You don’t expect them to be chatty, but the truth is they make a fascinating range of sounds. They bark, chirp, hiss, and make a particularly frightening noise called “crabbing.” After crabbing, your sugar glider may mercilessly attack you. You will find those opposable fingers quite annoying when your beloved pet is trying to murder you with them.
Be aware that sugar gliders need attention. In their natural habitat, they are sociable and tend to live in communities of twenty to forty. You will need to spend time with your sugar glider, holding it, playing with it, and letting it roam freely in your home. Even with this loving attention, it may still try to kill you on occasion. However, a vicious sugar glider is most helpful if a homicidal maniac is choking you to death.
Ignoring your sugar glider’s need for time and attention may cause it to become depressed. I could help with that, but you don’t want to go there. A depressed sugar glider is worse than a depressed thirty-five-year-old woman whose husband left her on their wedding night after he caught her kissing her pastor and friend because she was confused after having sex for the first time in seven years. That’svery depressed. So please play with your pet.
Finally, sugar gliders are nocturnal creatures, which means they are upall night. If caged, your sugar glider will screech and bang against its cage until you free it to roam about your home, destroying your drapes.
That’s what it’s like to have a pet sugar glider. It’s a wild animal, people! If your need for a baby gets extreme, get a dog or a kitten. Or maybe even a snake.
Then again, your sugar glider may just have your back, as my estranged husband is fond of saying. Who knows? The life he saves may be your own.
discussion questions
Bell repeatedly pondered the Scripture “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” ( Jeremiah 17:9 KJV). What do you believe that Scripture is saying? Does it imply that the heart cannot be known? Do you believe you know your own heart? Do you believe you can know someone else’s?
Bell sees Jazz right before she is called to the crime scene. Do you think her assessment at the scene was influenced by his visit?
Has someone you were close to ever gotten into serious trouble? How did it affect your relationship?
Bell ended up sharing a passionate kiss with Jazz, even after she left the crime scene. How would you explain her behavior? How would you explain Jazz’s?
Do you believe Bell and Jazz went too far physically? Did they sin? What is acceptable physical contact between a man and woman in love if they are not married?
Bell and Carly argue at the morgue. After Carly asks Bell if she slept with Jazz, Bell angrily tells her that if she had, it would be her, not Carly’s, business. Is Bell’s sex life her sister’s business? Is sex outside of marriage a private matter?
Bell reminds Carly of her own involvement in sexual sin with her boyfriend, Tim. If you had a friend or family member professing Christian faith and you knew they were in sexual sin, how would you deal with the situation?
Death, Deceit & Some Smooth Jazzdeals with real, difficult struggles with sexual temptation. Was it uncomfortable for you to read of Bell and Jazz’s struggle? Why or why not?
Why do you think Bell married Jazz? Should she have?
Jazz caught Rocky kissing Bell. What should she have done immediately in that situation?
Bell decided to allow both Rocky and Jazz some “space.” Should she have done that? How do you think she should have reconciled with her friend? With her husband?
Bell realizes that she wasn’t as self-aware as she believed herself to be. Her experiences showed her that she was not as loving in relationships as she could be. What steps do you believe she should take to change this painful aspect of her life?
the show way
IGREW UP HEARING SLAVE STORIES.Instead of reading them in books, they came riding on the voices of my mother and aunts. Some stories were horrifying, some inspiring, but all of them werepersonal . They were about the people in my family——people whose names I’ve memorized, who suffered in ways I can only imagine. The oral tradition of my family was a deep wellspring from which to draw strength and courage. I feel blessed to be a keeper of those tales.
My great-grandmother was named Amanda Bell Brown. I loaned her spirit and name to my main character, Bell, because she needed a loving guide. I also gave Bell something I no longer have: my great-grandmother’s quilt. I miss that quilt nearly as much as I miss my great-grandmother.
Quilts played a vital role in our country’s painful history. They were something to keep the slaves warm——needful in the harsh, cruel environments they were forced to live in. The quilts were a beautiful and expressive testimony of the creativity of people who were literally considered subhuman. These quilts were often called “show ways” because a secret language hidden within their designs could point a slave to freedom.
Show ways were often employed in the Underground Railroad. Rebel seamstresses, black and white, stitched specific directions in the quilts’ patterns. A monkey-wrench pattern was a call to pull the tools together to make the perilous journey. A sailboat pattern indicated that boats were available. The drunken path warned sojourners to travel east to west. The variations of the star pattern always reminded travelers to follow the North Star, Polaris.
It’s estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 people made their way north to freedom using the Underground Railroad. While we are fortunate in America to now enjoy the freedom my slave ancestors were willing to die for, many of us still need a show way every now and then. As frail human beings, we are prone to the bondage that sin entangles us in. We need directions when our lives are blown off course. And when the world seems cruel and cold, we could surely use something to keep us warm.
May Jesus be our North Star, and may love wrap itself around us and lead us on a sure path to Him.
Death, Deceit & Some Smooth Jazz Page 31
