Author: Carrie Sue Barnes

Carrie Sue Barnes is a fiction author and blogger who fell in love with creative writing as a grade schooler in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She resides now in Wisconsin with her family, often pulling her love for the Midwest into her writing. Carrie Sue's debut novel, The Hidden Legacy, was released in 2018 by Bold Vision Books to strong reviews. Since then, she has published several short stories and continues to write short fiction and faith-inspired reflections on this site. Carrie Sue loves reading, kayaking, hugging her children and friends, rewatching The Office, and connecting with readers in person and on social media.
Scripture, Simplifying

Keep It Simple

Carrie Sue Barnes

Did you know that your big toe has only two bones in it while the rest of your toes each have three? Well, you do now. That was the fun fact on my Snapple cap today and it got my friend and I thinking. We both thought that seemed a bit backwards. Could be a sad lack of remembrance of our high school biology lessons, or it could be something more. After all, the big toe is, well, big. It’s important; it seems to do more than the little toes when it comes to balance. Surely it’s more complex on the inside!

I realize this is a stretching of the simile but please let me say it: the big toe isn’t so different from life’s big things. I tend to assume that every occupant of the “things that matter most” category is complicated. They must require a great deal of deliberation, maneuvering and so on and so forth. Could it be that the inner workings of the big things are actually simple? It seems too good to be true for a girl who tends to over-think most everything. In the way that my background tends to influence me, my thoughts on the big toe analogy brought me around to Scripture and the beautiful yet challenging simplicity of life in Christ. Here more than anywhere else, “simple” does not equal small or inconsequential. The calls placed on our lives, the commandments we receive, they’re a big deal. They’re an eternally huge deal. Yet Christ keeps it simple.

  • “Follow me…” (Matthew 5:19)
  • “Let your light so shine before men…” (Matthew 5:16)
  • “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven…” (Matthew 6:20)
  • “Do not be anxious about your life…” (Matthew 6:25)
  • “Come to me…” (Matthew 11:28)
  • “Listen to him [Christ]…” (Matthew 17:5)
  • “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…” (Matthew 22:37)
  • “Love your neighbor as yourself…” (Matthew 22:39)
  • “Make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19)
  • “You must be born anew… of water and the Spirit…” (John 3:7, 5)
  • “Go, and do not sin again…” (John 8:11)
  • “You also should do as I have done to you…” (John 13:15)
  • “Abide in my love…” (John 15:9)
  • “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world…” (John 16:33)
  • “Make love your aim…” (1 Corinthians 14:1)
  • “Be imitators of god as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…” (Ephesians 5:1-2)
  • “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit but in humility count others better than yourselves…” (Philippians 2:3)
  • “Rejoice…” (Philippians 4:4)
  • “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is…” (Colossians 3:1)
  • “With confidence draw near to the throne of grace…” (Hebrews 4:16)
  • “Do right and let nothing terrify you…” (1 Peter 3:6)
  • “LET YOUR MANNER OF LIFE BE WORTHY OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST…” (Philippians 1:27)
Am I now oversimplifying? Over compensating for my overthinking? Well, perhaps it’s not that the situations, the decisions, the relationships, the risks and so on are all that simple and straightforward. They can all be plenty complicated and difficult. The lens through which we view them though, the avenue by which we approach them, that’s where the simplicity rescues us from ourselves.
Personal Reflection

This & That

Carrie Sue Barnes

I haven’t even seen the third “Pirates of the Caribbean” film but this rumor is a thrill to hear: Pirates 4 to film in Traverse City?? The photo on that blog does away with any doubts that it’s a usable setting for the film. It’s crazy how much I love that area.

Each and every flowering tree around here is obscenely fat with blossoms right now. It’s fabulous. The season for such sights is also the season for dandelions though. Seriously, I mowed the grass only last night and already there is almost as much yellow as green in our lawn. If I gave any credence to such things I’d have to deem the dandelion the single best representation of survival of the fittest in the plant world.

This morning I found a new favorite poem. Not many poems give me the inclination to memorize and loudly recite their verses but this one accomplishes exactly that.

Becalmed upon the sea of Thought,
Still unattained the land it sought,
My mind, with loosely-hanging sails,
Lies waiting the auspicious gales.
–
On either side, behind, before,
The ocean stretches like a floor, —
A level floor of amethyst,
Crowned by a golden dome of mist.
–
Blow, breath of inspiration, blow!
Shake and uplift this golden glow!
And fill the canvas of the mind
With wafts of thy celestial wind.
–
Blow, breath of song! until I feel
The straining sail, the lifting keel,
The life of the awakening sea,
Its motion and its mystery!
(H W Longfellow)
Midwest

The Sights & Sounds of May

Carrie Sue Barnes
“Yesterday was the first of May. I love the special days of the year…. A May Day that feels as it sounds is rare and, when I leaned out of the bedroom window watching the moat ruffled into sparkles by a warm breeze, I was as happy as I have ever been in life. I knew it was going to be a lucky day.”
(Chapter 9, I Capture the Castle)


The arrival of May puts me in the mood for yet another delightful reading of my tied-for-favorite book, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Since I just read it for the fourth time about a month ago, maybe I’ll only revisit some favorite scenes. Also appropriate to both the book and this May temperament, I am listening to Bach’s Adagios with a smile on my face. Do you suppose he composed them in springtime? Some of them, certainly. It’s hard to imagine the creation of “Sheep May Safely Graze” occuring in late autumn’s dryness or the depths of winter.

May causes me to wish to live in the countryside. The colors and brightness of the month are reason enough to long for a lengthy drive to reach any destination. I often wonder how long I will stay where I am – in this town, in this house. The notion of a move seems much more believable in May.

