Tag Archives: Eve

Does Eve Still Like Apples? A Conversation with Eve, Our First Mother

A visit with Eve:

ME: Eve is our first mother, the mother of all living. Through the ages, men have found reasons to say things about her that may or may not be true. In my book, Eve, First Matriarch, I try to set the record straight about this beautiful woman who is mother to all of us.

We have had some questions submitted for you, Eve. Are you ready to answer them?

EVE: I will be happy to answer your questions. I would like all my daughters and sons to know me better.

ME: Okay. First question for you. What was it like to anger God?

EVE: Let’s start with the hard question and get it out of the way!
We were afraid of God’s anger when we partook of that fruit. God had told us we would die if we ate it. I didn’t want to die. Adam didn’t want to die. But we both wanted to be together and have children. We couldn’t know happiness without sorrow. We couldn’t have children without breaking this one commandment.
I was frightened when I heard Father and Jehovah returning to Eden after we ate the fruit. We hid. We feared seeing or speaking to Him.
But, God wasn’t angry with us. He was filled with overwhelming sorrow because there was a better way for us to have moved forward in our progression. Lucifer stepped forward and interrupted it. I was glad not to be in Lucifer’s place that day. Father’s anger came through, though he used a quiet voice to send him from Father’s presence and from Eden. We were all sorrowful that day.

ME: I’m glad I wasn’t there that day. It would be frightening to upset God.
Another question, that goes along with the first:
What was it like to receive God’s forgiveness?

EVE: Father’s forgiveness didn’t come easily. I spent many days on my knees, praying and asking for His forgiveness. I kept remembering the days we spent in Eden. Those were carefree days, no pain, no sickness, and no hunger. But there wasn’t really joy, either.
After the birth of our first child, who Angelique named _, I better understood the forgiveness of a parent for a child. It wasn’t until many years later that I knew for certain that Father had forgiven me. In those years, I remembered my transgression and grieved that I had been so weak as to allow myself to be tricked.
When Adam convinced me that Father had forgiven me, the weight of my guilt lifted. I felt like the weight of many heavy rocks had been lifted from my shoulders. My soul felt as if it could join the clouds floating high in the sky.

ME: I’m glad you were able to feel Father’s forgiveness. It gives me hope that I, too, can be forgiven.
Next question: Is God to be loved or feared? Why or why not?

EVE: That is an easy question. I love Father. He is kind and generous. He is all we can hope for as an example for papas on this earth. He loves His children. He wants what is best for us — all of the time.
We hear Father tell us He is a jealous God. He jealously seeks for us, His children, to find the joy that can only be found in obedience to His commandments. Sadly, people aren’t always willing to obey Him. Father allows those who choose to be disobedient to pay all the consequences of their choices.
Father allows the Destroyer to tempt women and men. When they follow the Destroyer, they are no longer protected by Father. The Destroyer will not support them forever. When they lose the purpose, he allows them to fall into despair.
Those women and men fear Father, for they know they must meet Him in the end and pay the consequences of their actions.

ME: So, God is a loving Father?

EVE: He is. He loves us.

ME: Our time is nearly up. I know you have things to do. A reader wants to know if you still like apples.

EVE: Apples? I have always loved apples. Why would your reader want to know about apples?

ME: Men have taught that the forbidden fruit was an apple. Was it?

EVE: (laughing) No. But I am forbidden to tell you which fruit it was. I have to go. I’ll see you again sometime. Maybe I can answer more of your reader’s questions.

ME: Thank you, Eve.

Next week we will have a chat with Adam, our ancient father.

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Who Do You Honor This Mothers Day?

Happy Mothers Day to the women who are reading this.

Some moms are already posting pictures on social media of the flowers their children have given them. My husband bought me a beautiful plant. (I hope I can keep this one alive.) I have also noticed many women who vent their feelings of frustration, anger, and sorrow about the coming Sunday when we celebrate our mothers.

Those who aren’t mothers yet, or who haven’t been able to become mothers, for whatever reason, speak of their embarrassment when wished a Happy Mothers Day. Or sorrow, or grief, or regret, or … The emotions vary as widely as the women who do not (yet) have children and are not (yet) mothers.

