Win a Free Book - Interview with Kathi Macias

I hope you enjoy my interview with Kathi Macias, author of "How Can I Run a Tight Ship When I'm Surrounded by Loose Cannons?". If you leave a comment by Friday, February 27, I will put your name in a drawing for a free copy of the book!

Kathi, first of all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading "How Can I Run a Tight Ship...". Your storytelling was so honest and engaging that I had trouble putting it down! I could also very much relate to many of your struggles. Was there something specific that inspired you to write it?

Actually, as much as I hate to admit it, I came up with the title before I had a clue about the content. How Can I Run a Tight Ship when I’m Surrounded by Loose Cannons just popped into my head one day, and I thought, Wow, what a great book title! So I started to pray/think about it and realized it epitomized my life—a control freak who could never get a handle on anything! That realization brought me back to the first time as a new Christian that I stumbled across the Proverbs 31 woman and immediately began trying to be like her. What a hilarious and pathetic failure that was!!! I also realized that nearly all Christian women, to some extent, get caught up in the fallacy of the Proverbs 31 role model, and I wanted to help them see the futility of trying to do the impossible. Instead, I desired for this book to help women see the progression of grace in our lives as we pass through stages of growth and different seasons of Proverbs 31 living, moving into excellence but not striving for perfection. And I wanted to make them smile in the process.

Is it safe to say that you would be considered a "Type A" personality?

HA! I am such a Type A that I feel a failure if someone doesn’t tell me I’m a Type A-plus! Seriously, if I got a 98 on a test in school, I was ready to throw myself off a cliff. All I could think of was that 2 percent I missed. And, of course, I was a great “fixer.” I knew just how I could help others become as perfect as I wanted to be—at everything! If you read the book, you’ll know that kind of thinking got me dubbed “Mighty Mouse” in school—you know the theme song: “Here I come to save the day!” What a joke!

God has obviously given you (and me) and countless others that type of personality, and yet it seems like we struggle so much letting God rather than ourselves be in control of every situation. In our drive to be productive for Him, we lose track of our relationship with Him. That balance between being and doing s such a hard one to find. How have you seen God use your "type A" personality in positive ways?

Yes, God has used me “just as I am”—in spite of myself. And it never ceases to amaze me. More than once I’ve found myself asking, “Father, have You forgotten who You have on the end of the string here?” Then, of course, He reminds me that it’s not about who’s on my end of the string, but who’s holding it at its source. Why do I have to be reminded of that fact so often??? How can I write a book about it and STILL slip into that “it’s all up to me” thinking? Hmm… Do you suppose I’m still a “WIP”—a “work in progress” with a lot to learn? Absolutely! And so are you. So we may as well share a few laughs as we learn together along the way, don’t you think?

If you could sum up what you want to say to readers in this book in a sentence or two, what would it be? What do you most want readers to take away from it?

I want my readers to relax—to stop striving and failing and feeling frustrated and hopeless. We can’t do anything on our own anyway, so why feel badly when we fail? If we really believed Jesus’ words that “apart from Me you can do NOTHING,” we’d have a lot more peace in our lives because we’d stop trying to do what we cannot do. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But after 35 years of walking with the Lord, twenty of those years having been spent in fulltime ministry, I’m still trying to learn and apply it. So take heart, fellow pilgrims! You and I aren’t faithful—but God is, and He has promised to complete that good work He started in us. So let’s just hang on to Him and let Him steer our ships safely home—loose cannons and all!

Thank you, Kathi!

Leave a comment and I put you in the drawing for a free copy of the book.

You can also purchase a copy from Amazon.com http://tinyurl.com/apn93m

Pray Before Talking

In church on Sunday, the speaker talked about the importance of talking like Jesus did. Our words get us into so much trouble sometimes! He mentioned a co-worker who had a post-it note on his office phone that simply said, "PRAY". It was a reminder to pray before communicating over the phone.

In similar ways, we could have "PRAY" notes on our computers to remind us to send God-honoring emails.

I thought of another idea...

Enough said. :)

Are you interrupted?

"I think I find most help in trying to look on all the interruptions and hinderances to work that one has planned out for oneself as discipline, trials sent by God to help one against getting selfish over one's work. Then one can feel that perhaps one's true work - one's work for God - consists in doing some trifling haphazard thing that has been thrown into one's day. It is not a waste of time, as one is tempted to think, it is the most important part of the work of the day - the part that one can best offer to God. After such a hindrance, do not rush after the planned worlk; trust that the time to finish it will be given sometime, and keep a quiet heart about it."
- Annie Keary, 1825-1875, from "Keep a Quiet Heart" by Elizabeth Elliot

Interruptions and hinderances. Hmmm, I think I have two of those, ages 4 and 6! How many times do I feel hindered and interrupted from doing laundry, washing the dishes, writing, keeping to my set schedule for the day, etc, by my children! It feels horrible to think of them as trials. They are really a joy. (Usually. Well, except for this morning with my 4 year old... That's another story!) But, I do feel interrupted and inconvenienced by them. (Insert conviction here.) God has given me the gift and privilege to stay at home with them and home school them. They are not the interruption, but th real work that God has for me. Everything else is the interruption.

Lord, help me keep a quiet heart. Actually, give me one to begin with and then help me hold on to it! :)

"Whatever happens is assigned." -Elizabeth Elliot

25 Random Things About Me

1. I have two young kids who have way more energy than I ever will.
2. I love libraries.
3. I’m somewhat ADHD – I hardly do one thing for more than half an hour or so.
4. My kids sometimes drive me completely crazy, yet I still want to have one more. That’s got to be like the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Oh well.
5. I’m hopelessly addicted to coffee. I’ve quit several times only to re-hook myself later.
6. I can’t stand the Teletubbies and won’t let my children watch them.
7. I can’t wait to learn history chronologically alongside my kids. I wish I had been taught that way.
8. I also plan to teach my kids Greek and learn alongside them. (We home school in case you couldn’t guess.) I totally want to be able to read the Bible in the original languages.
9. Watching my son learn to read is one of the coolest things in the world.
10. I’m starting to think that I’m sick of living in the upper Midwest. The winters are SO COLD!
11. I wish I lived on a farm in the 1800s. Seriously. I suppose I could become Amish, but my husband would never go for it in a million years.
12. I wish someone had forced me to learn to play piano when I was a kid.
13. I wish I still had my tenor saxophone. It would be a blast to play again!
14. I probably think about money way too often.
15. I’m still using the beat up dresser I had growing up.
16. As my children just reminded me, we have 3 pets – two frogs and one fish. Do the crickets that feed the frogs count?
17. I think kindergarteners are very cute. It all goes downhill after that. (Not really, but sometimes it seems that way.)
18. I’m having a hard time coming up with 25 things.
19. I generally hate going clothes shopping.
20. I frequently lack sufficient patience when dealing with my children.
21. My daughter can be the cutest thing in the world or the most infuriating thing in the world. She can flip flop from one extreme to the other with amazing alacrity.
22. I’m not sure that ‘alacrity’ was the right word to use in #21…
23. “Bedtime for Francis” is one of my favorite children’s books.
24. I love reading historical fiction.
25. I think the “Olivia” books for kids are kind of weird. I just don’t get them.