Happiness is a Poem and a Flower

"No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn." (Hal Borland)

"Winter lingered so long in the lap of Spring that it occasioned a great deal of talk."  (Bill Nye)

I'm wishing I could spot some little spring beauty flowers like those above, but not yet this year. Those little blooms are still sleeping under the snow that has stuck around way past its welcome. But it's a good thing we don't have to find our happiness in the weather. While most of the poems I've received with entries to my Roses are Red Contest that's going on now, have been simple four line verses, a few readers have shared poems that put my amateur rhyming to shame. So tonight I'm sharing them with you.

Happiness  by Nona

Happiness comes from many places.
Singing birds and familiar faces.

A hug from a friend
when you are blue.

Lifting of the heart
when your love is true.

Sitting in the shade by a 
babbling brook.

Cuddled into a chair
with your favorite book.

~~~

Lovely poem, Nona. Peggy stayed with the Roses are red theme but made it so much more as she looks forward to Spring.

Roses are Red  by Peggy

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

When this Winter is through

The flowers will shake, and open their heads

Their colors are grand

Some smell pretty, too

Let's strike up the band

For those Violets of Blue

For those buds I will look

As they peek through the snow

While I watch from atop my book

As those zero winds blow

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

Dear God - Bring the Springtime

We need something new!!!

~~~

Last we have a true Valentine love poem from Sandi. 

What is Love by Sandi

What is love...

where does it go...

Is it a vapor not unlike the snow,

Does it drift lazily down from the sky,

piling around us until it's quite high,

Does it make choices or caress all the same

and when things go wrong is it always to blame...

Is it like the seasons that blow hot and cold,

Does it laugh lustily at all those it's fooled,

The fragrance it leaves is dispelled by none,

It lingers long after the romance is done,

If given the chance, would you risk it again,

Treating it tenderly like an old friend...

