Book Reviews Coming in January

In December, 2011, Graf-Martin Publishing (aka. B&H Publishing Group, Nashville, TN) sent me a couple of books to read and review for them. Watch for my reviews in January, 2012 at the blogs:

Laura-Lee Was Here

MAIDRYN'S MEDIA: Treasures & Trash

The Moccasin Mile


I will be reviewing the books:

"Courageous Living: Dare to Take a Stand"


"The Resolution for Women"


See you later.

" CORIOLANUS" Takes Control & Revenge

The new film from Lionsgate, acted & directed by Ralph Fiennes and also with Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave & Brian Cox is going to be in wide release on January 20 (2012). It's a modern remake of the Shakespearean Classic. But don't be afraid of the language, but maybe just the content. It's dark and disturbing and it will stay with you for days. (just like most things worthwhile do)

Be there or be WARE.

STAY TUNED TO THIS SPACE FOR MORE INFO!!!

But for now, here's a sneak peek at the trailer:

Cure the Post Christmas Blues

My Three Fathers           (Originally written: October 23, 2008)

 ~ by Laura-Lee Rahn

On a quiet night on December 25th several years ago, I was sitting around thinking about how Christmas had come and gone again for another year. After weeks of increasing frenzy, Christmas is  over after only a few hours. Suddenly my phone rang and I picked it up. I heard a man's voice say, "Little Girl? This is your Dad."
A mixture of shock and excitement swept through my body like an electrical current as I felt  transformed from a middle-aged woman to a 7 year old little girl.
I responded, "Hey Dad! It's great to hear your voice."
Then the thought hit me that something must be very wrong for him to call after all these years of silence.
"Are you okay?" I asked hurriedly.
"Sure," he replied with joviality, " I just wanted to give you a call to wish you a Merry Christmas".
We made a couple more minutes of excited small talk, but when I asked him a specific question I got no response. After a few seconds pausing he said, " I'm sorry to say this, but I don't think you're my daughter."
He was right. We discovered that he had accidently dialled the wrong number!
I asked him, " When did you first realize that I wasn't your daughter?"
He said, " Actually, I immediately suspected something was different. My daughter is never  this happy to hear from me. Usually the moment she realizes it's me, she hangs up." 
I told him, "I should have realized immediately too. My father hasn't phoned me at Christmas or any other time for almost a decade."
 
We wished each other a Merry Christmas and before we hung up the man said,
" I hope you don't mind me getting personal, but your father is a fool if he doesn't want to talk to you." 
I told him I thought the same about his daughter. He had grown quiet with the realization that he still had to phone his daughter and he knew she would probably hang up on him once again.
I got even more personal and said, "Let's make a pact. Every Christmas when my Dad doesn't call and your daughter hangs up on you, let's think of each other and remember that you have a "mystery daughter" who would never hang up on you and I have a "mystery father" who calls every Christmas to see how I'm doing".
 
Every year it seems that families become more fractured and the Christmas 'hurrah' gets more noisy and hectic. I suspect people make such a big commotion so they won't notice how lonely they are. I've puzzled long (and cried much) over people who ignore those in their lives who are desperately ready to love them unconditionally, but their family members treat them with indifference or sometimes even contempt.
Deep inside us God has placed a blue-print of family life that is repeatedly declaring to us, "this is not the way it is meant to be! " In Psalm 68:6 it says, "God sets the lonely in families". A family is suppose to be a haven, a shelter, a fortress in trouble and a place where you are loved independent of who you are or what you've done. Yet Christmas is a dreaded and lonely time for many people, because it seems to put a magnifying lens to our lives and amplifies the fact that things are not quite right.
  Now, I'm not going to tell you to love only the people who love you back, but my "wrong number father" showed me that there are people who are waiting and wanting to love me. I just may not have met them yet.
Now each Christmas finds me with three fathers: 1) a biological father who can't be bothered to know me, 2) a "wrong-number-father" who wants to know me and 3) a Heavenly father who knows me intimately. But not only does He know me, He loves me enough to send his Son from Heaven, to be born in a lowly stable, to die an agonizing death on a cross to atone for my entire life of sins, to rise from the dead to give me hope for Eternity and, oh yeah, to give me a reason to celebrate all year through with wonder, humility and deep thankfulness.
 
 "-rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-" (1 Peter 2:4 NIV)

Addendum  (December 28, 2011)

I wrote this article in 2008 and sent it to the Edmonton Journal newspaper during the last week of October, 2008. I got no response from the Journal. Not even an automated response. I had the opportunity for this article to be published elsewhere and wrote to the Journal several times to ask them for a decision as to whether they were going to use my story or not. If they didn't want it, I would pass it on to someone who did. I heard absolutely nothing from them. This response puzzled me because it is the first time in more than 20 years of writing that I have not had something I submitted published. Usually God is very clear as to what I should write and where to send it to. Now I realize it may have been the timing that was wrong.
When I wrote this story in 2008, my father was still alive. He died less than a year later in the summer of 2009. Since that time I've thought a lot about what makes a father. I have come up with a very long list. It included such things as compassion, tenderness, protection, sympathy, strength of character, guidance, humour, humility but mostly unconditional love demonstrated through self-sacrifice.
My biological father is gone, my "mystery" father I may never meet, but my Heavenly Father remains.
As I grew up, people used to say to me, "It must be hard to be without a father." But even then, I didn't feel I was without one. Just because God is invisible doesn't make him unreal. He is called the "Living God" because He is. Living, warm, available, compassionate, tender, a refuge, a companion, someone to dry your tears, to protect you and to sacrifice whatever it takes so that you and He will never be apart. Even if the sacrifice is His only son, Jesus.
After my father and mother got divorced my father still had visitation rights every second weekend. I would sit with my little, green suitcase every Friday night and wait for him to show up. By about 10:00 PM I would take off my coat, take my suitcase back to my room, unpack and go to bed, feeling worthless.