Yesterday I finished writing chapter 14 of The Mercy Hour. It’s Thanksgiving in that fictional realm and late November in Michigan is difficult to capture when you’re in a May mood. The contradiction of those realities is soothed at least a little bit though as it’s awfully easy to dwell in the imagination in the spring.

Intentionality

An Unchecked List

Carrie Sue Barnes

A storm’s coming.

No, that wasn’t a metaphysical statement spoken in a hushed tone. A real storm is coming. According to the online radar, it should hit right around the time I will walk out of this building to my car and drive home. Convenient. I do love a good storm though, especially one with plenty of volume.

I didn’t sign in here to talk about the weather so let’s move on. I signed in to talk about a list. The list. The “do before I get old and/or die” list. Some might call it a bucket list although my aversion to anything Jack Nicholson related keeps me from adopting the term. I’ve kept such a list for ten or more years. It’s been revised a handful of times and each version is kept for posterity. Occasionally there’s an item that doesn’t make the new list as the desire to fulfill it has passed and it no longer holds significance for me. A few nights ago I retrieved all the versions from my desk drawer and read through them.

Hold a master’s degree in English or writing
Live near the ocean
Kayak in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior
Publish a novel
Learn to play piano
Visit England, Ireland, Italy, France, Hawaii
Hike at Porcupine Mountains and Grand Teton & Yellowstone National Parks
Get married
Ride in a hot air balloon
Write a non-fiction faith-themed book
Write a biography

These are some, not all, of the ones still to be fulfilled.

So few lines have a checkmark beside them…
Sail on the ocean
See U2 in concert
Live by myself
Hike at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
Teach RCIA at a parish
Travel to Niagra Falls
Crochet a blanket
Write a novel

I decided not to revise the list this time around. The desires that have been left unpursued, not just unfulfilled, sadden me the most. I know that not every wish and endeavor will come to fruition. Certainly I’m learning to live with a bit of failure from day to day and that helps me keep my hope firmly anchored where it belongs. Not to have tried though, not to have pursued… I can’t live with that from day to day. I won’t.

Faith, Love, Personal Reflection

Aiming

Carrie Sue Barnes

“The line is thin between a selfish act and things you do to keep yourself intact.” I consider that one of the most insightful lyrics of the countless songs I have heard. It’s from “Same Mistakes” by Sara Watkins and the song is a beauty. That particular line resonated with me the first time I listened to it and does so again, perhaps more, this week.
I have a decision to make. It involves work and friendship and priorities. The direction to which I lean changes from day to day. Sometimes in life, thank God, clarity and peace of mind determine a choice and I am able to move forward in that choice with confidence. Sometimes not so much. After feeling convicted to turn in two completely different directions from Sunday to Monday, I began Tuesday with my Bible open on the kitchen table. As there is logic and good reason behind either choice, I felt convicted to seek the choice of love. Which way allows for loving as I should, while which way, valid as it may be, is the more self-serving? “Make love your aim,” was St. Paul’s reminder to me. Make love your aim…
This doesn’t uncomplicate things. This does not even decide things with desirable certainty. But I am given a lens through which to survey the problem, and a purpose to prevail over the handful of other tension-building purposes presently motivating me.
Intentionality

After Midnight

Carrie Sue Barnes

What am I doing here at 12:04 a.m., listening to She & Him and sliding open the patio door before I sit down at the kitchen counter? Blogging for the first time since Easter, for one thing. I’ve begun and deleted a few posts in the last week and a half. Each time I begin to gather my thoughts they scatter before I can finish a paragraph, so I’m not promising any coherence in this attempt either.

My sister, with whom I live, is in China for two weeks. This leaves me with a home to myself and plenty of quiet in which to think. I haven’t decided if that has proven to be a positive or a negative. It’s a bit of both, quite likely. On several occasions lately my mind has been consumed by the idea of living honestly. Easter night and last night were the greatest contributors to this theme, each due to very particular and separate struggles. Let me see if I can explain. It is not the simple opposite of telling lies. Rather, it is the appeal to be honest – stripped, to lack a cover or veil – in answers, in reactions, in interplay. I have this heavy sense of wasting time with pretending. As I catch myself at the start of a pretense, whether with another or with myself, I cannot follow through on it.

It’s a terribly unsafe way to live. Vulnerability, risk, misunderstanding – these are its results. But maybe more will come besides… maybe courage, maybe integrity, maybe fewer regrets and more glad-I-took-them chances. Truth faced, even in its bitter or thorny forms, is to be preferred to pretense, isn’t it? If nothing else I think I might stand surer in who I am and who I am not, in what I need to give and what I need to receive. Heroines parade through my mind and I see what I’m aiming for in this. Cassandra Mortmain, Emily Byrd Starr, Lily Bart as an antithesis… Lucy Honeychurch most of all.

“…let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.”
(E M Forster, A Room With a View)

Catholicism, Easter, Jesus

Alleluia!

Carrie Sue Barnes

I am spending the first hours of Easter morn baking a few dozen cupcakes, dancing to David Crowder Band in my kitchen and basking in the lingering jubilation of the Easter Vigil Mass. Tonight I witnessed 8 children be baptized and 5 adults enter the full communion of the Catholic Church and receive Confirmation and Eucharist. Tonight I remembered exactly why I love serving in the RCIA ministry. It was a glorious night. It is a glorious morning. I hope you find it so as well.

“Yesterday, I was crucified with Him;
Today, I am glorified with Him;
Yesterday, I died with Him;
Today, I am quickened with Him;
Yesterday, I was buried with Him;
Today, I rise with Him.”
(from an Easter sermon by St. Gregory Nazianzen)