by Roseanna White | Jun 10, 2015 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
Last weekend I had the joy of filling for my dad in the pulpit at our church. I’ve done this once before, but it was many, many years ago. Like, before Rowyn was born, I think…so yeah. It’s been a while, LOL. But I’d just been thinking, a day or two before he asked me, that I wanted to start expanding my speaking repertoire–you know, so that it included something other than my publishing story. đ
As I prayed about what to talk about, my mind kept going back to the topic of vacation. Summer is finally upon us, so
vacation is a topic on a lot of different minds, right? When can we go? Where
will we go? How long can we stay? How much will it cost? What do I have to do
to prepare? For a lot of us, vacation isnât about rest, itâs about doingâpreparing to go, preparing to
travel, preparing for each day while weâre there, preparing to get it all home,
and then preparing to get back to normal life.
I canât tell you how many
times Iâve heard someone say that they need a vacation from their vacation!
Personally, David and I have
made it a point to make our vacations restful. We donât do much planning, and
the most exciting thing on our agendas is usually to visit a museum or go out
to dinner. Otherwise, weâre relaxing. Resting. Rejuvenating our minds and
spirits.
This is a necessary process. Studied have shown that having a break from work actually makes a worker more productive. And God himself recognized this. In the Law of Moses, weâve seen how
the Lord gave very specific instructions on rest. We have the Sabbath laws. The
Sabbath year laws. The Feasts and festivals. All of these are meant to be times
when man takes a break from the grind of daily life.
But theyâre something else
too, arenât they? Theyâre also meant to be times when we take a break from
normal lifeâŚto worship and praise Him.
Letâs look at Matthew
11, specifically at the well known verses 28-30:
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am
gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My
burden is light.â
Jesus isnât just talking here
about a physical rest, right? Heâs talking about rest for our souls.
I want to share another
translation, this time from the Message.
âAre you tired? Worn out?
Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and youâll recover your
life. Iâll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with
meâwatch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I wonât lay anything
heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and youâll learn to live
freely and lightly.â
A friend of mine claims this
as her favorite verse, so Iâve read it quite a few times. I like how in
addition to the words âtiredâ and âworn outâ he also speaks to that spiritual
exhaustionââburned out on religion.â Not on faith, but on religion. On the traditions, the processes, the expectations, the
demands. Those can be so exhausting. They, like our jobs, are doing. And sometimes we need a rest from
that in the worst way.
I also love the insight into
how weâre going to find that, which is kinda an extrapolation of âCome to Meâ
and âtake my yoke upon you and learn from me.â
âGet away with me. Walk with
me. Work with me. Watch how I do it.â
Waitâmaybe this is a bad
example after all. What does he say here? Work
with me.
Well that doesnât fit the
idea of vacation at all!
But thatâs just the Message.
If we go back to the New King James, we donât see that in there, right? It just
says âtake my yoke upon you.â WellâŚthat doesnât use the word work, to be sure. But whatâs a yoke?
Itâs something we put on animalsâŚso they can work.
Hm.
And it goes on with âlearn
from Me.â Okay, so letâs learn from Jesus. We see him doing plenty of things.
Certainly, among them are traveling to observe the holy daysâholidays. But even
then, what is he doing? Healing the sick. Cleansing the lepers. Casting out
demons. Preaching. Teaching.
Workingâbut not toiling at a
9-5. Heâs doing the Fatherâs work.
So thenâŚis doing the
Fatherâs workâŚrest?
Thatâs quite a thought,
isnât it?
Though to be sure, even Jesus had to get away from the crowds. Away from
that hands-on work. In those times, we see Him slipping away to pray. To
commune with the Father.
As matters of faith often do, this idea of going to Him for our rejuvenation reminds me of my kids.
When my kids are bored, do
you know what they do? They come to me. When theyâre hungryâŚthey come to me.
When theyâve accomplished something theyâre proud ofâŚthey come to me. When
theyâre hurtâŚthey come to me. When theyâre upsetâŚthey come to me. When they’re excited…they come to me. When theyâre
worriedâŚthey come to me. When theyâre tiredâŚthey come to me.
They curl up in my lap. And
even though I canât often do
anything, it doesnât matter. All they want is to know that Mamaâs there. They
want to curl up in my lap and be my baby. They want to be surrounded by my
love. And after a few minutes, theyâre refreshed. Theyâre ready to put aside the
exhaustion or the scrape or bruise, the argument or the anger. Theyâre ready to
go back to their game or their project or their work.
