What Is Eternity?

I've been thinking a lot more about eternity lately. I'm 75 and dealing with debilitating pain due to advanced degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, scoliosis, and osteoarthritis. It causes me to be even more aware of my mortality.

While sorting through some files, I came across a poem I wrote for children years ago, "What Is Eternity?"

WHAT IS ETERNITY?

"What is eternity?" you asked me one day.

I thought it over, then I knew what to say.

Picture the sandy beach where you love to play;

Picture a little bird alighting one day;

Into his beak he takes a wee grain of sand;

Off he then flies to a way faraway land;

One long year later he returns from his trip;

Down he then swoops to take another wee bit;

Year after year bird makes one run after run;

When all the sand is gone, eternity's just begun!

                                                              --AnnaLee Conti

Growing up in a missionary family in Alaska, I became aware of my Creator at a very young age. In church, we often sang a chorus written by Alfred B. Smith, "With Eternity's Values in View." 

And a plaque on my grandparents' wall made a solemn  impression on me: 

Only one life, 'twill soon be past;

Only what's done for Christ will last.

As I grew up, the question that always guided my decisions in my life was "Will it count for eternity?"

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 2, tells us 

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: 

a time to be born, and a time to die.

The Bible also makes it clear that God knows the number of our days. Not one of us knows the hour of our death. Some die young of illness or in accidents or war, but I read recently that old age begins at 80 now! Psalm 90:10, 12 (NKJV) says, 

"The days of our lives are seventy years; 

And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, 

Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow, 

For it is soon cut off, and we  fly away...

So teach us to number our days, 

That we may gain a heart of wisdom."

It is not macabre to think about death and eternity. God says it is wise! 

As I look back over my life, another song by Dean Bernstrom comes to my mind: "I Wonder Have I Done My Best for Jesus?" It continues, "... when He has done so much for me." When I see Jesus face to face, I want Him to be able to say to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant....Enter into the joy of your Lord" (Matthew 25:21).

 

How I Became a Writer

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. How I ended up in Alaska is a story in itself, one of which I share in my new memoir,  Footsteps of Faith, a Faith-Building True Story of God's Direction, Provision, and Protection in my life. Available now in paperback. Coming soon in e-book.

 I grew up in Alaska in the fifties and sixties in a missionary family. We were avid readers. My Grandma Personeus was a storyteller and kept everyone entranced with her accounts of her and Grandpa’s early days in Alaska (1917-1982). When we visited them each summer during my childhood, she read books aloud to us—books she’d enjoyed as a child. 

Grandma was a prolific poet and wrote curriculum for Sunday school quarterlies and articles for church magazines. My mother also wrote continued stories and composed songs for us and for her Sunday school class.

As a young teenager, I discovered Christian fiction. We had no TV in Alaska back then. To provide good reading material for cold, dark winter evenings, my father subscribed to a Christian book club. We could hardly wait for the two selections that arrived each month. Those pages influenced my worldview and my attitudes about life and love. When I read the nine Christian fiction books written by my great aunt under the pen name of Zenobia Bird, I dreamed of writing my own novels.

 In high school, I began writing about the sights I’d seen and the experiences I’d had. I got my start in writing for publication while my husband was in seminary when I worked in the editorial area of Gospel Publishing House. The editors I worked with encouraged me to write and submit short stories and articles for their publications. Soon, I was given assignments to write Sunday school, vacation Bible school, and children’s church curriculum. When we began pastoring, I continued to write on assignment for Gospel Publishing House for more than 25 years. 

Alaska provided the setting for my stories. It wasn’t hard to fictionalize my family’s experiences of living by faith in Alaska, stories that are carriers of truth about God’s love, forgiveness, grace, and mercy, because I learned to know God there.

 In 1973, while my husband was in seminary and I was working at Gospel Publishing House in Springfield, Missouri, my Personeus grandparents visited us from Alaska. Grandma gave me a packet of papers, saying, “Many people have asked me to write our story, but I’m too old to see it through by myself.  So I’m placing all my written accounts in your hands to do with as you think best.”

