"How To Tell a Prince from a Frog" -- Interview with Artist and Author Christine Kerrick

Christine Kerrick is a wonderful and talented artist. She is a friend I know only through facebook, but I've admired her art for a while.

I've enjoyed her whimsical art like this one.

And her art centered on spiritual themes...

When I found out she had a book coming out, "How To Tell a Prince From a Frog: Law Enforcement Techniques For Knowing Who You're Dating," I knew I could get behind her with it.

I told Christine that I joke sometimes that I should write a book called "Dates From Hell and How To Avoid Them."

I know some princes. Three of them are my biological brothers. Some of them are my Christian brothers, and some have already found their princesses. I'm grateful for the good guys in my life.

But, I've also known some frogs. I seem to attract them. The froggiest of frogs and the wartiest of toads have hopped out of the bog to either date me or be my admirer. I've known a frog with a prison record, a frog who ended up in prison some time after I was no longer in contact with him, a frog with a drug abuse history, a frog with mental illness, who was also a liar and manipulator, and frogs who showed warning signs that they had the capacity to be abusive (although I was not the victim of it) either sexually or physically. My experiences were short-lived, because I did see the warning signs. I did not pick up these men (ahem, frogs) in bars. I met them in what should be the safest of all places to meet a potential mate, in church.

I apologize to any reader who may be avoiding church with the thought that the church is full of hypocrites, because the above statement would seem to confirm your fear. The father of Corrie Ten Boom, a Christian Dutch woman who hid Jews in her home during the Holocaust, once said, "Just because a mouse gets into the cookie jar doesn't make him a cookie." Just like that mouse in the cookie jar, going to church by itself doesn't necessarily make a person a Christian. Even Jesus Himself talked about hypocrites whom He likened to "whitened sepulchres" and false prophets whom He called wolves in sheep's clothing. Notice that if there are wolves in sheep's clothing among the flock, there is also a true flock.

In Matthew 10:16, Jesus says to His disciples, "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." In other words, we should be harmless but not naive. Christine's book should equip you to be "wise as a serpent."

Her book addresses how to pick up on clues of your date's character, whether good or bad, and how to recognize red flags.

Christine Kerrick was born and raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania and received a BFA in illustration from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Christine has some other book projects in the works as well as six published comic books which, of course, she illustrated herself.

One of Christine Kerrick's comic books below:

"How To Tell a Prince From a Frog" also features several of Christine's illustrations.

"I love writing fiction and have written six comic books. I am working on a couple of novels and have finished (but not published) a children's book. I'm working on a second one," she said.

Christine told me she felt inspired to write her current book "when I met one final Frog who lied to me and manipulated me and those around me."

Christine's artwork below, "Sweet Nothings," is intended to represent a sweet-talking liar.

"I wondered how this could happen and how I could let someone so dangerous slip past me. As I started researching things, I saw that other women had encountered dangerous men like this one too," she said.

The book is aimed towards single women of any age, not necessarily towards teenagers or young women.

Christine feels that her personal experiences have given her the wisdom to write this book.

"I couldn't have written this before that final experience with deception. I have also done extensive research in the years following and talked to scores of women about their experiences, all of whom share many common threads as far as how these Frogs deceived, what they said, the repetitive nature of their sins and the fact that the women 'knew' something was off but went ahead anyway," said Christine.

I noted that the title of the book sounds humorous and asked if the book's content was humorous.

"It is humorous off and on, but focuses on teaching and encouragement," said Christine. "It is a heavy subject, so I tried to inject humor whenever I could."

Christine expressed that frogs can be found in other contexts besides dating such as in business or acquaintance type relationships.

"This isn't to say we should condemn people but be able to know the signs that they are being deceptive and be wise enough to either confront the topic with them or leave and move on. In a dating realm, it is better to move on when you experience deception. Someone who lies to you or otherwise deceives you is not someone who will make a trustworthy spouse," she stated.

Purchase Christine's new book on Amazon and learn to distinguish a prince from a frog!