For anyone who has read my Culper Series, you’ll be familiar with the Puritan prayers I included, taken from Valley of Vision. This is one I used in the second book, which came to mind when I was thinking about this:
âBlessed Lord, let me climb
up near to Thee, and love, and long, and plead, and wrestle with Thee, and pant
for deliverance from the body of sin, for my heart is wandering and lifeless,
and my soul mourns to think it should ever lose sight of its beloved. Wrap my
life in divine love, and keep me ever desiring Thee, always humble and resigned
to Thy will, more fixed on Thyself, that I may be more fitted for doing and
suffering.â
Rest. Thatâs what Jesus
offers. But we donât get it by going away. We donât get it by stopping what
weâre doing. We donât get it by focusing on us.
We get it by focusing on Him.
By crawling up into our Fatherâs lap. By letting the Spirit act through us.
We don’t get it by stopping out work. We get it by doing His work.
And when take our vacation in the lap of our Abba Father, then a few minutes or hours is all it takes. We come back refreshed, ready to do His work–and certainly not in need of another vacation to recover from it.
by Roseanna White | Jun 8, 2015 | Word of the Week
It’s going to be a fun week around Writing Roseanna…so I thought I’d start us off with some fun, happy words. =)
I suppose I should start with the root word, cheer. The earliest English reference to word, from about 1200, was from the Anglo-French chere, and meant “face.” Within about 50 years, it had extended to mean “frame of mind or state of feeling.” Within another hundred years, it was more specifically the mood as could be determined by the expression on one’s face.
By about 1400, though, cheer was reserved for the positive of those expressions. And right about then, the verb came around–cheer, as in to cheer someone up. The act of shouting out encouragement is from about 1720 and is thought to have originated with sailors.
But what about cheers and cheerio?
First, cheers. As a salute or a toast, this British-ism dates back only to 1919–pretty new! It is quite simply a plural of cheer–the act of cheering.
Cheerio claims a date of 1910. Another Britishism, this departing salute was just a way of wishing someone good cheer with a bit of style. đ
But before I say “Cheerio!” for the day . . . we have some fun waiting this week!! The awesome folks of Bethany House let me know that there are a couple extra ARCs of The Lost Heiress and asked if I would like to do a contest to give them away. YES, PLEASE!
So beginning on Thursday, the fun will be hosted right here. I’ll be running a contest, promoted by Bethany House, for these advance copies of The Lost Heiress… AND I’ll be sharing the first chapter here on my blog! AND, a week from today, I’ll be revealing the cover of the second book, The Reluctant Duchess, as part of the ongoing celebration! I’m so excited!!
Normal posting will be suspended during the contest, but this Wednesday I’ll be doing a Thoughtful post since I was under the weather last week and didn’t get one up. =)
See you back here soon! Cheerio!
by Roseanna White | Jun 3, 2015 | Remember When Wednesdays
I admit it–I’ve long had a fascination with gemstones. It started with memorizing birthstones and just blossomed from there. And I’ve always leaned toward the bright, clear colors.
So naturally, when it came to diamonds, my teenage self said, “Psh. Diamonds. They’re so boring–they’re clear! Unless, of course, they’re colored…” I had every intention of being rich and famous, remember, so I declared that rather than some boring engagement ring with a clear/white diamond, I wanted a colored one.
Ahem. Yeah, um…reality took over, LOL. Neither David nor I turned out to be stinkin’ rich, so there you go.
But the fascination never quite left. And so, it should come as no surprise that it’s worked its way into my books. Back in college, I wrote a contemporary about an artist, and there was a character who was a jeweler. I loved delving into the world of jewels in my research!
And it comes up in my upcoming historical series from Bethany House too. One of my editors asked if the jewels I mention really are as rare as I say in the book…which reminded me that the whole world might not have done the research I did on colored diamonds, LOL. But in case you’re interested… =)
Diamonds can occur naturally in gray, white, blue, yellow, orange, red, pink, green, purple, brown, and black. The color is caused by impurities…yet they happen rarely, so they can dramatically increase the value of a diamond. IF they are bright colors. Faint colors can just dull the brilliance and usually degrade a diamond rather than making it more valuable. These bright colors are called “fancy colored diamonds.”
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| The Hope Diamond |
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The most famous, of course, is the blue diamond called the Hope. At over 45 carats, this thing is huge, and has quite a history attached to it.
The most expensive blue diamond to date, however, is a 7-carat one that sold in 2007 for $9.5 million. (The Hope hasn’t been sold in a long time). But that record was broken in 2013 by an orange diamond that sold for–brace yourself–$35 million.