 Nearly 10 years later, while we were starting a new church in New York State, my mother-in-law invited me to her home to write the first draft of my first book. For one week, I holed up in a bedroom in her house and wrote on an electric typewriter, stopping only for meals, which she prepared. I wove together the short accounts my grandmother had written about their experiences and filled in the spaces between. Due to the downturn in the economy, though, I was unable to find a publisher. In the next few years, I retyped the manuscript into a Smith-Corona word processor. In 2002, I discovered a print-on-demand publisher and was able to get the word processor disc converted to MS Word. My uncle (their son) paid to have Frontiers of Faith published, and I reimbursed him from book sales.

While writing Frontiers of Faith, I came across several stories that triggered my imagination for historical Christian novels. For years, I’d been writing them my head. In 2007, I joined a writer’s critique group at the local library to begin fulfilling my lifelong goal of writing novels. 

I learned a lot from that group that included published authors and began writing a minimum of one chapter a week. In 2013, I published Till the Storm Passes By. By 2017, my next two books, A Star to Steer By and Beside Still Waters, completed my Alaskan Waters Trilogy, the life and death saga of a fictitious Norwegian immigrant family who battles the beautiful but often treacherous waters of early twentieth century Southeast Alaska to find love and happiness in the midst of tragedies, based on the stories Grandma Personeus told.

 

During those years, I started this blog, “Nuggets of Faith,” including many stories from my life. When I read a book about how to blog a book, I decided to develop these stories into a memoir, Footsteps of Faith, that has just been released by ReadersMagnet. It is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble in trade paperback. The e-book is coming soon on those sites as well as iTunes.

 Why do I write?

Writing is hard work and involves a great investment of time, but I can’t not write. I write because I have stories of faith to tell. God has called me to write stories that are carriers of truth about His love, forgiveness, mercy, and grace.

On a personal note: In January, we became great-grandparents when Phoebe Ray Conti joined our family. What a thrill!

 

Links:

Website: www.AnnaLeeConti.com

Email: FrontiersofFaith@AnnaLeeConti.com

www.Facebook.com/AnnaLeeConti.Author

Twitter: @AnnaLeeConti

www.goodreads.com/author/show/2562235.AnnaLee_Conti

www.amazon.com/author/annaleeconti

 

 

Colors of Christmas

I love all the colors of Christmas:

• Stained glass windows in churches
• The many colorful lights that adorn trees and houses
• Red poinsettias and holly berries, red velvet dresses on little girls in the Christmas program and red bow ties on choirboys
• Pine green Christmas trees and wreaths, shiny green holly leaves, and powdery green mistletoe
• Silver tinsel, silver bells, icicles, moonbeams reflecting on new fallen snow, and stars twinkling in the deep blue of the nighttime sky 
• Gold ornaments and ribbons on gaily wrapped gifts
• Purple mountains and purple robes on  the Wise Men
• Pure white snow that transforms the dreary landscape into a glistening winter wonderland

All those colors inspired me to write this poem:

COLORS OF CHRISTMAS

Silver stands for our redemption,

purchased at great cost.

Red stands for the blood of Jesus,

shed to save the lost.

White stands for the purity of our 

robes of righteousness;

Washed white as snow by Jesus' blood,

we stand in holiness.

Green stands for our Christian growth;

to feed on God's Word is a must.

Blue stands for our loyalty to Christ

in whom we trust.

Purple stands for His majesty;

King of kings is He.

Gold stands for the heavenly place

He has prepared for me.

by AnnaLee Conti

As you enjoy all the colors this Christmas, I pray that you will experience the myriad facets of the Light of the World, JESUS, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.

Merry Christmas! 

Update on Footsteps of Faith: 

Due to the pandemic, the publication is taking a bit longer than I had hoped. The projected released date is now late January 2021. 

The Oak and the Ivy

Our travels this year have been limited to trips to the doctors, to Newburgh to visit our son and pick up packages (our mail is delivered to a box at the front of our manufactured homes park, so we must pick up packages at the post office, which we want to avoid during this pandemic), and to the Commissary at West Point, where the military police monitor social distancing, etc. Occasionally, we take a short drive locally.