Pride, Prejudice and Penitence

One summer not too long ago, I was walking along the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey, getting acquainted with a new friend. We had traveled with a mutual friend. He asked me a deep question, what from my past did I regret the most. I had a hard time thinking of something at first. I think my friend was expecting I might have a terrible story of rebellion in my youth, but really, I don't have any such stories. I've never been drunk. I've never experimented with drugs. I've maintained my purity. After a time, I did think of something in my childhood that I regretted. It was not something that continuously nagged at me -- I believe God has forgiven me -- but it is something that I remember with pain when I recall it. At times, I want to travel back in a time machine to replay the scenario a different way. It has to do with how, in my easygoing and people-pleasing nature, I was sometimes manipulated into doing things I wouldn't normally get involved in.



In the community where I grew up, I had almost no exposure to people of color. My first exposure to black people was probably through television, through shows like "The Jeffersons," "Sanford and Son," "What's Happenin'," "Good Times" and maybe even Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert." In some of the neighboring towns that abut my own, the demographics would have been quite a bit different, but in my grade school, there were no black students whatsoever. Later, when I moved to the next neighboring town at age twelve, out of a class of 100 seventh grade students, there was one black boy. My first significant black friend was a boy I met in the eighth grade through a parachurch Bible study group. He was from the Dominican Republic and liked me very much. He would have liked to date me if I was able, but I was young, younger then he was by three or four years,and not allowed to date.

But further back in my childhood, when I was perhaps eight or nine years old, for a short while, there was a black girl my own age who lived in my neighborhood. I never saw her in school, since she attended a private Catholic school in town; however, she lived just around the block from me. A school friend, whose backyard was adjacent to mine, had befriended her, and there was one occasion when the three of us played together. The other two, my backyard friend and this girl, got into a fight at some point. I no longer have any recollection of what started it or what the cause of the conflict was.

What I do remember was that I was somehow manipulated into taking the role of the middle man, delivering hateful messages from one girl to the other. Each stayed in her own yard, and I walked back and forth carrying messages. One girl would tell me, "I'm not talking to her, but tell her (blank) for me." One of the messages to our black friend included the use of the "n" word...nigger. I remember qualifying it by saying, "This isn't me saying this, but she says..." And, I'll admit that I was an equal opportunity insulter, that is, I was being diplomatic in delivering the insulting messages from both sides.

Why would I participate in this? I'm not sure. Maybe, initially, I thought I might be able to play the peacemaker, but, of course, it worked out quite differently. It afflicted my conscience at the time, especially the use of the "n" word, even repeating it as the neutral messenger. Most likely my cooperation was due to the fact that the nature of my friendship to my backyard friend was a strange one. You might even call it an abusive relationship. She would take advantage of my placid nature by manipulation and sometimes made threats or became violent when I did not cooperate with her. Still, I wish now I'd had the backbone to stay out of it, or if I did interfere, to use more of a peacemaking effort rather than repeating the words like some sort of messenger parrot. I was being a pushover. So, this is one regret that brings me pain when I remember it.

On a different note, I remember when my nephew, Micah, who grew up in Maine, saw his first black person while on a family trip with us to the Statue of Liberty.



Like my early childhood, Micah did not see any black people where he lived. He was only two or three years old, and as he was too young to understand rules of etiquette or that it's impolite to stare, he stood gazing at this man with wide eyes as if to say "I've never seen someone who looked like you before!" My brother, Micah's father, was beginning to feel embarrassed. Happily, the man who was the object of his stares was not at all embarrassed and chatted with my little nephew in a friendly manner. My brother was pleased that this first experience for Micah was a positive one that did not instill in him any negative feelings of awkwardness.

The best book I've ever read on race or racisim is "One Blood." I read it while I was writing my novel, "And the Violin Cried," which deals with anti-Semitism. It is the opinion of the authors that there is no such thing, scientifically speaking, as race. There is only the human race. The whole concept of race, and, in fact, racism, by implying that different races evolved from different types of monkeys at different rates, is influenced by Darwinism and evolutionary theory. It is this evolutionary theory that inspired Hitler to feel as he did towards the Jews and the blacks. The Bible has a much more favorable view on humankind.