Looking In The Window: Be The Best Or Do Your Best?

This week I'm giving away a Kindle copy of Stopped Cold. To enter to win leave an email address and a comment below.

An MC speaking on a Christian radio station last week reported that a great number of young people are stressed today because they believe they must be perfect. According to the radio’s source, they are anxious about getting into the best colleges, making the best grades and finding a perfect wife.

Well, I couldn’t help but think of Stopped Cold, my recent re-release that tells readers they don’t have to be number one for God to love them. God’s given each of us a gift or gifts to use for him.

I wrote Stopped Cold because I’ve had the misfortune of knowing young people whose inability to cope with being less than the best resulted in devastating results. They range from youngsters who had difficulty coping because they didn’t come in first in a race or receive all A’s to young people who attempted or committed suicide. The drive seemed to originate from different sources—parents, siblings, peers or within. I wondered if the phenomenon had crossed my path more than that of others, so I did a little research.

Among the statistics I found, the CDC says “suicide among teens and young adults has nearly tripled since the 1940’s.”

In “A Young Athlete’s World of Pain and Where It Led,” published on June 22, 2016, in “The New York Times,” Tim Rohan tells the story of a young football player suffering from concussions. He didn’t mention it to anyone because he thought it wasn’t the manly thing to do. He ended up killing himself.

According to the Westminster Catechism, which I studied in the 1940’s and 50’s, man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

I love what a friend of mine told her child. “You don’t need to be the best but always do your best.” That’s a healthy way to look at our competitive world. It pushes us to live up to our potential, and we often achieve success beyond our goals, or not, but in the end, we’re still a child of God. Using our gift or gifts for Him to the best of our abilities gives our lives purpose and makes us worthwhile. Perfection, winning and losing don’t define our self-worth.

About Stopped Cold

Stopped Cold is a Grace Awards Finalist, a 4th place finisher in the 16th Annual Preditors and Editors Readers Poll and was an Amazon Best Seller in Christian Teen and Young Adult Mysteries and Thrillers for one month.

Things aren't what they seem in peaceful Mistville, North Carolina.
Margaret McWhorter enjoys a laid-back Freshman year in high school swimming and hanging out with friends—until the day her brother, Sean, suffers a stroke from taking steroids. Now he's lying unconscious in a hospital.

Anger sets a fire for retribution inside her, and Margaret vows to make the criminals pay. Even the cop on the case can't stop her from investigating. Looking for justice, she convinces two friends, Jimmy and Emily to join her in a quest that takes them through a twisted, drug-filled sub-culture they discover deep in the woods behind the school. Time and again they walk a treacherous path, and come face-to-face with danger.

All the while Margaret really wants to cure Sean, heal the hate inside, and open her heart to love.

Meriwether, the high school in Stopped Cold, has its own twitter site. Margaret would love to have you follow it at Meriwether Christian @ MeriwetherCS
(https://twitter.com/MeriwetherCS/followers)

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