Truth-Stained Lies (22 page)

TERRI BLACKSTOCK
is an award-winning novelist who has written for several major publishers including HarperCollins, Dell, Harlequin, and Silhouette. Her books have sold over six million copies worldwide.

With her success in secular publishing at its peak, Blackstock had what she calls “a spiritual awakening.” A Christian since the age of fourteen, she realized she had not been using her gift as God intended. It was at that point that she recommitted her life to Christ, gave up her secular career, and made the decision to write only books that would point her readers to Him.

“I wanted to be able to tell the truth in my stories,” she said, “and not just be politically correct. It doesn’t matter how many readers I have if I can’t tell them what I know about the roots of their problems and the solutions that have literally saved my own life.”

Her books are about flawed Christians in crisis and God’s provisions for their mistakes and wrong choices. She claims to be extremely qualified to write such books, since she’s had years of personal experience.

A native of nowhere, since she was raised in the Air Force, Blackstock makes Mississippi her home. She and her husband are the parents of three adult children — a blended family which she considers one more of God’s provisions.

Terri Blackstock,
a
New York Times
bestselling author, has sold over six million books worldwide. She is the author of numerous suspense novels, including
Intervention, Double Minds
, the Restoration Series
(Last Light, Night Light, True Light
, and
Dawn’s Light)
, and other series such as the Sun Coast Chronicles, Cape Refuge, and Newpointe 911.
(www.terriblackstock.com)

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

The Moonlighters Series
1 |
Truth-Stained Lies

Intervention Series
1 |
Intervention
2 |
Vicious Cycle
3 |
Downfall

Restoration Series
1 |
Last Light
2 |
Night Light
3 |
True Light
4 |
Dawn’s Light

Cape Refuge Series
1 |
Cape Refuge
2 |
Southern Storm
3 |
River’s Edge
4 |
Breaker’s Reef

Newpointe 911
1 |
Private Justice
2 |
Shadow of Doubt
3 |
Word of Honor
4 |
Trial by Fire
5 |
Line of Duty

Sun Coast Chronicles
1 |
Evidence of Mercy
2 |
Justifiable Means
3 |
Ulterior Motives
4 |
Presumption of Guilt

Second Chances
1 |
Never Again Good-bye
2 |
When Dreams Cross
3 |
Blind Trust
4 |
Broken Wings

With Beverly LaHaye
1 |
Seasons Under Heaven
2 |
Showers in Season
3 |
Times and Seasons
4 |
Season of Blessing

Novellas
Seaside

Other Books
Shadow in Serenity
Predator
Double Minds
Soul Restoration
Emerald Windows
Miracles
(The Listener/The Gifted)
The Heart Reader of Franklin High
The Gifted Sophomores
Covenant Child
Sweet Delights

R
ecently, as I was stressing about my writing process, God showed me that He understands, because He is a writer too. As the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), He is writing each of our stories.

Did you know that? Do you understand that you’re the leading character in your story? That your story has a theme and a purpose, and a conflict and a resolution?

You are the character — God’s masterpiece. Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) says that we are “God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”

When I begin writing a book, I approach it in a number of different ways. Sometimes I start with a plot, and the
characters are designed to serve that plot. Other times, I start with the characters. But in either case, the stories and each of the characters have a purpose and a character arc. I plan for them to grow, so I give them challenges they aren’t expecting. As they deal with those challenges, some of them catastrophic, I show them growing until, at the end, they aren’t the same people they started out to be.

I know it isn’t easy to imagine God writing your story, because a lot of us see ourselves as extras in the broad scope of His-story. But you do have your own story. God did design your character for a purpose. He did give you a character arc. He made you a certain way, and He will give you challenges to help you grow. As He’s writing this character growth in you, He wants you to learn something. He wants you to change somehow. He wants you to do something. He wants you to impact someone.

So much of what happens to us can’t be explained. Sometimes we never understand it. We don’t always come to the end of our lives and have a light bulb come on and some grand epiphany where everything suddenly makes sense. But God knows the story. He knows the purpose. He knows how it will fit into His broader plan, because He wrote it.

But every good story has conflict. If I had a story without any conflict, no one would read it. It would be boring. Our conflicts are the things that build us, strengthen us, make us more useful. Without them, we are one-dimensional. And God doesn’t write one-dimensional characters.

When I’m writing a character, I love them as if they were real people. I cry over them and pray over them. Remember when Jesus wept when Lazarus died, even though He knew He was going to raise him from the dead? It recently occurred to me that it’s the same thing I do when I have to kill a
character I’ve spent chapters developing, and I literally weep over it. I only let a character die if I know that it advances my plot and my purpose in telling this story, but it hurts me when I do it, even though I know the end of the story.

