Secret (Ghostwriting Part Four)

Note: This is the fourth and final (planned) post in our ghostwriting series. Sorry they've been so spread out. Be sure to check out the first three posts: Moral, Famous, and Voice. If you've got questions, enjoyed the series, or just want to say hi, feel free to leave it in the comments.

As soon as I hang up the phone accepting a new ghostwriting offer, I'm giddy. I run around the house like a crazy woman; I giggle uncontrollably. You'd have to try really hard to remove the smile from my face.

Like good family and friends, people who see me ask why I'm so excited.

Here's the thing about ghostwriting: I can't tell them. The job of a ghostwriter is to be invisible. That includes not telling people she wrote that book, article, letter, piece.

When my family/friends ask, sometimes I tell them I have a new ghostwriting opportunity. Sometimes I just smile and smile and smile. Sometimes I'm a bad secret-keeper and blurt out my new opportunity. I am so excited I just can't keep it inside of me. Like a small child who purchased a parent a Christmas present, that present will not remain a secret until Christmas no matter how hard the child tries.

In the original ending of the Gospel of Mark, the women leave the empty tomb and don't tell anyone what they saw.

What if the story ended there?
What if they kept the resurrection of Christ a secret?

Imagine how different life would be. For you. For me. Imagine how different history would be.

Yet don't we do that all of the time? If you call yourself a Christian, then inside of you is the secret of the ressurected Christ. That good news should evoke the same emotion in you that ghostwriting does for me (only moreso). Unceasing smiles, uncontrollable laughter, looking so silly that people ask you what's up.

Um, hello, your debt has been paid in blood and you get to call the Creator of the universe "Daddy."

And I get excited over writing in someone else's name.

Through Christ, we get to live in someone else's name. Forever.

If you're ghostwriting for the Lord, you've got to blurt your "secret."

Are you a child-like ghostwriter bursting to tell or are you leaving the tomb in fear?

<>< Katie

That's My Daddy

Every Christmas my entire extended family worships together to start our Christmas Eve brouhaha.

As a toddler, I would walk between the knees of my relatives and the pew in front of us.  One of my uncles, neither will fess up to being the culprit but it could have feasibly been either one, handed me a piece of paper and told me to take it to my other uncle.

I looked down at the piece of paper, recognized a big "D" scribbled and loudly proclaimed, "That's my daddy!"

The paper really said, "Dork."

Yeah, church was pretty much over for my family at that point in time.
Happy Monday!
<>< Katie

The Suite Life

The first and last time I bribe my suitemates to dinner by volunteering to drive in the snow...
Katie: Okay, girls, I'm going downstairs to get my laundry. When I come back we're going to dinner. Five minutes.
Elizabeth: We need ten minutes.
Katie: Be fast! I'm hungry, and I have a headache.
Nikki: I think Katie's just crabby because she hasn't blogged today.
Katie: I HAVE blogged today which you'd know if you ever read my blog.
Elizabeth: I think Katie should go blog again.
Katie: Seven minutes! You just wasted three sassin' me.

Twenty minutes later
Katie: Girls. Car. Now. Hungry. Headache. Remember?
Nikki: Go scrape the snow off; we'll wait here. Pull the car up right here on the sidewalk for us.
Katie: You want it on the second floor, too?

A few minutes later
Elizabeth: I'm wet!
Amy: KATIE!! Nikki hit me with a snowball.
Katie: Nikki, get in the car!
Amy: You need to drive me to the hospital.
Katie: I'm not driving you to the hospital.
Amy: But it hurt me!
Katie: Then you can borrow my bike, but this car is headed to the caf. Nikki Raye, get in the car!
Elizabeth: I'm cold, Roommate, close the door.
Nikki: I've hit two of my eight roommates with snowballs! No, I mean, two of my seven roommates. I'm going to get them all!
Amy: You're going to get yourself, too? There are only seven of us total.
Katie: Hit me with a snowball, and you're walking back from dinner.

At dinner
Amy: How's your headache?
Katie: Annoying enough that I've decided to name it: Amy Nikki Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: Why am I last?
Katie: Because you took my car keys. Give them back or we're all walking, and I have no problem walking in snow.
Elizabeth: [giggling] I don't have them!
Katie: I don't know which one of you has them at the present moment, but I know all three of you are equally guilty.

After dinner
Elizabeth: ["whispering" from the passenger seat to the back seat] Hey, Nikki, did you ever talk to Tony about that thing?
Nikki: Huh?
Elizabeth: You know! Amy, I think you were there, too.
Katie: Why are you trying to talk in code if Nikki and Amy were both there? Clearly you're trying to hide your secret from me. I'm a bit more perceptive than you've given me credit for being, thank you very much.
Nikki: Katie, let's just say things happen in our apartment that you wouldn't approve of.
Katie: Well, as long as they don't happen in, what bedroom am I? C! As long as they don't happen in C.
Amy: Well, there were two men in there...
[all three burst out laughing]
Katie: Stop breathing; you're fogging up the windshield.
Nikki: Oh, Kax. Hey! So I finally registared on the Wii today and it asked me if I was your friend. I sat there for a minute and thought before I decided to click yes.
Katie: You are not my friend right now.
Nikki: I'm sorry I hit you with that snowball.
Katie: No you're not but I forgive you.
Nikki: You're right: I'm not. [evil Nikki cackel]

Just before bed when I emerged from my bedroom for the first time in a few hours
Adam: Katie, were you doing your thing in there that whole time?
I gave him a confused look. Where I'm from, we always say "Mom, Puke did his thing" to mean "the cat threw up," and no, I did not vomit.
Allyson: Blogging.
Katie: Oh, no. I was writing.
Adam gave me a face that said, "There's a difference?" Silly science major.

This was last night. We walked tonight. Who knew it could take twenty minutes to walk less than a mile...
<>< Katie