Child of God and a follower of Christ.
Depression fighter.
Spec Fic writer and artist.
STEAMM lover and a 2A supporter.

These are my stories.

About Me Header

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ABOUT ME

About Me Text

DeWayne's Art Dreams - YouTube Drawing Videos I have collected and curated
My Drawings

Study. Practice. Learn. Draw. Write. Breathe. Live.

Gathering and uniting the Forces of the Warriors of Spe C'f Iic.
Bringing understanding. Lighting the darkness. Defending mankind from ancient evil.

Too often, I fail God, but He picks me up, cleans me off, and helps me to continue on the journey of living life, writing, and drawing for Him.
My childhood home was Alaska, where I had a fair share of adventures and misadventures, including surviving the largest recorded earthquake to hit the North American continent.
Record-breaking earthquakes hit Klamath Falls, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington while I lived in those areas as well. Much of my writing takes place in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
In 2nd grade I became an avid reader, and in 7th grade I began the struggle with myself, and God, of whether or not I wanted to accept the title "Writer."
I use this blog as a way for me to get myself to work on self-assigned writing projects, a way to encourage myself to get on with the adventure of being a Spec Fic writer and artist.


For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, And what I dreaded has happened to me.
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes.”

My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me,
and horror hath overwhelmed me.

I will call upon God;
and the Lord shall save me.
Evening, and morning, and at noon,
will I pray, and cry aloud:
and he shall hear my voice.

My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the King; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer. - Psalm 45:1 King James Version

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,
And establish the work of our hands for us;
Yes, establish the work of our hands. -Psalm 90:17

And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
To devise cunning works, … to work in all manner of workmanship.
… and in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom,
that they may make all that I have commanded ... - Ex 31:3-6 King James Version

He has filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding, in knowledge and all manner of workmanship, to design artistic works, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting jewels for setting, in carving wood, and to work in all manner of artistic workmanship. Ex35:31-32 NKJV

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. - Psalm 19:1 King James Version

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. - Psalm 33:6 King James Version

Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever You had formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. - Psalm 90:1-2

Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee. - Nehemiah 9:6 King James Version

For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The LORD, The God of hosts, is his name. - Amos 4:13 King James Version



24 April 2011

NEWS UPDATE!

It's almost 12 hours later from when I posted the previous article. I finally got back to bed about 3:30 this morning and slept only fitfully, waking at around 8:00 / 8:30. I called the bookstore where my brother and I had met to have our "picnic," and they told me they hadn't seen my wallet. Five minutes later I get a vmail msg saying the bookstore did have my wallet, so I am PRAISING JESUS for that WOO HOO! \o/\o/\o/

So what next for this wantta be writer? Well, there is always starting next week's blog post. And speaking of next week's blog post, I have a bunch of notes on scratch paper I need to get typed. I also have a ton of articles I clipped from various sources that I intended on scanning "someday." For some of those notes "someday" was O'Dark:30 this morning, so I will continue working on scanning in notes for stories. And I also need to work on getting some editing done on The Ayes Have It, so I can hopefully turn in another submission for MAY. I have recently been browsing books at Barnes and Noble to see what I want to use the Barnes and Noble gift card that I was given for Christmas, so I might do a little more browsing for books.

"Up from the grave He arose,
with a mighty triumph o'er His foes.
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
and He lives forever with His saints to reign.
He arose, He arose, Hallelujah Christ arose."

Since I Can't Sleep I Might As Well get Up And Get Something Done

It is 2:19 in the morning, and when I went to bed about 4 hours ago I emptied my pockets onto the night stand, and found that one of my wallets wasn't in its pocket. I checked the car, no wallet. I went to bed trying to leave it in God's hands, and got to sleep fairly quickly. However, I got woke up and had the idea to go back outside and check the ground between the house and car, and to look around the car, still no wallet. By know I am wide awake and unable to go back to sleep. I decide I might as well get up and try to get some things done.