When I killed off a child in one of my books, it threw a lot of my readers for a loop. I can’t tell you all the letters I got from people who were still wiping tears as they wrote to me. But almost all of those people said that they understood why I did it, and it was the only right choice for that story. I let that child die to teach a principle that would help many people. Sometimes God does the same thing. As the Author of our Faith, He writes things into our story that are hard to take. But He has a plan and a purpose for that pain, and He promises that it will turn out well for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

Some of you are thinking,
God couldn’t have written my story
,
because I’ve done so many things wrong. I’ve made mistakes that make God gasp
. But guess what? God can’t be shocked. He isn’t surprised at the mistakes you’ve made; He plans to use them. He already knows the purpose of all those mistakes, and He already knows how they work into your redemption story.

I love writing characters who are a mess because there’s so much I can do with them throughout a series. In the case of Holly in the Moonlighter Series, do you think I’m looking at her and thinking,
Wow
,
I hate this character. She’s such a loser. She’s a failure at everything
. No! I absolutely love her. I cry with her, I laugh with her, and I have big plans for her. I hate to see her hurting, but I’m letting her hurt, because I have a purpose for that pain.

Some of you may remember my character Issie from my Newpointe 911 Series. Issie was the same kind of character.
She was a mess. The first time we see her, she’s trying to break up someone’s marriage. But as the series progressed, I took her through a growth arc, and when I featured her in the final book, I was able to show her growth. I loved her from that first day I conceived of her.

In the same way, God is not surprised by your mistakes. If you’re a mess, if you’ve had failures, if you’ve done every single thing in your life wrong, God can use it in your story. He has a plan for it. No matter what you’ve been, God still loves you. If I can love Holly and Issie as I’m writing their stories, God can love you while He’s writing yours. I’m not more compassionate than He is.

He knows you. He wired you that way. He gave you the background that would lead to that. He understands why you wound up here. He wants to see you learn and grow and change. He knows just what obstacles to put in your path, when to lighten up on you and give some comic relief, when to tighten the screws to get you out of your comfort zone, when to pull your security out from under you so you’ll reach for Him. He wants your character arc to be the kind of story that impacts others when the last page is written.

I have a friend named Jeff Gerke, and a few years ago he adopted a little girl named Sophie from China. Sophie had a cleft palate, so a few months after they got her, they took her for surgery. Jeff blogged about that difficult day and Sophie’s fear and the pain afterward, and I was particularly touched by this. He wrote, “Sophie couldn’t see that she needed this surgery. She couldn’t understand why people she loved and trusted would allow her to go through such fear and pain for no apparent reason. Of course, we could see she needed it and that this was all for her benefit through the rest of her life, but all she could see was the fear and pain.”

I think we go through things like that sometimes. I think God allows us to undergo pain and fear for no reason we can see. He knows we need it and that it will help us in the long run, but all we feel is afraid, hurt, and maybe even a little betrayed and abandoned. As Jeff’s son told Sophie, “You’re going to be scared and it’s going to hurt, but we’re going to be here after, and we’re not leaving you.”

That’s exactly what God says to us when He’s taking us through a trial we don’t understand. Because He knows the resolution. He knows the beauty that will come from it.

In Jesus’ story, His suffering was catastrophic. Hebrews 2:10 says, “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.”

Jesus suffered because His character arc included a sacrificial death to take our punishment — the greatest act of love in all of history. Remember all those mistakes and failures I mentioned earlier? The ones you and I have done? Jesus’ story was all about those sins. It was all about taking the punishment that we deserved. He suffered so that we wouldn’t be burdened with sin and shame, but we’d be set free with redemption and grace and an eternity with Him. That can be how our story ends.

Or it can end differently. Some of us decide to get angry at God for the story arc He’s given us. Some of us would rather raise our fists to God than open hands reaching for Him. Some waste all of it. Some of us miss the whole point of our story.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Can you trust God with your story arc? Can you trust that, as the Author of your life, He is writing in it what
needs to be there, and that however it turns out, it’s for your good? Like Jeff’s baby Sophie suffering through the fear of surgeons and abandonment and pain, without knowing they’re just trying to fix her birth defect and heal her, God is doing something in us that we might not be able to see.

God has an eternal future in mind for you. It can be yours if you surrender to His redemption in your life. Whatever regrets you have can be turned into something beautiful … something impactful. Something meaningful. There can be a happily ever after for you if you trust Him no matter what.

I pray that every one reading this will grasp that, and that when the last pages of our lives are written, we’ll each embrace the happily-ever-after that Christ was dying to write into our lives.

Terri Blackstock    

ZONDERVAN

Truth-Stained Lies
Copyright © 2013 by Terri Blackstock

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

EPub Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN: 978-0-310-28933-3

Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan,
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blackstock, Terri.

      Truth-stained lies / Terri Blackstock.

          p. cm. (Moonlighters series; bk. 1)
          ISBN 978-0-310-28313-3 (softcover)

      1. Sisters — Fiction. 2. Women private investigators — Fiction.

3. Murder — Investigation — Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.L34285T79 — 2013

813’.54 — dc23                      2012027197

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. www.alivecommunications.com

Cover design: James Hall
Cover photography: Ken Kochey/Getty Images
^®