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[How to plot an original short story]

Instead of using ingredients from cards, let’s pick our own for each of the five parts. Here’s my choices after reading and thinking about the power of decision-making.

Characters & adjectives:
invalid who is pessimistic and depressed (Betsie)
caring neighbour who drops in to help out & takes her to appointments (Tereaza)

Setting:
invalid’s home and large hospital corridors

Plot Problem:
struggle to help a sickly woman help herself to better conditions

Climax:
sick woman learns power of decision-making

Complication:
bad news from doctor

Betsie called out a weak “Com’on in,” when Tereaza knocked on the inside door in the porch. Tereaza bounded up the two steps and into Betsie’s kitchen as her usual cheery self, and noted that Betsie’s face lit up and she really had the effect of cheering up this sickly older woman.

That made her feel good, so as usual, she bustled about to do the various favours Betsie asked of her. She washed the bent over woman’s grey curls in the bathroom sink, then sat her down at the table and put rollers in her hair, even though Betsie kept apologizing for the ragged old things. Tereaza throw a load of towels and linens into the washing machine next, and got a roast in the pot, and peeled potatoes, and all the while tried to switch Betsie’s negative thinking to a more positive, hopeful vein.

When her time had run out, she was almost relieved to promise to take Betsie to see the eye specialist in the big city hospital the next day, and to get out of there. Much as she cared for this older friend, and Betsie did tip generously, the constant struggle to cheer Betsie up was getting her down.

That evening Tereaza picked up a book her brother had loaned her, and began to read the first chapter just before bed. She got excited as she realized this applied perfectly to Betsie. She would make a project tomorrow of teaching Betsie this way of thinking.

When she went to pick up Betsie, she was solicitous and friendly, but waited patiently for Betsie to get into the car without helping her any more than absolutely necessary.

Once they were settled in their seats, buckled up, and turning onto the highway, Betsie asked, “So what news do you know today?” She liked to hear Tereaza talk about her own interesting life.

“Well, I did learn something new last night. Do you believe that we are responsible for our choices?”

This started a discussion on sin and that yes, we no one to blame but ourselves for our decisions. Fortunately, God is willing to forgive our sins when we confess or admit to them, and ask for Jesus’ blood to wipe them out. This wasn’t exactly the point Tereaza wanted to work on, but she took time to develop it, so that Betsie would feel they were agreed on some basics.

Slowly Tereaza guided the conversation to examples, of specific decisions and their consequences. She used a couple of examples from her own life, then asked Betsie if she could name some decisions that had set the course of her life in a new direction.

The older woman was just getting warmed up about her memories as a young woman and the independent choice she made to take a job in a different town from where her family lived, when they arrived in the city. While she focused on city lights, Tereaza let Betsie talk about when she had several rooming options, how she chose the one that led to her meeting the young man whom she married.

They dropped the topic while Tereaza helped her friend into a wheelchair from the trunk, and took her into the huge hospital with its many corridors and mall-like walkways.

As usual, Betsie was soon hinting that she needed a bathroom. Tereaza had done this often enough that she remembered where the main facilities were on each floor. She zoomed the wheelchair into a stall just in time. Often she stayed in the cubicle with Betsie to help her stand and turn around, but this one was rather small, so she stepped outside and leaned against the door to think and pray. How was she going to help this woman learn to take more responsibility for her own life and care? She did need some help; obviously enough, and she didn’t want to suddenly drop her caring ways, but she did hope to open her eyes to see that there were still lots of things she could do for herself.

When Betsie called out her name, and Tereaza opened the door, she found that Betsie had managed to get herself back into the wheelchair on her own. Wonderful.

After letting her wash her hands, Tereaza zoomed the wheelchair down the long mall stretch to the office suite of the Eye specialist. They were just in time for her appointment, but were directed to a waiting area and had to wait another 45 minutes to get in. During that time, Betsie was in a mood to talk, so Tereaza laid aside the magazine that had caught her eye and concentrated on discussing decision-making and responsibilities with her friend.

Sometimes they were off on rabbit trails, and for a while they were distracted by some restless children nearby.

