one being that she has an Uncle Henry and I only wish I did.

My favorite TV program is Castle. Richard Castle is a best selling author of murder mysteries who is shadowing a NYPD detective named Kate Beckett. He is enchanted with Kate and says he needs to do research to make her the heroine of his new novel series. I love the writing references, but most of all I love the humor. Who knew a murder mystery could be funny? Okay, this is pretty clear fiction, but to further confuse fiction and reality, in September after the first season of Castle, Harper Collins published a novel, Heat Wave, which was written by Richard Castle with biographical information like on the show and a  heroine like Kate Beckett. I have the book in my library. It is very real. So I wonder, are fictional characters real?

Fictional characters may not be flesh and bone, but they do have a reality. Why else would we be so disturbed to hear that Atticus Finch was a bigot? The tears I cry at Uncle Henry’s passing wet my shirt. Richard Castle’s books are in my library. About half-way through writing Saving Jane Doe, Uncle Henry started writing his own dialogue. When fictional characters teach us something, when they make us think and feel, and when their stories become part of our consciousness, they become very real.

Sometimes English lets us down. Take the word pride. Sometimes pride means a good thing, a healthy sense of self-respect or pleasure in an accomplishment. Sometimes pride is a cardinal sin, an excessively high opinion of oneself, conceit, or arrogance. Recently, a friend said to me, “You must be so proud.” I had just given her a pre-release copy of my novel, Saving Jane Doe, which has its e-book formats release today. I’ve thought a lot about her comment. I feel excited, grateful, humbled, and blessed. So many people have helped to bring this about. I am grateful to them. So many others write just as well or better and haven’t had the good fortune to find a publisher. By these truths I am humbled and blessed.

But do I feel proud? I confess the answer is yes. I take great pleasure in this accomplishment. I love it when people say they loved reading Saving Jane Doe. I love it when they say to me they couldn’t put it down. I love it when they say they want to read my next book. So when does this pride become a deadly sin? When I forget how many people helped and inspired me, when I forget how much better others might have done it, and when I forget how very much God has blessed me and how utterly helpless I am without Him, it is then that I sin. Lord, help me remember.

My unofficial measurement of yesterday’s snow fall was eleven inches. Most events were cancelled, many stores and restaurants closed, and many city services cancelled. My afternoon mah jongg games were cancelled. I suppose if all you do is play video games and watch TV, yesterday’s events would not be a problem, but for a lot of people these events create a restlessness that is like illness; cabin fever they call it. I don’t get cabin fever; at least, I haven’t yet. Perhaps it is because of my personality (my Myers-Briggs letters are INFJ if that tells you anything), but I prefer to think it has more to do with my attitude and inner peace.

When I was growing up, our parents wouldn’t let my brother and me play in the snow. They were afraid we would get sick, and we had no money to pay for doctors. So, I created my first snowwoman just two years ago. What fun! I made her features out of vegetables and gave her my hat and scarf. I didn’t set out to make a snowwoman, but I found it difficult curving in the bottom so it looked more like a skirt; thus a snowwoman. I highly recommend making snowmen whether you have children or not. If you build it they will come; my neighbors have great photos of their grandchild with my snowwoman.

Our mother did make snow cream when we were kids. Hours of snowing cleans the air of dirty particles. Last night the top layers of snow were pure. I scooped up eight cups of snow. In Mom’s old gallon crock I added 1/2 cup of cream, 1/2 cup of milk, 1/2 cup of sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla. The result was delicious. I even blended four strawberries into my serving. I highly recommend making snow cream.

According to Wikipedia, Elbert Hubbard in a 1915 obituary of dwarf actor, Marshall P. Wilder, first coined the phrase “He picked up the lemons Fate had sent him and started a lemonade stand.” Later many others have popularized the phrase “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I guess what I am trying to say here is if life gives you eleven inches of snow, make snow cream and a snowman.