Crystal Joy, Completely Yours

Show open: zoo canary story

The show opens at the Pathway Studios in Johnston proper. After a Muppet Christmas Carol ghost-of-Christmas impression ('welcome friend, come closer and know me better'), the host tells an opening story about teasing his daughter at the zoo (St. Louis or Kansas City) while she walked a canary hut for half an hour with her elbow out, trying to get one of 500 canaries to land on her.

Tonight's lineup and Crystal Joy's return

The host previews the night: author Crystal Joy is back in studio with a new book, Completely Yours (the follow-up to Completely Captivated). He also teases a cnn.com article about the changing reasons women cheat on their partners, saying he wanted a woman's perspective before 'a bunch of dudes' bat the story around. The article discussion is deferred to a later week for lack of time. Crystal reintroduces herself: 31, Quad Cities, stay-at-home mom and work-from-home romance author; her books are fictionalized love stories based on interviews with real couples, plus a forthcoming contemporary romance, Shackled Heart.

Completely Yours: real-couple stories and sacrifice

Crystal Joy explains her process: she asks couples to describe their relationship as a movie of four or five scenes, then fictionalizes them into novels about a hero and heroine falling in love, including breakups and tragic circumstances. She recounts Tom and Megan's story (married, wondering whether to divorce), