My sister, Tabitha, creating what she loves.

“When you are writing without a contract, you feel as though everything you say is completely worthless (technically it is, until you get a contract).” —Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

Prior to the release of Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller had written several books, but none of them had earned him a name. By the time he was writing Blue Like Jazz, he was getting a bit discouraged, so there are several parts about writing discouragement and the hope for someday being a bestselling author. It’s ironic, because by the time most people read the book, it was a bestseller with 1.5 million copies sold, and now there’s a movie based on it.

Writing seems to be (and can be) pointless if there’s no contract behind it. This is why it’s necessary to find contracts, live up to them, and keep working on the things without contracts behind them.

A few months ago, I came across these “Rules of a creator’s life“:

1. Do more than you’re told to do.
2. Try new things.
3. Teach others what you know.
4. Make work into play.
5. Take breaks.
6. Work when others are resting.
7. Always be creating.
8. Make your own inspiration.
9. Love what you do, or leave.

These have ruled my days as I slowly build the work I’ve been doing. When I’m doing the work I must do for my contracts, I don’t neglect the writing I don’t yet have an obligation to do. If I waited around until the work was demanded, I would be out of practice and have a load of work to do. I’d much rather have half the work done when the task needs to be finished. That’s why, among my other published works, I have hundreds of pages of writing in progress.

It’s also why I’ve been blogging every day. Writing consistently keeps me working and creating, and it helps me to improve. My blog is cynthiajeub.com, and I’d appreciate your visit there.

This article was originally written as a guest post for the UK site www.largerfamilylife.com.

John Wooden wrote, “The greatest thing a father can do for his children is love their mother.” I know from experience in a large family that having parents who love each other is crucial to a child. Among my earliest memories is waiting for dad to come home from work. At the time, I was one of only five children, and my dad was an English teacher at a high school in Fargo, North Dakota. When we heard his car pull up the driveway, everyone would whisper to each other, “Daddy’s home!” After this, we’d scramble to gather around the front door to receive hugs and then mom would give dad a kiss.

That was in the mid-nineties, and I’m now one of sixteen children, but I can honestly say that the most consistent thing I’ve ever known in my family is love. Mom has made a point of seeing that we are all gathered together for all three meals a day—it’s rare to eat separately from the family. Every morning when I was a child, dad would make breakfast for the young children and read aloud classics about friendship like Charlotte’s Web and the Chronicles of Narnia. Mom, too, loved storytelling and would read the Bible and more dramatized history books than I can remember while we practiced our drawing during homeschool.

My parents carefully taught each of us to love and respect each other. When there are fifteen other kids in the house, you automatically learn that sharing is unavoidable. If ever a fight arose between siblings, we were taught an important lesson: that speaking reconciling words, even if I didn’t mean them, taught me to using them meaningfully later on. For instance, many times when I was angry with my younger sister, mom would tell us to apologize to and forgive each other. We would force the phrases “imsorry” and “iforgiveyou” out grudgingly at the time, but today those phrases come to our aid now when we really mean what we’re saying.

Not only did our parents tell us not to fight, they also never fought. I grew up in a peaceful home, where my parents love each other deeply and never argue. Because we saw what it looked like to choose not to blow small matters out of proportion, my siblings and I also rarely fight.

In 2006, my family was featured on the US Learning Channel show Kids by the Dozen. Our Producer, Tracy, was curious about what kept our family together so well. After many interviews in front of the camera, my parents were able to solidify the forerunning message of our family: love. See, when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He gave love as the answer. We are to love God and to love our neighbor, and the family unit is where the habit of loving others begins. Even if siblings have clashing personalities, they can learn to love. When troubles hit, love gives a family the ability to help each other through. If one of us is having a bad day, we are surrounded by friends and small children to cheer us up. Growing up in a large family that treasures love is a gift I wish more people had the chance to experience.

Today our country celebrates the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., who was a peacemaker, someone who could call upon the needs of the hearts of people across many different races, belief systems, and ask them to work together on the common goal of equality. It’s because of his great legacy that I agree with his statement,

“Let us be Christian in all our actions. But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.”

There are three things to keep in mind as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and having a day off work isn’t one of them:

1. Love is a Verb

Love shouldn’t be something we just say to each other. It’s something we do every day by delivering justice to those around us. When children come to the rescue of someone being bullied, they are showing compassion and exercising justice, which is love. When a group chooses to endure harm from authorities because they are peacefully protesting an atrocity like segregation, they are supporting each other for the sake of justice, which is love. Love is something we need to remember to exercise love instead of just talking about it.

2. Justice is costly

Rosa Parks said, “Dr. King didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk from Montgomery to Memphis, enduring jails, beatings, abuse, threats, the bombing of his home, and the highest sacrifice a person can make for a righteous cause.” Getting laws changed isn’t easy, as many people learned in the Civil Rights Movement. We would do well to learn the same, and to refuse to be complacent in our efforts to end today’s injustices. We can take courage in the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was successful in halting the injustice they set out to end.

3. Justice is worth the cost

Those who endure injustice at the hands of others know that justice is worth the cost of revolt. Throughout history, men and women have willingly died for the sake of bringing freedom, equality, justice to the countries they held dear. Civil Rights leader John M. Perkins wrote, “The call to biblical justice in every corner of society must be sounded by those who claim a God of Justice as their Lord.” Therefore we must also make the sound heard: that justice is love in action, and it is worth pursuing.

“But let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream.” –Amos 5:24

Fighting between spouses baffles me. When I visit my friends, I sometimes see their parents, whom I know love each other and are dedicated to each other, bickering over petty things. One mom explained to me that she doesn’t like fighting with her husband, but that she does it because making up afterward is sweet.

A friend that I’ve known for over ten years recently told me that she couldn’t comment on my parents because she hadn’t really seen much of their relationship with each other. I asked her if she meant that they never fight, and she said yes. “My parents aren’t on their best behavior around you,” I explained. “They really don’t argue.”

Whenever I try to find a reason for this unique dynamic to the way my parents love each other, all I can find is that they are both totally self-sacrificing for one another. In other homes, a miscommunication about the food being eaten or the vehicle being driven will bring tension between a husband and wife. I’m more likely to hear, “I’m sorry, honey, I’ll do it the way you want,” than, “No, you said it this way earlier” in the discourse between my parents.

There are a couple of things to note here. One is that my parents don’t take advantage of each other. The above statement about being self-sacrificing can be used to hurt your spouse if one parent controls the other because of the submission from the first. The second point is that my parents aren’t merely civil with each other. They really like each other, and often play off of each other in clever banter.

Here’s a generalization that I see all too often: married couples don’t flirt. The way I see it, if I love someone deeply and I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with him, we’ll play around, I’ll let him know that I think he’s special. After joking with a friend, I’ll often add, “You know, I think you’re pretty cool. We should be friends.” It’s the same with my parents. They’re married already, but that doesn’t mean that the adventure of getting to know one another is over, much less the enjoyment of each other’s company. They constantly work to make the other person feel special, a habit that never gets monotonous.

My mom tells me this:

Giving in to the other person isn’t always easy. It’s a mutual decision to look for the positive outcome, and choose to avoid unnecessary conflict.

When this simple tip is put into practice, the list of necessary conflict grows incredibly short.

Training champions at a California camp. Shane is Training Minds Ministry's youngest coach.

Last month, my friend Shane Baumgardner gave a speech on success at Nationals to a group of debate competitors who had qualified to the championship tournament. The speech was challenging—we’re glad we recorded it (listen to the whole thing here: http://monumentpublishing.com/2011/06/success-at-nationals/). He spoke about being honest with yourself, and being honest with God.

“Can you look at yourself in the mirror after a hard week of competition and honestly say that you’ve left it all on the line, that you’ve done your best, and that you’re satisfied with the results? And, more importantly, can you turn to God and know that you’ve given Him your all, and be able to say, ‘I did everything that I could with the ability that You have given me; I’ve run the race with excellence, I ran it in a manner worthy of victory, I did everything that I could with the talent and the opportunity that You have provided me’?”

Shane is coaching at Training Minds Ministry, but he has experienced this kind of situation firsthand. He has taken top awards in debate, extemporaneous speaking and impromptu (national titles in the former two). He knows what he’s talking about.

When I am truthful with myself about my motives, my intentions, and my performance, I’m humbled. I haven’t done well, but I know that I can do better. With this realization, it’s no wonder it’s so easy to lie to myself.

Today I was reading a book by Mark Mittelberg, and he mentioned that hypocrisy is one of the leading problems people have with Christianity. It’s statistically proven—something about the way we conduct ourselves delivers the message that we don’t really believe what we say we believe.

In other words, if speaking the truth in love and loving our neighbors is a command, why don’t we do it more?

The image of looking myself in the eye and being honest with myself and with God has come to mind every single day since Shane brought it up. I know that I can’t always say to God and myself that I did my best each day. In fact, I usually can’t do so. That’s why being honest is so crucial: if my own shortcoming is a blind spot for me, I’m stuck at a standstill.

Honesty leads to clarity. Only when I’m being truthful with myself am I able to see my situation for what it is, and, with God’s help, change for the better.

Part 3 of a 3-part series of Cynthia's award-winning oratory speech.

Part I | Part II | Part III

So far we’ve gone over the fact that underdogs make great main characters in stories, and that they’re made of courage. All of that is well and good when we’re talking about Zelda and Lord of the Rings, but what does an underdog’s plight look like in real life?

Barna published a book a few years back entitled UnChristian: What a new generation really thinks about Christianity…and why it matters. The book was based on national surveys of non-Christians, and the shocker was that most people who knew Christians said they were hypocritical, too political, and out of touch with the world. Christianity looks bland to observers. Our faith has become a ritual, a religion, simply because we don’t challenge ourselves.

I sincerely believe that average people, especially Christians, need to be more ready to face conflict like underdogs ready to conquer. It is because of comfort zones that so many people live what they would call boring lives.

Francis Chan addressed this issue of comfort when he preached using the visual aid of a balance beam. Literally, the pastor prepared by setting up a gymnastics beam on the stage where he was going to speak. After removing his shoes, Chan mounted the beam and explained that many Christians tend to, instead of doing crazy stunts, hold on to the beam. Clutching the beam, he proceeded to say that we often live as safely as possible.

Keep in mind the image of someone straddling a balance beam. A gymnast risks falling so she can show skill – it would be strange to see the opposite: risking skillful performance for the sake of safety by clinging to the beam. Yet this is what so many of us do with our lives. When a comfortable position in life is found, we tend to hold on to it, losing sight of what courage can do for us. Kids in my generation are taught by our parents, “if it hurts, don’t do it.” I just have to wonder if that’s the key to living a powerful life. When I look at my favorite stories, the heroes and heroines are those with the highest stakes, the greatest adversity. What makes them heroic is not clinging to comfort, it’s in striving to conquer the giants that their stories include.

Donald Miller wrote, “If the stuff we are doing with our lives wouldn’t make a movie meaningful, it won’t make real life meaningful either…Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in…People love to have lived a good story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen…Part of me wonders if our stories aren’t being stolen by the easy life.”

All it takes to make my life into a great story is realizing that I have a story waiting to be told, if I’m courageous enough to embrace it.

Part 2 of the 3-part series from Cynthia's award-winning oratory speech.

Part I | Part II | Part III

Click here for part 1.

A few of my friends have convinced me to read the stories behind the popular Nintendo game series The Legend of Zelda. The storyline follows a young boy named Link, who has to fight many adversaries and work through complicated puzzles to help save Princess Zelda and prevent the villain, Ganandorf, from gaining access to the triforce, an item that provides the ability to completely destroy the world.

The reason I bring up the story of Link and Zelda is because the games present an interesting makeup for the hero, the villain, and the damsel in distress. You see, all three of these characters possess one part of the triforce: Power, wisdom, and courage. Princess Zelda, in her wisdom, carefully hides the keys to finding her part of the triforce. Ganandorf seems always to be winning, his power is unrelenting in his attempts to destroy Link. Link’s counterattack is using the simple virtue of courage. Courage allows Link to keep facing the challenges before him, and, if you’re good at the game, he wins in the end.

Last time we discussed the fact that underdogs are always the main character. The stuff heroes are made of is courage, and we could all use a little bit of it. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courageous people fear, but they aren’t ruled by fear. Our hero presses on even when he is convinced that all is lost. He is willing to get outside of his comfort zone, to face death, and to refuse credit for his sacrifices.

J.R.R. Tolkein explained this well in his conclusion to The Lord of the Rings. The character Eowyn insists to the king that she can go with his army to fight for Middle Earth. After Eowyn claims that she fears neither pain nor death, the king asks her, “What do you fear, Lady?” To which she replies, “A cage. To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.” You see, lost comfort is not what is to be feared. The true fear ought to be the life that goes unlived. Interestingly, Eowyn goes on to kill a monster and play a major role in the climax of The Return of the King. She didn’t have to face death, she only had to face her fear of death, and in so doing demonstrated the courage and success of the underdog.

What are your favorite most courageous movie characters?

This is Part 1 of a 3-part series captioning Cynthia's award-winning oratory speech.

Part I | Part II | Part III

Stories inspire us, they remind us of great truths in a way that straightforward speaking cannot, and they allow us to share in the adventures of another person, fictional or not. A story has four main elements: there’s the setting, conflict, climax, and resolution. Between the conflict and climax, a character faces difficulty, self-doubt, and challenges. But without the conflict, there would be no buildup to the climax, and, therefore, no story.

The main character in every great story is an underdog. Underdogs are easy to relate to and sympathize with, and we love them because we feel like their stories are a possibility for us, too. For me, underdogs are fascinating because I meet average people every day. I don’t, however, see great stories — real, inspiring, non-fictional stories — on a regular basis. This is because most of us don’t realize that we are passing up potential stories when we refuse to embrace conflict in our lives.

Blake Snyder, a successful screenwriter and bestselling author, offered the following checklist for a solid main character in his book subtitled The last book on screenwriting you’ll ever need. He says, “Tell me a story about a guy who…

• I can identify with.
• I can learn from.
• I have compelling reason to follow.
• I believe deserves to win and…
• Has stakes that are primal and ring true for me.”

I would even say that it’s impossible to be a hero without being an underdog. That sounds like a generalization, but think of superheroes—they all have nemeses and weaknesses. Every Sports hero had the odds stacked against him and an opponent who made it seem impossible to win, and every artist had to break the trends pressing him. The great story places a character in a situation that lives up to what G.K. Chesteron said: “A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth.” Others must have to have failed in the attempt to do what the hero succeeds at in the end, the stakes must be high, and the hero has to doubt himself in the face of the challenge, because effortless heroism isn’t heroism at all.

But we don’t want to emulate the underdog merely because he in unlikely to succeed, but because he takes the challenge before him and conquers it. We all love tales that astonish us, and though when listening to a story we’ll try to guess the ending, we don’t always want to be right. There’s something satisfying about a twist ending, something we didn’t expect. When watching a race, the audience takes their eyes off the expected champion to watch the rookie catch up, and they cease breath as he passes up the predicted winner. When expected to fail, the underdog turns the tables and earns center stage.

More than anything else, the plight of the underdog is a story of hope to those of us who think we’re average: success is attainable.

What extraordinary things make a hero? Who are the heroes in your life?

In my favorite book, A Little Princess, Frances Hudgson Burnett tells the story of a girl named Sara Crewe. While surrounded with wealth, Sara was like a princess. She did well in school, wore fancy clothes, was kind to everyone, loved the outcasts, and was pampered in every way.

Ravenous: (adj.) Extremely hungry, devouring or craving food in great quantities.

Because of her pampered life, Sara wondered if she could continue to be princess-like if her riches disappeared. She was determined to always be a princess on the inside, no matter what happened.

Then Sara’s father died just after losing his entire estate in an investment dealing, and she is left at the cruel mercy of the instructor at her boarding school -– no family, no money, and plenty of work.

In my favorite chapter, Sara finds herself hungry and running errands through the streets of London. She dreams of food with a feverish hunger and happens to find a four-penny piece on the ground outside of a baker shop. The situation is simply too good to be true, but as she begins to walk in, she sees a small beggar child on the side of the road.

“This,” Sara says to herself, “is one of the populace. All the kings and queens, when they were poor and driven from their thrones, shared with those worse off than themselves.” And though faint with hunger, she buys a bag full of buns and gives five out of six of them to the other girl. A beautiful picture is painted here – a ravenous child sharing with one even hungrier than herself.

There are two conclusions I draw from this tale:

1. Always serve others. In my personal life, this is one of my weaknesses. Too often I forget that I need to be selfless as Sara was. She was starving, but willing to share what little she had. I have a lot more to be thankful for, but sometimes I don’t want to share or I have other plans for what to do with my time. There is no beauty in selfishness.

2. I’m ravenous – and that’s how it should be. Jesus said this to the not-so-good Samaritan: “Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst again.” And it’s very true. We are filled with the Holy Spirit – nothing else is necessary. God continues to satisfy in new ways. My God loves surprises. He loves to see us pray about the questions we have for Him, to discover Him in ways we never saw before. Psalm 23:5 makes sense in this way: “…my cup runs over.”

Phil Joel wrote, “To have found You, and still be looking for You, is the soul’s paradox of love…You fill my cup, I lift it up for more.”

God wants us to be ravenous for Him, that He is more than capable of filling us up, and we are to pass His love for us onto others.

My mom received a note from a lady who had met me at a conference. I barely remember her, but I remember that day. I had only gotten one hour of sleep the night before and was praying for strength just to get through the conference. I didn’t really want to meet anyone, and I wanted to get home! To my surprise, the author of the note thought I was full of joy and helpfulness.

Here’s my sister and me holding some babies at a celebration in Fort Collins.

See, Lydia and I helped with her newborn baby. Personally, I have only a vague memory of it. The note said I was “Christlike” and “gracious.” But I certainly didn’t feel that way at the time.

That passage where Jesus talks about not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing has always confused me. One of my favorite theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, meditates on this in The Cost of Discipleship:

“From whom are we to hide the visibility of our discipleship? Certainly not from other men, for we are told to let them see our light. No, we are to hide it from ourselves…we must be unaware of our own righteousness.

“…The Christian is a light unto the world, not because of any quality of his own, but only because he follows Christ and looks solely to him…If you do good, you must not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, you must be quite unconscious of it. Otherwise you are simply displaying your own virtue, and not that which has its source in Jesus Christ…the genuine work of love is always a hidden work.”

You know what I think? Amazing. God (not me) touched someone’s life. I wasn’t even aware of my own actions. I was behaving so that my right hand didn’t know what my left hand was doing. Come to think of it, we’re at our very best if we never realize that we even did a good work. I was just moving along, tired and praying for strength, and unbeknown to me, God’s graciousness won the day.

Bonhoeffer concludes with this:

“If we become conscious of our hidden virtue, we are forging our own reward, instead of that which God had intended to give us in his own good time.”

I’ve already received my full reward for what happened at that homeschool conference; it’s out in the open now. Perfect. Jesus said that those who parade their good works have already gotten praise from the world, but what is done in secret and is seen by God will be rewarded openly by Him. If I would have known what my right hand was doing, I would have likely been all puffed up and proud about it, and that would have been my reward. Far from perfect.

Sometimes God likes to teach me things with a hint of irony.