Finally they had the first session with an aide who tested Betsie’s eye pressures. Then they were back in the waiting area. Tereaza had just brought their talk back to the power of making decisions, when they were called into the specialist’s office.

The tall red-head doctor with the British accent was polite, but to the point. She had glaucoma in her eyes. The left being the worst.

Betsie pulled herself up in her wheelchair and asked, “How soon can you operate?”

“We won’t. You’ve already had all the surgeries to your eyes we can give you. There is no cure for glaucoma. All we can do is keep the pressures under control, but you will have to be faithful in putting the drops in your eyes.”

Betsie stared at Tereaza incredulously.

Tereaza felt awkward. How could decision-making help here? But to save the day, she turned politely to the doctor and asked questions to clarify on Betsie’s behalf. She knew that later on the way home, she’d have to explain to Betsie exactly how and why of all this.

Sure enough, once they had the prescription, and were in the car and heading home, Betsie forgot even the usual ice cream stop she liked to insist on, and peppered Tereaza with questions. She seemed to take this glaucoma diagnosis as a sentence to blindness.

Over in several ways, Tereaza explained that it was not a given that she would go blind. She could maintain her eyesight by faithfully putting the drops in her eyes. Betsie did not like to do that, and wanted Tereaza to promise to come over twice a day to put them in for her.

Suddenly Tereaza heard where this was going and where the opportunity to apply decision-making could come in. “Guess what, Betsie! Here’s your chance to make a decision that will save your sight. I cannot come over that often. I have a life of my own to live, but how about if YOU decide to learn to put those drops in and to do it very punctually yourself? You can be depressed and worried, and be forgetful or you can decide to make this a top priority in your life. You have the power to save your eyes by doing this one hard thing until it becomes easy for you.”

She broke into the smile Betsie often admired, the one with the dimples. “Just think, you might discover other decisions you can make to improve the quality of your life. Instead lying down and letting life’s trials pummel you, you can rise up and draw fences around you to tell the trials how close they may come.”

Betsie pursed her lips and stared straight forward for a few minutes.

Tereaza began to wonder if she ought to apologize… when Betsie announced, “Yes, I’m going to prove that I have the power to make decisions. I will do that as long as God gives me breath. That’s the one decision I will leave up to Him.”

Tereaza’s dimples twinkled, and turned to laughter when Betsie added, “See, I have the power to make you smile and laugh.”

Are you having good weather for Easter week too? We are thrilled with how the snow and ice has been melting each day the past week or so. It still freezes over at night, so in the morning I have to get off the sidewalk at places to skirt the ice patches, but they are much fewer and farther between now. At five, when I walk home, there are puddles where the ice was, but each day, less and less of them.

My garden in the backyard is nearly clear of snow, but still rather muddy. I’ll give it some more time before I go turning over the compost with a spade. However, the front of my house faces north and there is still about a foot or more of dirty snow on my flowerbeds. (sigh) I can hardly wait for my pink tulips to come poking up out of there!

There is always someone ready to remind us that we could still have a freak spring storm, but it is sure good to go some places with only shoes on, instead of boots.

Saturday was so nice outside that I pulled some 2x4s and 2x6s, etc. out of my garden shed, and brought up Dad’s old power tools from my basement, and tackled a construction project. I wanted another shelf unit in my basement and decided to build it myself. It didn’t take long until I really missed Dad. I used to just tell him over breakfast what I wanted and he’d go make it out behind the back door. Now I had to teach myself how to use the power skillsaw and the cordless drill or screw-driver.

At one point I was bent over, biting my teeth, willing that screw to drive in straight (it didn’t seem to want to go), and suddenly I felt such a vibrating knot in my neck that I was sure I was doing this wrong.

Dad never made a good teacher. He would quickly grab the matter and “show me” instead of letting me try – however, I should have insisted on some basic how-tos with these power tools.

Oh well, after a few screws, I seemed to catch on and it got a bit easier. I did end up finishing the two ladders on which I wanted to lay my shelves to make a large, heavy-duty unit of warehouse storage for my heavy boxes of books and files. It didn’t look perfectly straight, but each one was able to stand up on its own, and by 5 pm I had nearly filled four shelves with heavy boxes.