Amongst those things I figure I better try to get a blog article written to post - but what to write. Well, losing my wallet topped of a wonderful week where I've been busy subbing for Bellevue Christian Schools, and had an interview at Shoreline Christian School. So although I've been jotting notes on scraps of paper about possible blogging ideas for this week, I've not accomplished getting an article written. I decided I would cheat and post an old poem I wrote for a friend when we were in college, and she was going through some hard times. Considering how I am feeling right now about the missing wallet, I figured I need to remind myself of what the poem says. May it bless you as well.
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Sail On


Behold, "there arose a great tempest in the sea,
insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves...."

And He "rebuked the wind,
and said unto the sea,
"Peace, be still...,
and there was a great calm"

And they marveled, saying,
"He commandeth even the winds and water,
and they obey Him."

Matthew 8:24, Mark 4:39, Luke 8:25 KJV



When the storms of adversity rage around you,
and the waves of fear beat against you,

I pray that you will look to
The Man whom even the winds and waves obey,
and that you put your hand in His,
and that He will calm your
heart,
mind,
and soul
with the words
"Peace, Be Still."



When the windless days of
doubt,
discouragement,
and depression
beset you,

I pray that Jesus will unfurl the beautiful sails of your life,
and fill them with His gentle, benevolent winds of
friendship,
hope,
and love.


When it seems you've lost your way,
and are going nowhere,
and you don't know which way to turn,

I pray that the merciful, compassionate waves of
success in our Lord will wash over you
to guide you to a place of rest in Him.


May you find a safe haven in God,
and May Christ be your
Compass,
Captain,
and Companion.

Amen.

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Blessings this Resurrection Sunday.

17 April 2011

MIDNIGHT SNACKS

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It was TUES last week (12 APR) that I started writing last week's post. I'm going to try to post once a week, and this week I thought I would give you the aforementioned promised conclusion to Midnight Snacks. So without any further ado, I give you Part Two. (Part One is here.)
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PART TWO

I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and rather than foolishly going out into the living room and challenging the as of yet unknown numbers of intruders, I would make my escape as quietly and quickly as possible. It was a hot summer’s night and I had already opened the window, and had the fan going for some night air circulation. The fan may have covered any noises I may have made as I attempted to silently remove the screen from the, thankfully, first floor window. I eased the screen out of the frame and carefully set it aside where it wouldn’t fall or get knocked over while I proceeded to step two of my escape and evasion tactics. I slipped through the empty window frame and climbed outside and raced over to the neighbor’s apartment, where thankfully he had a phone, and called the police. Mike was insisting I had been dreaming and had been hearing things when I woke up. I decried his accusations as I dialed 9-1-1, and informed the dispatcher I had intruders in the apartment.

While I waited for the police to show, I snuck back to the backside of our apartment where Greg’s room was and lightly taped on his window, and whispered “Greg, Greg, there’s somebody in the apartment.” I repeated myself until he responded and I told him the police were on the way, and to stay put, unless he wanted to join me in crawling out a window, and wait. He, like me, was a country boy, and we grew up using certain tools that more “refined” folk might look down upon. I told him to stay cool and stay in the room, and not to do anything stupid when the cops arrived.

Eventually the cops show up (when seconds count, the police are only minutes away), and by now my adrenaline level is sky high. The cops show up and ask what’s going on. I tell them that there are an unknown number of unwanted visitors in my apartment and that I crawled out my window and after calling for them, went back and told Greg what was going on. The police went to go through the front door and it was locked. HUH??? How could anyone have gotten in if the front door was locked?? Apparently, when Wendy left, Greg turned the lock, but didn’t push the door entirely closed, so the door didn’t latch.

The police made there way around to the back patio door, and because the curtains had been left open they could see the two visitors that had found their way into my living room. Apparently these two were well known by the local constabulary, as they called out their names, and told them to come over and open the closed and locked patio door. “John,” and “Joe” eventually managed to stumble over to the door and let in the police. These two had a bag with a liquor store label from across town. Apparently these two had bought their nightly supply of booze, stumbled back across town, stumbled into my apartment complex and managed to find our door had never been properly secured, and wandered in to have their beer bask. Thankfully, they were no more dangerous than this. If they had been the guy on the loose while I was house-sitting for friends in Alaska during Spring Break…, but that’s another story.