Yeesh!
The largest red diamond ever mined is the Moussaieff Red Diamond, at a bit over 5 carats. It was discovered in Brazil in the 1990s. Before that, most red diamonds came from Africa or India.
The largest purple diamond (purple! love purple!) is the Royal Purple Heart, from Russia. Its origins are rather shrouded in mystery…but even more mysterious is the Supreme Purple Heart. Which is round, not heart-shaped (go figure). Believed to have been mined in the last 30 years, experts can’t even verify it’s size. They guess somewhere between 2 and 5 carats, and that it came from somewhere in the Amazon. It’s said to look deep purple from one angle and deep red from another.
Such a lovely, colorful world of gems! Do you have a favorite stone?
by Roseanna White | Jun 1, 2015 | Word of the Week
We’ve all heard it through the grapevine (and some of us might break into song at the mere mention…), but do you know where the saying comes from?
I didn’t–but I learned recently so thought I’d share. =)
Grapevine, meaning “a rumor” or “information spread in an unconventional method,” comes from the Civil War era South. The “grapevine telegraph” was much like the “underground railroad.” Metaphorical and secretive. Just as the latter wasn’t a real railroad, but a term to refer to the secret movements of runaways, so the “grapevine telegraph” referred to spreading information on the down-low, rather than using the real telegraph. And so grapevine is a shortening of that–a way to spread information without using typical means that could be tapped or overheard.
by Roseanna White | May 27, 2015 | Uncategorized
A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of a return client–always fun. =) A couple months ago I designed a simple cover for her vintage-era novel, The Eyes of the Heart.
Embassie got back in touch with me to say she was ready to do the cover for her next book, Through the Waters.
Set in the turbulent Civil Rights movement in Alabama, Through the Waters needed a heroine on the cover, in era-appropriate clothing, and a lovely backdrop of Alabama, perhaps with Spanish moss hanging. I headed over to Shutterstock to look and quickly put together a pretty little lightbox. =)
I always try to find an image that nails, up front, the look I’m going for. Failing that…I get creative.
Creativity was necessary here. The images I could find of women in the right style of dress didn’t fit the heroine’s physical description. But I found two dresses I really liked, and the woman had her back to the camera, so I could tweak the rest. My first choice was this one, in purple.
I downloaded this image, deleted her background, and got to work on skin tone. The heroine is an African American, so I selected all the skin visible, increased the saturation, and darkened a bit until I got a beautiful shade of brown that matched the model Embassie provided that her character was based on.
I really liked how that looked. But Embassie said that she always either wore her hair up or in loose curls. With the way the hat was here, we got no hint of hair whatsoever. I decided to change that so found a hand-dandy photo of a girl with lovely black hair.
I chose this one solely because of the way her hair was laying over her shoulder–just waiting to become a ponytail. đ And voila!
I really, really liked how that looked, so I chose a background and got down to composing the cover. My first thought was this one with the lovely pinks and purples…
I put them together (though it required copying the grass over and again to get it to go down far enough), zooming the girl in to fill the whole right side.
Next, I added an Action called “Nashville,” that colorizes the whole thing.
I liked the vintage-photo feel that gave it, so I went ahead and added the title and author’s name.
But of course, I wanted a little extra something…and needed to add the series title too. So I chose a flourish and put it both under the title and her name. And voila, the finished version of Round 1.
I sent this to Embassie for her take, and she liked it…then asked if she could see another option. Being a wise woman, she knows that having choices can be a fabulous thing. đ So I went back to Shutterstock and this time chose a bright red dress on the same model for a splash of color.
Going about things just as I did with the purple dress, I deepened her skin tone to that perfect shade of brown and added the same hair.
For her background, I went with this Spanish-moss-draped branch that gave a fun peek out into a field.
Embassie had mentioned a little house that could be in the cover, so I also found a photo of a small, rundown-looking house.
Putting the house in the background and sizing it appropriately, I got this.
I liked the frame that the moss and branch provided, so I went ahead and put in the girl.
The pop of red was fun, so I went ahead and added the title, etc., again, this time framing it in that white space.
I sent it off to Embassie…who liked this one too. =) She couldn’t decide between them, so of course did the logical thing and asked if we could put Woman #1 on Background #2.
And naturally, we did just that…and found our winner!
I really love how it seems like she’s looking back at the house, and how the images came together so well! Embassie was thrilled too, so there have it. Through the Waters, a sure-to-be-exciting historical romance that will be coming soon!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, sheâs homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her booksâŚto offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.