I had also cleared off and moved another shelf unit, and I only gave up because I was reaching a point of utter physical exhaustion. I knew I would likely be sick on Sunday.

I was too. Not as bad as I have been in the past when my adrenalin glands were drained with exhaustion, but I had a sick headache all day and into Monday.

As my mother would say, “Where there is a will there is a way.” I should add to that, “…As long as you are prepared to pay the cost.”

Last week I wondered when I would find time to make those digital pictures, or Scripture Signs, for our new project at WTM. I don’t have a scheduled block of time for it yet, but I sacrificed my plans for Saturday night, and decided to try for one or two. What do you know, but I together with the 2 or 3 I had done earlier, I soon had a folder full of 10 of them. So I have my contribution ready for tomorrow’s committee meeting.

The atmosphere here at the office is quite keen on this. Joe has been printing out some he has made, and Priscilla bought some mat frames, and now these pictures are starting to show up on the office walls downstairs. Next week we plan to have a bunch of them ready as prizes at our fund-raiser, the Music/Dessert night, at which seven of the talented musical children of the Ong family will be putting on a concert.

I’ve worked up a press release and am trying to get it out to all the media this week. However, this afternoon I’m making a house call for computer tutoring, and fine-tuning some setup details.

Say, I’ve been remiss and forgetful to tell you about a couple of websites I have. I really need to get my marketing act together, don’t I? Or else I need to be able to hire some help!

One is a sub-domain site, off of this one, with the theme of prayer and intimacy with God. Because it is not a profit-motivated site, I forget to mention it, but last week I got a request from someone who had discovered it and wanted help to find a certain Bible verse that shows that God is eagerly waiting to answer our prayers. I think I’ve got a new friend as a result. To help you find it, I better start giving out the URL more often. Intimacy.Ruthes-SecretRoses.com I also need to find/make time to add more pages there.

The other case has an unusual story too. Back in 2005 I helped a friend by designing a cooking site for her to sell some e-cookbooks she had got. I could see it had potential so I hinted that if she ever wanted to toss it, she should toss it to me. Well, guess what, Judy did just that last summer, shortly after my birthday. I was too busy to change things over to my name so I ignored it until just a few weeks ago. I spent a couple of Saturday evenings fixing it up so that I can benefit from the sales of that site now. It needs a little more lick and polish, but I guess I can start giving out the URL to this new site of mine too. JustGoodCooking.com

It has a membership recipe exchange section I want to polish up some more, but I was surprised to discover that there are already 27 people signed up for a mailing list. I had no idea! I don’t think Judy did either. I want to switch it over, to my preferred system for mailing lists, but then… I need to find or make a block of time to write to these people who want to be notified of new recipes on the site.

You know this is Easter week, and sometimes it comes upon us so fast we don’t have time to think through what it means. I have been giving it some thought though in the last day or so, and am bursting with many things to say or share about Easter.

Yesterday I was going to write a new short story for the Story Game, but found myself thinking about my best Good Friday memory and decided to use that instead. See it below in the Ruthe’s Roses article. That is a true story.

This morning in my devotional time I had an idea for another Easter message that really gripped me. Maybe I can leave you with the key thought so you can mull it over yourself if you have time.

From the Gospel of John 20:19-22 and 21:15-17 Key Thoughts: When Jesus appeared after His resurrection, He gave peace to the disciples, they were not to be afraid; He also gave them the Holy Spirit and commanded them to forgive sins, then shortly after, at another time to Peter, Jesus implied that we should express our love to Him, and feed His lambs and sheep.

I had heard of foot-washing ceremonies, but had never experienced one. When Pastor Luke announced a unique way of celebrating pre-Easter with a foot-washing service, and an all night prayer meeting, including an experience like the persecuted believers in (then) communist Romania have, when they have to meet in secret, followed by a breakfast early on Good Friday morning, well, I looked forward to it. The youth were invited to take part, but as my friend Shirley and I talked to others we got the impression that not many of our age, or the seniors were very enthused. Many of them had excuses, like traveling or family needs.

About 30-40 came for the Thursday evening service to commemorate the Last Supper. There was a muffin and juice break so that those who didn’t wish to stay for the night could go home without embarrassment. However, Pastor Luke announced that anyone could leave at any time during the night if they felt they could not stay through until the morning.