A few days ago, Bob and I drove south from Newburgh along the Hudson River past West Point, across the Bear Mountain Bridge, and north on the east side of the river to our home in the Town of Fishkill. We love the fall. We were looking for color but found little change yet.

Then I spotted some rich red color entwining the trunks of some of the still-green trees--poison ivy, the first color to appear in fall in our area. 

A chorus we'd sung often in church during my childhood suddenly popped into my mind. I hadn't sung it in years, but the words flowed quickly:

He's the Oak, and I'm the Ivy

He's the Potter, I'm the Clay

He's the Oil, and I'm the Vessel

I'm the Traveler, He's the Way

I'm the Flower, but He's the Fragrance

I'm the Lamp, but He's the Flame

He's the Words I sing to Music

I'm the Bride who bears His Name!

Who can begin to put into words all that Jesus is to the believer? Metaphors help. 

As a writer, I love metaphors. Perhaps that's why I love these lyrics so much. These metaphors give wonderful insights into our relationship with Him. He is our all in all.

Oak trees are strong and solid. Jesus is strong, and we can depend on Him at all times.

The nature of any ivy is to cling. It entwines around tree trunks, climbs up the sides of houses and even up telephone poles, and hangs from wires that cross roadways. 

Poison ivy gives a nasty rash. Our son had such a severe case of poison ivy poisoning in high school that he needed steriod treatments. 

Not all ivies are poisonous. In fact, common ivy, often a house plant, was a symbol of love and friendship in Europe in medieval times and was once traditionally given to newlyweds by their priest. Perhaps that is why many bridal bouquets contain ivy. 

Like ivy clinging to the oak tree, the older I grow, the more I cling to Jesus. Sometimes life has been quite difficult, but Jesus has never failed me yet.

What is your favorite metaphor for what Jesus means to you?

Coming Soon!

 

Footsteps of Faith Cover Reveal

Here is the cover for my upcoming book, Footsteps of Faith, my faith-building memoir of God's direction, provision, and protection in my life.

Topics include

1. My parents' testimony of traveling from Pennsylvania to Alaska with two toddlers on $15.00 in 1948.

2, Growing up in a missionary family in Alaska in the fifties and sixties where I became aware of my Creator at a young age and learned to trust God to supply all my needs

3. How the Great Alaska Earthquake affected my life  

4. How my husband's experiences in Vietnam led him into full-time ministry

5. How I overcame fear    

6.  How I became a writer and an ordained minister

7. How I learned and grew through life’s challenges

Here are three introductory paragraphs from the Introduction of Footsteps of Faith:

"My story began long before I was born--from French Huguenot martyrs in 1685, whose sole surviving son immigrated to William Penn's colony in American for religious freedom. The limbs of his family tree are filled with missionaries and ministers seeking to spread the Word of God our ancestors gave their lives to protect.

"My maternal grandmother, Florence LeFevre Personeus, gave me a navy blue, hardbound book entitled The Pennsylvania LeFevres. 'This is the genealogy of my family dating back to 1510 in France, compiled by my father, George Newton LeFevre.'

"The lists of names inside reminded me of the genealogies in the Bible, which I usually skipped so I could devour the exciting stories. The book didn't look too interesting until she showed me a picture in it of the LeFevre Family Bible. Smoothing her snow white pouf of hair that framed her delicate features, she related the unforgettable story of the wife of Abraham LeFevre and mother of Isaac, our first American ancestor, who baked the family Bible in a loaf of bread..."

Today, this Bible can be viewed upon request at the Lancaster County Historical Society

and is one of the most requested items from the collection. This Bible belonged to the French Huguenot family of Isaac LeFevre. Sixteen-year-old Isaac survived the massacre after the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685 and was able to smuggle the Bible out of France as he escaped with the Ferree family. I was privileged to view it in person on one of my visits to Lancaster County.

My prayer is that the story of my life will encourage and build your faith in God.

Look for further announcements about my soon-to-be released book in the coming weeks. 

