Guest Author, Sherry Shindelar

 

Sherry Shindelar is an excellent author and one of my critique partners. I deeply appreciated this story.

 

 

The Hidden Civil War: Breaking the Chains of Addiction

 

Texas Reclaimed is a story of victory, redemption, and the rebirth of trust. It is a story of courage and of freedom from the chains of the past and the chains of addiction. It is a story that honors the Civil War soldiers who survived their wounds, only to return home to fight another battle: dependency on the opioid-based medicines that had helped save their lives.

I first heard of laudanum when I watched the movie Amazing Grace about William Wilberforce’s eighteen-year battle to end the slave trade in Great Britain. Wilberforce played a pivotal role in ending the slave trade and eventually slavery itself in Britain by speaking, campaigning, and introducing bills into the British parliament. However, Wilberforce was also addicted to laudanum, a tincture of opium. 

 

It wasn’t his intention to become dependent upon a drug. A doctor prescribed it to him when he was twenty-nine years old for ulcerative colitis and other health ailments. Laudanum was used to treat a number of health issues and ailments in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and no one, including doctors, had much understanding about addiction and dependency. The word addiction didn’t even exist as we use it today. But the soul-deep struggle was very real for too many people, even a man of faith like Wilberforce.

Addiction is pernicious, and laudanum took its toll on Wilberforce. He suffered physically, mentally, and spiritually from its poisonous effects.

Years later, I learned that even some of the nineteenth-century authors that I admire, such as Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, struggled with laudanum dependency, as well.

In the nineteenth century, doctors and the public viewed opium, in its various forms, as an essential medical tool. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were wounded in the American Civil War, and many more suffered from debilitating and potentially life-threatening illnesses. A Civil War medical manual, quoted in Dr. Jonathan Jones’s Opium Slavery, states that opiates were as “important to the surgeon as gunpowder to the ordinance [military weapons].” 

Unfortunately, the medicine that saved their lives, too often, enslaved them for years after the war. According to Dr. Jones, “Veterans, their families, and communities struggled to cope with addiction’s health and social consequences, which included much victim-blaming that compounded suffering unnecessarily.” Too often, society’s reaction hindered instead of helped the men’s recovery.

 

My heart went out to Wilberforce, the tens of thousands of soldiers, and others enslaved to laudanum or other substances through no fault of their own. For many, once infected, it could be a lifelong battle, one that many did not win on their own.  But there were victories.

And I love to write about soul-deep struggles and victories.

My hero, Ben McKenzie, is a Federal Cavalry captain captured and imprisoned in the notorious Andersonville Prison Camp. He barely survives the harsh conditions of the camp. His best friend, Jeb Scott, does not. Ben makes a deathbed promise to his friend that he will look after Jeb’s mother and sister who live in Texas.

Ben aims to keep that promise, but the medical treatment that he receives after his release from prison camp leaves him dependent upon laudanum. My story starts a year later. Ben determines to break the chains that are eating away at his self-respect. He throws away his bottle of medicine and heads to Texas to keep his promise.

I asked a friend of mine about his own deliverance from addiction. He had this to say, “It was a lifetime ago, my addiction was strong, but my pain was stronger. I’ve lost so much in my life, but then I found that God’s love was deep, and He was even bigger to forgive. Out of His mercy He set me free, and through His grace He healed me from my past.”-Rev. Mark Little Elk

That is my prayer for all of those who struggle. And I look forward to sharing Ben McKenzie’s story with you in Texas Reclaimed.

 

Amazon link for Texas Reclaimed:

https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Reclaimed-Lone-Star-Redemption-ebook/dp/B0FX5YK964

 

https://sherryshindelar.com/

Psalm 31:12-24: God Hears Us

A Psalm of David

I am forgotten as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery.

For I hear many whispering, “Terror on every side!”

They conspire against me and plot to take my life.

But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.”

My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies,

from those who pursue me.

Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.

Let me not be put to shame, Lord, for I have cried out to you;

but let the wicked be put to shame and be silent in the realm of the dead.

Let their lying lips be silenced, for with pride and contempt they speak arrogantly against the righteous.