Other women feel guilt because they aren’t the perfect mothers you read about in the Mothers Day card section or the songs the children sing. (I always cringed at the “Your happy smiling face”. For some reason, I didn’t alwyas feel like smiling.) Perfection just isn’t possible, but moms feel guilty because they haven’t yet achieved it.

Some women struggle with Mothers Day because their relationships with their own mothers isn’t as good as it could be. Or they feel sad because the relationship with their mom or stepmom ended with the death of their mothers.

Ad infinitum. The grief and sorrow continues with multiple variations of all these excuses and more. Many women struggle to find any joy or honor on the day set apart to honor mothers and women.

Believe it or not, I’ve had all those feelings burn in my heart and soul. Yes, I now have children and grandchildren, but I went through a painful time when I wondered if I would ever be a mother and hear my little ones sing, “Mother dear I love you so.”

I am blessed to still have my mother here with us. She’s now 86, and in general good physical and mental health. Not many women my age can say that. I’m grateful that I can go visit her on Sunday.

This Mothers Day, I am thinking of our first mother, Eve. She struggled with her children and grandchildren who didn’t always listen or do as they were asked. They made choices contrary to those she would have chosen. They caused her hurt feelings and great sorrow. I can only imagine how sad a Mothers Day would have been for her in the years after Cain killed Abel. Such sorrow!

Still, I look to her in gratitude as our first mother and thank her for taking that one step, eating that fruit or whatever it was that caused her to be ejected from the Paradise that was Eden. She did it to give us life, for until she did that, she and Adam were alone in the garden and no new life was created. I am grateful for her willingness to leave that perfect place so we could have life.

So, this mothers day, I honor Eve.

What about you mothers? Who do you honor and remember this year? I’d love to hear your stories if you struggle, if you are sad, or if you are grateful to be with your mom or … I’d love to hear.

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Where Do We Go When We Leave This Life?

Madeline L’Engle is one of my favorite authors and has been for a long time. My introduction to Ms. L’Engle’s works came through the children’s book, A Wrinkle in Time. I read it, and all the others in that series, and searched for more, reading many children’s and adult books by this wonderful author.

Recently, I found The Summer of the Great-Grandmother a memoir about the summer her mother’s decline into dementia, or arteriosclerosis, as it was known at that time. It became poignant as, during the time I read it, my husband and I attended three funerals, one for a sweet lady who had suffered from this horrible disease for the last year-and-a-half.

Ms. L’Engle is as passionate about her Christianity as I am about mine, though they are different. Still, I found her thoughts about the end of her mother’s life similar to those so many of us consider at the passing of a loved one from this life into the next.

We all think about life, at these times of passing, wondering where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going when this life is all over. Now is not a time to share my beliefs on that topic. Just know that I have a strong and firm understanding.

I love the poem by Wordsworth. From his Ode, Intimations of Immortality we read:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home …

Ms. L’Engle worried about these same things. Her concerns were about where we go after this life, and will we be remembered, by others, or by our God. She said:

“To the ancient Hebrew the ultimate hell consisted in being forgotten, erased from the memory of family and tribe, from the memory of God. If God forgets you, it is as though you have never existed. You have no meaning in the ultimate scheme of things. Your life, your being, your ousia, is of no value whatsoever. You are a tale told by an idiot; forgotten; annihilated.

“How many people have been born, lived rich, loving lives, laughed and wept, been part of creation, and are now forgotten, unremembered by anybody walking the earth today?”

Certainly something to be concerned about. Who wants to think our lives are so unimportant, they will be forgotten? Not me, though I know that after I am gone, my children and grandchildren will the the last to remember me.

I find peace in knowing, as Eve did, that I will return to my Father in Heaven, a Father who loves me, cares for me, and as he knows my name now, he will know and remember me in the next life.

Sadly, our extended family is feeling the greater sorrow of the loss of a young teenager. He did not live his life to the fullest. He will never graduate from High School, will not kiss a girl for the first time. His parents feel his loss to their core. Preparations for his funeral and burial were not in their plans for this summer. Certainly, their hearts are broken, and they are asking if they will ever see their son again.

Eve struggled with the loss of her child when Cain slew Abel. Her sorrow felt palpable to me, as I wrote about this in Eve, First Matriarch. I felt the sorrows of other matriarchs, when they lost children. In my soon to be released book (book 3) Finding Peace, a mother faces the loss of her children to kidnapping and the inability to find them or know about them. This mother, overwhelmed by grief, was taught by Mother Eve to find hope.

She (Eve) tightened her hug and added, “This I do know, darling granddaughter, you will be reunited with them. Perhaps not in this world, but surely in the next. This is the promise and gift of the covenants we made. Our children will be ours once more. Ask Enos. Ask Seth. Ask Adam.”

This I believe with all my soul. This I know. We will be united with our loved ones. We will be remembered.

I hope we are at the end of our funerals this summer, but as our friends age, we will be faced with loss of friends and loved ones.

How about you? What do you think?

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A Sneak Peek

Happy Spring!

My next book is nearly ready to publish!

Ancient Matriarchs 
Into the Storms,
Ganet, Wife of Seth

The manuscript is receiving a last review by my editor. I finally found a new cover editor and now have a cover for it.

What do you think?

 

I have been thinking about Eve, First Matriarch.

My favorite part of the story is also the saddest for me. I was amazed when her first children, Absalom and Bilhah chose to leave their home and their family because of differences of belief. I loved how Eve and Adam allowed them to leave, giving them the right of personal choice. It was hard for them, allowing them to think, act, and believe differently than they did. Yet, they allowed it. The right to choose is a gift from God, and no one can take it away. Thus, they allowed it, though they sorrowed for the choices their children made.

What is your favorite part? Please share it with me.

Have you shared your review with Amazon? As an independent author, I publish my books without the backing of a major publisher. That means no six-figure advances and no advertising budget. One of the best ways you can help me is to give an honest review. I’m not asking for a school book report—horrors! I would appreciate a star rating and a couple of sentences on Amazon. Or, tell your friends about it on Facebook or Twitter.

If there was something you didn’t like, or that needs work, share that, too. I’m all about constructive criticism. It helps me write a better book next time.

But, please, No Spoilers!

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It’s Live! Did You Get Your Copy?

It’s live! My first book, Eve, First Matriarch, is now live on Amazon, available in Kindle, paperback, and now Kindle Unlimited. I would be honored if you would order and read it! Check it out here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MU4KRWT

I am so excited that some of you have already ordered my book. I hope you received it this morning!

This has been a crazy busy week. My son’s car was wrecked, another son needed help with his foster babies, and my computer decided to crash the weekend before my book release! Only taking care of the babies was fun.

It seems my computer fan is dead, and it has gone to the service center. In the meantime, in order to survive, I’ve borrowed my husband’s computer until mine is returned. It has been a challenge to find all my files. I managed to save them onto a new exterior drive—the old one I was using died. It makes my stomach hurt just to think about all my struggles to retrieve all my important files.

I haven’t retrieved everything yet. Still working on that. However, I plan to get the last of the important problems solved today. I did learn one important lesson: Backup, backup, backup, in many places, so if one crashes, another will be available!

So scary and frustrating to think all your work on a book may be lost. For four days I thought my work on Book 3 had disappeared and was gone forever. Finally, after looking almost everywhere, it appeared! I offered my gratitude to my Heavenly Father, for only he could guide me to its location. I definitely believe in an answer to prayers.

I promise I won’t look at my sales page every 30 minutes to see if you bought my book, but I’d really appreciate it if you did. Drop me a line and tell me how you like it. If you give me your snail mail address, I’ll send you an autographed bookmark.

 

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A New Year, A New Book

Time passes quickly, especially when you are busy!

I have been busy over the last weeks of December and the beginning of January. I worked hard to get my first book, Eve, First Matriarch, ready for you to read! I am in the final stages of approval on both Create Space, which will allow you to order a paperback copy, or Kindle, which is electronic. The kindle version goes “live” on January 17!! I expect the paperback copy will be available by the beginning of next week. I even have an author page on Amazon:  amazon.com/author/angeliqueconger

I am learning the most difficult phase of being a self-published author, or an authorpreneur, is the marketing. I had never written even a good short story before. This required lots of new knowledge. I have read many books and reworked the original words many times to make this first book worth reading.

I finally talked my good husband into reading it for me, now that I have a paperback proof. He read it for errors, and did a good job of finding them. He even told me how much it affected him—something he wouldn’t say if it were not so.

If you would like to help me share the word about my book, I’ll be more than happy to have you on my team. All this is new to me, so we can learn how to get the word out together. I’ll blink twice and the book will be available to buy.

Check out the Amazon page and order yours today.

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A Christmas Story and a Free Gift

Merry Christmas to you!

This has been “one of those” Christmas seasons for us. My sweetheart came down with bronchitis, and has not been able to get rid of the cough or the randomly returning fever. Lots of things we would have liked to do but couldn’t.

It reminds me of the Christmas when I was 6. Not a good year for me. We lived in the basement of our house while my dad was building the upstairs, with mom’s help. We had a nice house down there and we spent many lovely Christmas’s together there before they finished the upstairs part.

I don’t remember if my brother was sick that year, I was much too sick to remember. I had the flu. I remember my two major gifts: my bicycle, full size of course—mom and dad could only afford one bicycle and it had to last, and a Bonnie Bride doll, dressed in a dress similar to the one I chose when the day came for me to marry.

I don’t remember getting up to look at the presents Santa brought. I do remember being so sick I’d get up to sit on my bicycle for a few minutes, play with my doll, then crawl back into bed for an hour or so. I repeated this throughout the day, too sick to take the bicycle outside to try to ride it.

I still have the bicycle, it’s in my garage. I plan to get it cleaned up and new tires and inner tubes and ride it in the spring.

I hope your Christmas is happier than that one was for me. Memorable as it was, I wouldn’t want to be sick for Christmas again.

*** **** *** **** ***

My first book, Eve, First Matriarch, will be available in January through Amazon. If you’d like a free advanced copy, I’ll be happy to share. I only ask that you write an honest review in exchange. What do you write in a good review?

Check out this for suggestions on how to write a review.

There are two ways to receive your free copy:

Fill out the contact form on the Contact Us page
Send me an email: [email protected]

Please include the email address of your kindle reader device.

I look forward to receiving your request.

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Gone, But Not Forgotten

It’s Fall, already!20151124_141035-1

This summer has been tough for me and this blog. Between physical therapy, surgeries, for both me and my husband, and unexpected travel, I haven’t been very consistent. Now the days are cooler and shorter, and quieter. My plan is to resume writing on a weekly basis.

Eve, First Matriarch is closer to publication, as are books 2 and 3 in the series, Ancient Matriarchs. I (hope) I am on the last edit before preparing for publication. It takes longer, almost, than the original rough draft.

I am working on a short story to give to followers of my newsletter. When it is ready, everyone who is a current reader will receive a copy, as will any who subscribe in the future.

I look forward to sharing with you. Those who receive my newsletter receive news of publication first. If you haven’t subscribed, go to the top right corner of this writing and share your email address with me. Then, look for the short story and regular Weekly Musings.

See you there!

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Could This Be Changed?

I was chatting with a good friend today. She asked me what I thought happened to the spirit of a child after a miscarriage. She has had a few, as have I. We shared our thoughts and then she said something I think is profound. “Why don’t any religions have a rite for families who lost a child to miscarriage? If they did, there would be less abortions.”

Though I understand my religion’s reasoning for not having a rite for the loss of a miscarriage, I see her point. Thousand of children are murdered every day in the name of “women’s choice,” because a child is inconvenient, or uncomfortable, or will make the woman ‘fat’, or any of the multitude of excuses for using murder as birth control. If the early loss of a child was mourned by religions, perhaps there would be less abortions.

Eve was fortunate. In her time, women and men were still perfect, with little cellular degradation. I doubt she suffered, as my friend and I have, from miscarriages. Yet, as I have stated many times, I believe she and Adam were given to know what would happen in our time.

They must have been excited to see the many technical advances of our day. Imagine their delight in seeing our advances in transportation and communication. For instance, the ability we have to travel around the world in a day, and receive messages from the other side of the world immediately. News, and other presentations are instantaneously available.