One older single woman, our treasurer, stayed with us and the young people. But us, I recall the pastor and my friend Shirley and myself, and some university students, about 20-25 people stayed.

We went back to sit in the front pews in the sanctuary where we had just had the evening meeting, and Pastor Luke read the Bible passage about Jesus washing His disciples’ feet, and explained how we would do this. Some basins and towels were brought in and we paired off and spread out a bit. A young university student washed my feet first and then I hers.

The oddest emotions washed through me as Sandy washed my feet. A tenderness that someone would do this for me, then the realization that Jesus cared for me enough to serve me like that too. It didn’t take but a few minutes, yet it had me tearing up. When it was my turn to wash Sandy’s feet I felt bonded to her in love, while she experienced the emotions and awe at the Lord’s love and humility.

As we returned to our places, I could see Shirley was deeply affected too.

Now, we began a a series of prayer times for different topics.

After a short talk on pray by a layman, various people stood to pray aloud for current events around the world that were in the news those days and also to pray for our national, provincial and local governments.

Another layman shared Scripture and thoughts about prayer, and the pastor reviewed a list of prayer requests from our missionaries, and we broke into small huddles to pray for these requests.

In about 15-20 minutes we returned for more Scripture and words about prayer, and then broke into pairs or triplets to go off into smaller huddles with a copy of the church directory in hand and each huddle was assigned to pray for one or two pages of the families and names in that directory.

Juice and muffins remained on the table in the foyer, for those who needed sustenance between sessions, but the night was going on at quite a pace, and I hardly noticed. I certainly wasn’t hungry.

Pastor Luke explained that we were going to try something very different. We should all go off alone to pray for ourselves, and to rest up for a while. All the lights would be turned off except for the exit signs over outside doors.

In approximately half an hour we should slip quietly into the foyer, and someone would meet us with a flashlight to guide us to the secret meeting place of the saints. The believers in a communist country never travel openly or in large groups because it is easy for someone to report to the authorities that there is a meeting going on somewhere. A wrong move could mean the death of yourself and likely some other believers. Discretion was the word. Nor could we bring our Bibles with us. They had to stay behind because most believers in such situations don’t own a Bible.

Sure enough, when I went quietly into the foyer Jan met me with a flashlight and led me to the back of the platform in the sanctuary where there was a ladder on the wall up to the attic. (I had no idea it was ever there!) Ladders are never fun for me, but I tried it and got up to the church attic, and found several others were already there, sitting on boxes in a circle. A few more were led to this hiding place in the next while, but our numbers were reduced to about 15. The older single lady had to go home when she discovered she would have to climb the ladder. we felt badly for her.

When the guides joined us the pastor began a very quiet service. We dared not sing aloud, but hummed quietly while a young university couple (engaged to each other) led us with a very softly strummed guitar. Since we had no copy of the Bible we had to go around the circle and each person had to quote some Scripture verse that they knew for memory. Most of us realized to our shame, that we could recall very few.

The pastor had memorized a longer passage of several verses and preached on that in a quiet, conversational tone.

Somewhere below a door slammed and we all started with fright, as if we had been discovered. We were quiet for several minutes before the pastor continued his message.

We prayed quietly but earnestly around the circle, for each other, and for the believers in free countries like Canada and the USA.

Finally Jan, as our hostess, passed around a plate with small wedge cuts of a couple of oranges.

With the pastor’s instructions to go find a quiet corner to have some time with the Lord all by ourselves until we were called for breakfast in fellowship hall, we began to slip away one by one. About five to ten or 15 minutes were allowed between each departure, so that no “neighbours” (pretended) could tell that there had been a gathering at this place.

At 7 am. we could hear and smell breakfast, and a call came out to join together there to share a meal and report on our experiences. I tell you, there was hardly a dry eye in the place, as many of us had been profoundly moved by the whole night’s experiences. The bacon and eggs tasted exceptionally great too.

I went home after that for a nap of a few hours, but that whole Easter weekend had a tender and emotional veil cast over it. I don’t recall much else about that weekend, but a spiritual richness rose like a strong perfume that lasted for a number of days later.