Coming Soon!

FOOTSTEPS OF FAITH

The Faith-Building True Story of God’s Direction, Provision, 

and Protection in the Life of the Granddaughter of Charles and 

Florence Personeus, Pioneer Missionaries to Alaska

by

AnnaLee Conti

Growing up in a missionary family in Alaska, AnnaLee became aware of her Creator at a young age. From her parents’ and grandparents’ example of living by faith, she learned to trust God to supply her every need.

The devastating Good Friday Earthquake of 1964 brought AnnaLee and her husband together when she transferred to the University of Alaska Fairbanks on an earthquake-relatedness scholarship. Bob Conti planned a military career. His testimony spans three continents—from a tree in Greece to a dark night in Alaska to a bloody battlefield in Vietnam.

Through a historic flood in Fairbanks, a fear-filled tour in Vietnam, and an Army assignment in Rhode Island, God directed the Contis’ footsteps into full-time ministry in New York State. The author shares their journey in this exciting sequel to Frontiers of Faith.

Author Bio:

An ordained minister, author, and teacher, AnnaLee Conti earned her B.A. at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and her M.A. at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. She served as Minister of Christian Education and Music in their churches and teaches Bible and theology to ministerial students. For 25 years, she wrote many articles, stories, and curriculum for Gospel Publishing House and has published Frontiers of Faith and the Alaskan Waters Trilogy of historical Christian novels.

* * * * *

It's been several months since I've been able to write on my blog. After dealing with my health concerns and getting my manuscript off to the publisher, my internet connection became very unreliable. Every time I sat down to write something, it would be off. Then for a week, we lost all internet, cable T.V., and telephone. Last Friday, a technician finally came to fix it and discovered that the cable from the pole to our house was damaged. It has been replaced, and everything is working normally again.

Above is the announcement that my newest book is coming soon. The above is the back cover copy. I'll post a picture of the cover in a few weeks.

They Killed My Son Today!

They Killed My Son Today!

When my son was young, the agony Mary must have experienced watching her Son die on the cross became very real to me, and I wrote this story. On her bed that night, how she must have been haunted by His suffering as she relived that awful day !

They killed my son today! I pound my pillow trying to expend my rage. Angry tears pour down my cheeks.

"Crucify him! Crucify him!" That's all I can hear. I clamp my hands over my ears, yet still I hear their yells.

Just last week the crowd wanted to crown him king. Today, they shouted for his blood. How fickle they are! His trial was a mockery of justice. And Judas--one of his closest friends. How could he betray him?

John has been so kind. The house is quiet now. But this stillness only seems to magnify the sickening thud of the hammer driving those spikes into his hands and feet. Oh, God, will I ever be free of those sounds?

His hands. I held those baby hands, and the fingers closed tightly around mine. Those small boy hands patted my arm so gently when I had a headache. Those young man hands became calloused working in the carpenter shop with Joseph. Those manly hands blessed the little children, healed blind eyes, raised the sick, multiplied the loaves and fish. They never did anything wrong. Why would they pound rusty nails into those loving, kind hands?

His feet. I remember his first steps. Joseph had just come in and Jesus, forgetting himself in his pleasure of seeing Joseph, let go of the table and tottered toward Joseph, saying, "Up! Up!" I remember listening for his footsteps each evening when he and Joseph would come home from the carpenter shop. His step was always the first to ring out on the cobblestones. He was so full of life. And now he's dead.

Oh, my son, my son! I'll never hear your gentle voice again. You'll never sit down with me after supper and tell me of your dreams. I didn't always understand what you said, but just being with you, listening, was enough.

What are these words coming into my mind? "This child will be rejected by many in Israel...And a sword will pierce your very soul." I'd nearly forgotten those words of Simeon. Is this what he tried to tell me?

Words my son spoke suddenly begin to vibrate in my soul: "I am the resurrection and the life."

Could it be? Do I dare to hope? You raised Lazarus. Do you have the power to raise yourself from the dead also?

What's this strange peace settling over me? Dawn is near. Perhaps I can sleep awhile.