The police got the two cuffed and stuffed into the back of the cruiser and came over and told me I was going to have to make a citizen’s arrest, and then release my prisoners into police custody. Apparently, the police can’t arrest for certain misdemeanors unless they see them committed, and so I made the ”citizen’s arrest” for trespassing, and signed the forms releasing the two into police custody. That was the last I ever heard of these two visitors.

Oh, I never made it to the accounting test the next morning.

15 April 2011

Getting Back in the Saddle

Recently, I've been trying to train myself to get up earlier and to do a little writing. So I was up at 5:20 on TUES, 12 APR, scribing some notes I had scribbled down for this blog post while I was sitting in on a workshop at the Northwest Ministry Conference at Overlake church in Redmond, WA, where I had volunteered to help run the NCWA booth on SAT, the 9th. The workshop was discussing how to build an online community, not just a website. Part of the discussion included doing a blog. It was enough to convince me I needed to climb back up on the horse that had bucked me off last year. I've been dragging my feet about getting back into the saddle of blogging, mainly cause I didn't know what to write about. So I decided I would just write about needing to get back to blogging, and about why I haven't blogged for over a year.

The longer I put off doing something - getting back to blogging in this instance, the harder it is to get back to doing it. When I was in high school I was in a drama class in which we were required to get up and do a monologue. I didn't mind getting up on stage and doing small parts, even though I hated getting up in front of class and giving speeches, but this just went against my grain. When the time came to perform the monologue, I came down sick with a tummy ache. I really was sick to my stomach, from nerves, and mom had MS and didn't have the strength to fight with me to get me up and to school. I ended up missing 14 days of school when my high school councilor finally came by the house to see what was wrong. We all talked, and I reluctantly agreed that I would return to school the next day. Talking about having creepy-crawlies in the tummy, walking back into the school that next day certainly gave me the heebie-jeebies.


So why the long absence? It was about this time last year that my Toshiba Qosmio G25 started having heart palpations, and started giving me heart palpations. I managed to get my docs backed up on a flash drive and then copied them over to the Toshiba Satellite that a friend from church gave me. MAY & JUN of 2010 came and went, and I spent that summer sorting through the various copies of all the backup files I had managed to accumulate.

I wound up throwing away some 7,000 files. Some of these files were back ups of back ups of back ups of ... well, you get the idea, going back to at least 10 years ago. All this to say: I got a little distracted from blogging for awhile, even when I did get a computer up and running. THEN in JAN I managed to kill the Satellite (or at least put it into a coma). In FEB a friend from NCWA gave me a replacement, and I've been busy trying to get all my files restored from the last backup I had performed to the flash drive. After I got close to finalizing this process I started dating my backup files, and working on keeping them organized a bit better.

So, here I am a year later finally trying to figure out what to write about in order to get back into blogging. Last week I opened the old posts to try to get motivated to blog and spent a day fiddle-faddling with the layout and such, including renaming the blog "Ruggles' Roamings," from "Ruggles' Wanderings," wanting to get back into blogging, but a little reluctant to try to climb back into the saddle, after all - "What would my readers think of me having been gone so long, and now here I am expecting anybody to actually care about what I blog. I'm not really a blogger (worse - I'm not really a writer), just a pretender." It was thoughts like these that I had to overcome in order to sit down and write this new entry, and so here we are.

So what's next? I've been working on my short story The Ayes Have It, getting it critiqued, editing / rewriting, getting more critiques, trying to move forward. Maybe I will write about that, maybe I will write about trying to write with a cat in the lap. I still owe you all the conclusion of A Midnight Snack, so I need to get that posted. If you already read the older posts, you may remember that I originally stated that this blog was supposed to be a tool in order to get into, and stay in the habit of a regular writing schedule. I'm hoping that between my recent attempts to get up earlier, and my renewed efforts to continue with my blogging that I will be able to get even more writing done. I need to go make sure my backups are current, and properly dated, so that I don't have to re-live last summer's adventures.

Palm Sunday is coming up, Monday is the beginning of Passover, Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday follow close behind, so as we enter into this holy season, be blessed, in Christ's Holy Name.

Chesed v’shalom aleichem b’Y’Shua haMashiach

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