The command given specifically to Eve was to be a mother, to multiply. Much, if not all, of her life was spent bearing, raising, and teaching children—hers and those of her daughters and granddaughters. When she no longer could give birth, her daughters and granddaughters carried on replenishing the earth. Even then, I believe she taught the children and their mothers.

Knowing that, imagine her deep sorrow to learn that women would willingly allow their children to be murdered, under the guise of “women’s choice” and “my body, my choice.” I can see her weeping for many days over this knowledge. How could women so easily destroy that great gift she gave up so much for to have?

Additionally, I believe she wept when women began to struggle to bear children. It was given to women to bring life to the earth. Those of us who cannot have children, or who struggle to become and stay pregnant, feel Eve’s anguish.

Child bearing and raising children has been the domain of women. Still, men feel our pain and their own when expected children are lost. My husband grieved with me, for me and for himself, over our lost little ones. Other men ache for lost children.

I was blessed to finally deliver five healthy children. Not all couples are so blessed. We, who have lost children to miscarriage, and those for whom conception is impossible, grieve over lost children who could be ours, through adoption. We perceive abortion as selfish withholding of beautiful, healthy children from those who want children, but cannot bear them on their own.
What do you think? Should churches provide rites for miscarried children? Have you experienced the pain of miscarriage or inability to conceive? How have you managed? I look forward to your comments.

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Only We, the People, Can Solve This Problem

Over the past years, we have seen things become acceptable after losing favor in the intervening years. I wore saddle shoes as a kid to help my feet stay straight. Fifteen years later, the black and white (or brown and white) oxford became the shoe to wear, though it no longer had the strength to hold an ankle straight. They come into favor every few years.

Skirt lengths have gone up and down the leg over the last hundred years, sometimes raising as high as it modesty (or not modestly) allows it to crawl.Others years, skirts fall to the floor—and all the intervening lengths between.

Hats, too, come and go. There was a time no one went out without a hat, and no man would enter a house, let alone sit at a table, without removing it. The hat has blown away, though men routinely enter homes and sit at restaurant tables with their ball cap firmly stuck to their head.

There is a meme going around my face book feed.

It says a lot about our society, when a public longing for loyalty and morals makes the rounds of social media—a lot that is not good.

In my lifetime, I have seen a decline in both loyalty and morals. Time was when presidents and government were held to a higher standard of honor and loyalty—to the country and their spouses. NOT any more. Now, people hardly raise an eyebrow in the event the press comment on some government official’s lack of loyalty to a spouse. Lack of loyalty to the country causes a few groans, but little more.

There was a time when a couple cared about the one they married, children came into their lives nine months or more later. Anything earlier was a cause for deep embarrassment, for themselves and their families. This changed with the “Peace and Love” generation, who lived together and had children. But, these were the minority. Slowly, living together, one night stands, and single parenthood became normal.

Not so long ago, those who leaned toward anything but hetero-sex stayed in the closet, rather than admit to perverted sexual behavior. It was safer that way, for the penalty was death. Not so now. If I don’t condone their actions, I am “biased,” “narrow minded,” or “intolerant.” Young men claim to be girls so they can win in a girl’s race. The national argument over bathrooms continues, supported by people who should want to protect their daughters.

Imagine what Eve would think about our world today. For me, it would not take much imagination. I believe Adam saw the events of this earth past our time in it. I think Eve joined him in sorrowing for our behaviors. Some think other times were worse than ours, pointing to the days of Noah, when God saw fit to baptize the earth and wash it of the wicked, adulterous, and disloyal. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah burned, destroying the sodomites. I have read prophets say our time is worse than either of these. Surely, Eve cried when she saw what would happen to her daughters and sons.

When I saw the meme, my first thought was, “No kidding. A change is needed.” Then I thought about it again.

Loyalty and Morals, and a number of other good qualities, will only return to this country, and this world, when we, of loyalty and morality, determine to be examples of those qualities and live them.

We must band together, become leaders of the movement. We must be personally loyal and moral. We must demand that others around us be loyal and moral. We must expect loyalty and morality from our government.

What do you think about our loss of loyalty and morals? How can we turn it around? Is there another way? I don’t believe new laws will help, it must come from we, the people.

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