Not taking it for granted, but being thankful each day,

That no matter how brief, it once came your way???!!

~~~

Indeed we can be thankful when love comes our way. Thanks, ladies, for sharing your talent with us. 

The contest is still open. You can see the prize (a heart-shaped necklace and winner's choice of one of my books) on my News and Events website page. You can enter by leaving a comment on a post here (with a way to contact you) by midnight EST on March 3, 2015. Thanks to all who have already entered and shared a poem too. You don't have to share a poem. That's just to add a little fun!

Joy, Happiness and Just Plain Fun

Fun with Mystery Photos

I hope you've been having fun with my mystery photos.Wednesday's photo stumped most of you. Maybe because it was sort of fuzzy after I snipped out the little bit to try to trick you. Take one last guess and then look down a few paragraphs to see the "rest of the picture." 
 


A New Photo to Guess
 
Here's a new photo bit to guess. This one might be easier for you all. But whether you get the guess right or wrong, you still get another entry in the giveaway to increase your chances of being a winner in my book giveaway. I'm picking two winners who will get one of my books and a grab bag book of a different Christian writer. 

Joy and Happiness

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give. (Eleanor Roosevelt)


What makes us happy? Is happiness the same as joy?The dictionary says joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. You know that kind of feeling you have when the person you love says they love you too. Or when you hold your first grandchild. Or when you see a flash of a bluebird's wings. Or a crocus bursting out of the ground at the end of a long winter. Or when you're singing your favorite hymn and the words are just as meaningful on the hundredth sing through as the first. Or when you get the news that something you wrote is finally going to be published. 

Joy! It sings in your heart. Makes you smile when you are all alone. Makes your feet feel like dancing. Sometimes you feel so joyful you have to release some of the sparkle of joy into the air by moving. You might clap your hands, twirl around, 
jump in the air or do cartwheels. Joy can explode. 

Summer of Joy

That's the kind of feeling I wanted readers to think about when they saw the title of my third Heart of Hollyhill book. I originally titled the story Sunflowers of Joy. No real reason except I love sunflowers and I wanted that joy to make an appearance in the story. But the publishers tweaked the title a little and came up with Summer of Joy. I like that title too although most of the story happens in the winter and spring. Even so, the title invites us to think about a summer full of joy. And that sounds fabulous. 


The Rest of the Picture
 
Oh, yeah, and see those little records. That's the mystery picture from Wednesday. Amy guessed records among other things and Linda guessed it was from the cover of Orchard of Hope, but she may have meant Summer of Joy and had the titles mixed up. Thanks for all the guesses. Now it's time to guess again. One more chance to get your name in the drawing hat and to have some fun. At least, it's fun for me! 

Joy 

Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are. (Marianne Williamson)

Happiness is Another Book

"It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about." (Dale Carnegie) 

Happiness for me today is thinking about another book written. Another story told - difficult though it was to pry out of my head and onto my computer screen. 

A fellow writer in an e-mail posting today said he didn't think there was anything magical about writing a story. Perhaps not for him, but it feels a little magical to me each time I write "the end" and then start to read to see if I got the story told. I did that this week. Read my new Shaker story, The Gifted, with some trepidation since a lot of its story words had been difficult to summon out of the murky depths of my storytelling well. But the story is there. The one I wanted to tell. The one my characters lived for me in my imagination. 

So happiness is a story told. A blessing received. The first reader liked the story. That's always me - that first reader I have to please. Stephen King in his book On Writing says you should write for one reader. For him, that is his wife. But for me, well, it's me. Of course a writer can be deluded and fooled by her own words. Most writers do have critique partners and first readers other than themselves. But as that Frank Sinatra song says, I did it my way. That's the only way I can. And the story has to speak to me first. 

Now I have to finish it up, cut and polish my words in hopes that my next readers will think I've found the right story and told it in the best way I can. I need to trim away some more of those words I had such difficulty coming up with in the first place. But sometimes you just have to spill the whole bucket of words even when you only need half or three quarters of the bucket. Then you have to mop up.

On my Facebook page this week we've been talking about the University of Maryland research that found reading a book made people happier than watching t.v. I don't know if that's true of not. I think surveys can prove just about anything at times and today it could be books making people happy and tomorrow t.v. or Facebook. But reading makes me happy. And reading my book after writing the end and finding the story actually is there the way I doubted through the last hundred pages or so, now that's happiness. 

Does reading make you happy? On FB a lot of readers have shared the books that make them happy. What a gift to me that some of them mentioned my books. Hope you are finding happiness in your thoughts today.

Happy Possibilities

Where do you feel happy? And if you found such a place, how often would you make every effort to go there? This would be a place where you would feel loved and worthy and safe and engaged in life. No boredom there. No hard testing. Except, of course, some of us are happiest when faced with challenges that we have to give our all to meet.
~~
That's probably why people run marathons. I haven't decided that would be a happy time for me. I love to walk, but running 26 miles is another matter. But my son-in-law and daughter enjoy testing themselves by running in races and feeling the accomplishment of finishing with a faster time than they did in the last race.
~~
Me, I'm happy when I'm writing and it can certainly be challenging to come up with the right idea that can start the snowball of story creation rolling. At times the idea can explode and lend itself to a dynamite beginning that maybe writes itself but then somewhere along the story writing way will come some writing doldrums. I usually have a few stretches of doldrums when I'm writing - times when I wonder if I'll ever finish this story or even if it's worth finishing. And yet I'm only really happy when I'm somewhere in the process of telling a story.
~~
Not that I don't get happiness from other things. I certainly do. I love my family and I'm crazy about my grandkids. I am blessed with a life chock full of happy possibilities. Even now staying with Mom so much, there are happy possibilities as Mom and I spend more time together than we have in years. Of course there are also the happy times when I do get to go home and just be me. And part of me - a big part of me - is a writer. That was part of me before I ever met my husband. It can be a frustrating part - a maddening part - a consuming part. But in the center of all of that it can be a happy part.
~~
I got going on the idea of where to find happiness from our Sunday bulletin today. In the printed material on the back the writer asks, "Where is a good place to find happiness?" And he suggests we might answer "the church." I do hope you expect to find that inner happiness so necessary to your well being in your chuch. I do. But I also know I need to be writing words that will slide one sentence into the next and the next until I have a story going. And then I'm happy - at least until I hit the doldrums. ;o)
~~
I've been so busy this weekend with the trip to Books by the Banks in Cincinnati and then staying at Mom's and trying to cook for Homecoming meal and going to Homecoming and then back to Mom's that happiness hasn't been much on my mind. More survival or perhaps endurance is the better word. Maybe I'm running those races just like my daughter and son-in-law, but they're private races - races to get everything done and some words written too.
~~
I haven't even been home long enough to pick my winners for my birthday giveaway, but by next blog post for sure. Oh yeah, and I just put the flower picture because I liked it. It's been way too chilly today as if winter is trying to leapfrog over autumn and so I needed a little bright time. Plus, the area where I took the picture of those Dutchman's-breeches is one of the places I can always find a good dose of happiness while I'm hiking. Church is another, especially on a day like today when we were celebrating 198 years and welcoming so many friends back home.
~~
Where is a good place for you to find happiness?

Happiness is a Form of Courage

How about some happiness quotes to lift the mid-week blahs? I don't really have mid-week blahs, but I've heard some people say they do. One thing sure I won't next week since my twin grandbaby boys should have discovered a bright new world by then. If I can get on line I'll let you know their names. If Mom and Day have picked names, they haven't told us yet. I asked my five-year-old granddaughter, soon to be big sister again, if she'd been helping her mom and dad think up names. She was quiet a minute before she said she thought the twins were going to be named Robin and Cyborg. She's a big Teen Titan fan, but I'll be plenty surprised if her mom has signed on for those names.

So here's some happiness quotes to keep you smiling on through the week.

• Happiness is the only thing that multiplies by division.
• A poor man can be happy; but a happy man isn't poor.
• Show me an optimist, and I'll show you a happy-condriac.
• Happiness is a form of courage.
• Happiness has to be cranked up; trouble is a self-starter.
• We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. -- George Bernard Shaw
• When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. -- Helen Keller
• The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. -- Allan K. Chalmers

Now one last bit to keep you smiling even if you have to fill up your gas tank tomorrow. Somebody spotted this sign on an Amish buggy

Energy efficient vehicle - runs on oats and grass. Caution - Do not step in exhaust.

Hope you have much to be happy about this week and every week.