How abundant are the good things that you have stored up for those who fear you,

that you bestow in the sight of all, on those who take refuge in you.

In the shelter of your presence you hide them from all human intrigues;

you keep them safe in your dwelling from accusing tongues.

Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love

when I was in a city under siege.

In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!”

Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.

Love the Lord, all his faithful people!

    The Lord preserves those who are true to him, but the proud he pays back in full.

Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.

 

Father, you know the pain and suffering that we go through, the horrors that attack us. You hear us cry to you from the farthest, darkest place. Help us, Lord, to learn to trust you better; to know that you have such good plans for those who call to you. 

For the Joy Set Before Him

I like to study on Good Friday what Jesus did for me. I read from Isaiah the sadness and horror he suffered:

 

Isaiah 53:3-7:

He was despised and rejected by mankind,

    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain

    and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

    stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,

    he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on him,

    and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

    each of us has turned to our own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

    the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,

    yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth.

 

Jesus didn’t protest. He knew that through his punishment, we would have peace. We would be healed. We were the joy set before him.

 

Hebrews 12:2:

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

 

Thank you, Jesus, for clinging to the joy set before you. Thank you for the joy we can cling to today.

 

Romans 5:10:

For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

 

John 5:24:

“I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.

 

1 John 2:1-2:

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

 

Romans 8:34:

Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

 

Hebrews 1:3:

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

 

Jesus, you live to save and intercede for us. You are our radiant glory. 

He Briefly Thought Of Home

I was given permission to share this precious writing by an excellent young author.

 

 

He Briefly Thought Of Home

By Rylie Demers

 

He was born beneath a sky that seemed to tremble.
 The stars glimmered like distant lanterns, as if heaven itself leaned down to see.
 His mother held him close, whispering old prayers into the night air. Her hands shook, not from cold, but from the weight of the small miracle she cradled.
 The world was quiet except for the sound of breathing; Hers, his, and the wind slipping softly through the cracks of the stable.

He grew slowly, the way light spreads across the morning.
 He was gentle, the kind of child who spoke to animals and believed the wind could hear him.
 He liked the smell of bread baking, the warmth of sunlight on the floor, the sound of his mother humming while she worked.
 When storms came, he ran outside to meet them, laughing, his hair plastered to his face.
 When he returned drenched and smiling, she would scold him softly, drying him with her shawl.
 “You feel too much,” she would say. “Even the rain finds a home in you.”
 He would only smile, eyes wide, as if feeling were the greatest gift of all.

He followed his father into the workshop, where the air was thick with the scent of sawdust and cedar.
 There he learned patience.
 He learned to smooth roughness, to fit the crooked back into place, to make broken things whole again.
 His father’s laughter filled the room, deep and kind.
 When he taught the boy how to plane wood, he said, “Creation listens to the heart that shapes it.”
 The boy listened. Always.

When his father died, silence moved into the house like a shadow.
 The tools hung untouched.
 The wood waited.
 But one morning, his mother found him there, shaping a block of cedar as the dawn spilled through the window.
 Her tears fell quietly.
 “You have his hands,” she whispered. “And his love.”

Years blurred.
 He became a man with shoulders like his father’s and eyes like his mother’s; Gentle, searching, always carrying something sacred and unseen.
 He built tables where families shared bread.
 He repaired broken doors, carved cradles for new life, built chairs for the weary.
 His work carried warmth.
 Each piece held a trace of him, something soft, like love that had soaked into the grain.

He never turned anyone away.
 A widow who could not pay, a child whose toy had broken, he gave, and gave, and gave again.
 When asked why, he only said,

 “Because the world is heavy enough. Let what I make lighten it.”

In his late years, the world began to stir around him.
 He left his home and took to the road, walking with the kind of certainty that comes from sorrow and hope mixed together.
 He found others, men who were lost to the world.
 Fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot, a skeptic.
 He called them friends. They were human, but so was he.

He tired. He hungered. He laughed until tears filled his eyes.
 He missed home.
 He loved them not for who they were, but for what they could be. He saw them as God saw them. He saw what they were supposed to be, before the fall of humanity.