I became a Christian for one simple reason, I discovered I had a Father who would "show up". He's been "showing up" every day of my life and has never left me for one moment. Christmas may be over, but the love of God goes on every moment, of every day of my life.

If you're feeling let down because Christmas didn't give you the "warm fuzzies" you thought it would, or that it was over too soon, why don't you give your Heavenly Father a chance to show up. To be a part of your life. To give you all that you've been living without. Quite simply, He will. And if that isn't a reason to celebrate , I don't know what is.

"Hark the Herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King
Peace on Earth and mercy mild.
God and sinners reconciled ... "

"He said to me, ' You are my Son, today I have become your Father' " ~Psalm 2:7

WE are "the Reason for the Season"

Every year I see Christians put up those signs (me included) that say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season". This year I took it one step further and asked, "why did Jesus really come to earth"? He came because of His great & Massive love for us. So the truth of it is, "WE are the reason for the season."
Watch the video and see what I mean.
A Womderful Christmas to you from Me & Mumsy.
Love L-L

God Knows

Minnie Louise Haskins 1875-1957

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year,
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied ‘ Go into the darkness and put your hand
Into the hand of God that shall be to you better than light
And safer than a known way!’
      
So I went forth and finding the Hand of God trod gladly
Into the night. *
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day
In the lone East.
      
So heart be still what need our little life
Our human life to know, If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife of things both high and low,
God hideth his intention.
God knows. His will is best.
     
The stretch of years which wind ahead, so dim to
Our imperfect vision, Are clear to God.
Our fears are premature; In him all time hath full provision.     

Then rest: until God moves to lift the veil from our
Impatient eyes, when as the sweeter feature of life’s
Stern face we hail, Fair beyond all surmise God’s
Thought around His creatures our minds shall fill.

King George's (VI) Christmas Message 1939

FOLLOW THE ABOVE LINK TO A VIDEO

The Walking Dead : mid-Season FINALLY!

Technorati Tags: AMC,The Walking Dead,The Talking Dead,pro-life,pro-choice,abortion,Norman Reedus,Jeffrey DeMunn,Steven Yeun,Zombies,Bible,Christian,Christian Reviews,Andrew Lincoln,Horror genre,cult films,cult classic,TV shows,mid-season finale,after death,Centre for Disease Control,Atlanta,CDC,Jenner

If you have been reading my critiques of the second season of the AMC show, '”The Walking Dead”, you will know that I have not been singing it’s praises as much as I did last season. In fact, this season I’m not singing at all! But I am still watching , although for very different reasons and motives (after all everyone needs a good Sunday night gripe session). I usually say most of negative comments to the TV during the broadcast (or should I say broadcasts) of the episode. But there are a few things that have me quite upset and so  must “spill over” into my blog.

1)  I am tired of the people at AMC calling their reruns “an encore presentation”. When one episode has been played over and over so that AMC can wring every inch of advertising revenue out of it, it’s just called plain, old reruns.

2)  In all my many decades of watching TV I have never heard of a mid-season finale. What that basically means is that all the people who make the show want to head off for several months of holidays. They simply call it a “finale” so that we won’t realize that it is actually the first episode this season that actually included something HAPPENING. Do you believe that 1 hour TV shows used to actually be shot live, lasted 57 minutes long and included 46 episodes per year. Ah, the gold ol’ days.

3) You cannot force something to become a cultural phenomena or have a cult following. AMC feels that by following “The Walking Dead” with a show called “The Talking Dead” they will be able to build this show into another Star Trek or any one of dozens of other movies and TV shows that developed cult followings. I’ll let them in on a secret, “those shows were good”.  If they make great entertainment and do their jobs well, this show will live on indefinitely. This entire direction of PR might actually backfire on them. Simply because the show “The Talking Dead” is more interesting and exciting then the show they are suppose to be promoting. Oops!

4) As for Sophia being one of the “Walkers” in the barn … my 70 year old mother had that one figured out the moment it was revealed that there were “Walkers” in the barn. Actually, Mom has come up with some really interesting plot lines for this show. I enjoy her story lines more than the actual ones. Maybe I should send in a resume to “The Walking Dead” on her behalf. I hear there’s good money in TV writing and maybe I’ll be able to get her my allowance re-instated.

5) This one will probably meet with the most resistance. We know that the character of Lori is pregnant, took some “morning after” abortion pills and then threw them up. So now her husband, Rick, comes trotting over to “have it out” with her. He’s got his nerve. After all, he’s only the baby’s father ! So after some “Blah blah blah” back and forth Rick states, “Did you really think I would make you have a baby you didn’t want?!”

Lori replies, “Oh sure! Then it would be on my conscience.”

(Now forgive me for being my ‘naive’ little, pro-life self but ) It seems to me that if a woman states that it’s “her body” and “her decision” and “solely my choice what I do with my body” then, yeah, it would be on her conscience! I’ve known about the tenants of the pro-choice movement for a long time, but do they really expect to let no one participate in that decision and then require them to carry the blame AND the consequences for actions they had no say in?

All I can say is, “Beam me up, Lord. It’s getting really weird down here.”