They argued and misunderstood him.
 They wanted miracles while he wanted their hearts.
 They failed him again and again, and he forgave them before they even realized their faults.
 When they fell asleep during prayers, he smiled.
 When they panicked in storms, he reached out his hand and steadied them.

They did not know what he truly was.
 They only knew that when he was near, they felt lighter, as if something inside them remembered how to breathe.

Sometimes, when they slept, he sat awake, looking at the stars.
 He thought of his mother.
 He thought of his father’s laughter in the workshop.
 He thought of home, the smell of cedar and oil, the sound of his mother’s voice saying his name as though it were a prayer.
 He missed it more than he could ever say.

Then came the night the world turned.
 He prayed beneath the trees until his tears burned, and his heart broke under the weight of what he knew must come.
 His friends slept nearby, too tired to keep watch.
 He loved them still.
 Even when one betrayed him with a kiss, he called him “friend.”

The dawn that followed felt hollow.
 They dragged him through the streets while the sky grew heavy and gray.
 He said nothing.
 He had always been gentle with words.

And then, they brought it to him.

The cross.

Two rough beams of wood, freshly cut, raw, splintered, smelling of earth and sap.
 He looked at it and felt his chest tighten.
 The scent rose up around him, and suddenly, the noise faded.
 He was back in the workshop.
 His father was beside him, smiling softly.
 His mother was calling him in for supper.
 The air smelled the same, wood, dust, and warmth.
 He thought of laughter, of bread, of the clumsy arguments of his friends.
 He thought of every table he had built, every cradle, every door.
 Every life he had touched.

He reached out and touched the beam.
 The grain bit his skin.
 The smell filled his lungs.
 Home.
 He looked at it not as a prisoner, but as a carpenter. His eyes, even through the haze of pain, traced the wood, the knots, the rough edges. The corners were jagged, the joinery careless. It was built in haste, without tenderness, without respect for the living tree it once was.

His fingers twitched with the old instinct, to sand it smoother, to balance the weight, to bring out the beauty hidden in the wood. But this was not a creation meant for beauty. This was a weapon made of what he once loved.

The beam’s surface was cruel beneath his touch, biting at his skin like thorns. He knew the type of wood by scent alone.
 He had worked with it countless times before.
 Once, he had used it to craft cradles and tables, things that held life.
 Now it would hold death.

He thought, This is not good work.
 And the thought broke him more than the pain did.

Because he could see what it could have been, the symmetry, the balance, the grace in the design, and for a moment, he almost wanted to fix it.
 Old habits die slow.
 Love for creation does not vanish, even when creation turns against you.

 

They lifted it onto his shoulders, and he fell beneath its weight.
 But he rose again.
 He always rose.

Through the blur of pain, he saw her, his mother, standing in the crowd.
 Her eyes wide, her lips trembling, her hands pressed to her chest.
 For a moment, he was her little boy again, running home in the rain.
 And she was still calling him back inside.

He took another step.
 And another.
 Each fall drove splinters deeper.
 Each rise brought back the scent of the wood, the same scent that had once meant creation, not destruction.

When they fastened him to it, he breathed in that scent again.
 Wood. Earth. Home.
 He thought of his father’s hands guiding his own.
 He thought of his mother’s shawl drying his hair.
 He thought of his friends laughing beside a fire, too human to be holy and too beloved to be lost.

And even as the world darkened, even as breath left him slowly, he still felt love, for all of them, for everything.
 Because love, once made flesh, does not die.
 It lingers in the grain, in the breath, in the air.

He breathed in the scent one last time.
 He thought of home.
 He thought of mercy.
 He thought of the way wood smells before it becomes something new.

And as the sky split open and silence filled the world,
 he whispered forgiveness, not as a command, but as a promise.

Because even a cross, to a carpenter,
 still smells like wood.

And for one last, trembling heartbeat,

 he thought of home. 

Diamonds from Isaiah 1:27-31

Zion will be delivered with justice,

    her penitent ones with righteousness.

But rebels and sinners will both be broken,

    and those who forsake the Lord will perish.

“You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks

    in which you have delighted;

you will be disgraced because of the gardens

    that you have chosen.

You will be like an oak with fading leaves,

    like a garden without water.

The mighty man will become tinder

    and his work a spark;

both will burn together,

    with no one to quench the fire.”

 

Father, I know that you are powerful and just. All evil will be punished, and those who turn to you will be lovingly cared for.

A Children-Friendly Car Museum

My friend Nina told me a fun story about spending time with her daughter’s family, helping them get ready to move.

 

I just returned home from a last trip to Phoenix.  I won’t miss the stressful 2 hour trip up there but I’m sure going to miss the little guys.

 

I helped my daughter take another load to donations.  “I feel like such a bad mom, taking all these toys…but we won’t have room in CO,” she told me.  I assured her she wasn’t a bad mom, the boys had outgrown the toddler riding toys and the plastic toy BBQ grill, unused Tonka trucks and more.  “Think of how thrilled some mom is going to be, someone on a tight budget who would love a tricycle for their little one, finding a great deal on this one.”  

 

We took a break to go to the Martin Auto Museum and Event Center in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix.  Remy and Elden (five and three years old) could not stop talking about this wonderful place. And I am not a car person, but why not?

 

Oh my goodness they had so many vehicles and even better, they let people sit in a lot of them.  A 60s convertible?  I slid across the front bench, remembering back to my childhood, a world without seatbelts and safety features.  I ran my hand over the rounded curves of a car from the 1940s and wondered how this one managed to avoid the junkyard and be lovingly restored.

 

Remy sat forever in a gull winged BMW sports car telling me, “Grandma, this one is the best! The seats are so comfortable.”  

 

Then we came across a long skinny racecar, close to the ground.  The staff said, “Oh if the kids want to sit in this we can move the steering wheel!” And into the little seat climbed Remy, and he just fit, peering down the long long nose to the two little wheels 8’ away.  

 

The man said, “This racecar is for straight racing for kids ages 5-17.  Its top speed is 85 miles an hour.”

 

The world is more curious than I imagined.  Who lets a 5 year old drag race?  Not this grandma! The car museum helper said that usually racing runs in families and the kids start pretty young.

 

Who knew? But we went from car to car to car.  And there was even a curious bicycle made by John Deere, the front wheel replaced by the rotating blades of a hand lawn mower.  How hard would it be to peddle back and forth on the lawn to mow it, I wonder? 

A Few Special Books

Some books to touch your heart, in many ways.

 

A piece of the moon by Chris Fabry. A bunch of broken souls come together around a small-town radio station in 1981. They face their past, join with unexpected partners, and find acceptance and forgiveness and hope. I read this as an audio book read by Chris Fabry himself. I think he’d make a great radio DJ.

 

Waiting for Christmas by Lynn Austin. A story of hope and miracles in early 1900s New York City.

 

A Constant Love by Tracie Peterson. A great story of Wyoming ranching in the late 1880s, wonderful truths of God’s love and forgiveness. “But there was no way to turn back time. Somehow, they all had to move forward.” And, the author takes a brave stand on the issue of suicide by Christians.

 

By Irene Hannon:

Vanished. I’ve enjoyed books by this author before. I search for them. This is a fun story. Faith. A little romance. Well-developed crime and criminals. A group of buddies who love to give each other trouble and always protect each other. What I’d forgotten about this author’s stories was the down to the last minute, breath-grabbing, fist-clenching danger.

And, Dark Ambitions. Some of the same characters, wonderful suspense and mystery. Both excellent reads.

 

Mother Emanuel: two centuries of race, resistance, and forgiveness in one Charleston church. By Kevin Sack. A fascinating history of the Black church. It begins by telling of the murder of nine church members in 2015 Charleston, South Carolina. Then moves back to talk of slaves being brought to America in the 1500s; slavery; the fight for emancipation and abolitionism, including in churches. The discussion of whether to evangelize Blacks; the Civil War; the growth of the Black church. It talked of pastors who were elected into government, and of the church helping with marches, demonstrations and classes in non-violence. It told of the life of Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney, the pastor who died at the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel. Then of the trial of the murderer, and of the struggle for forgiveness and healing, for Mother Emanuel and the families of those killed and the surviving victims.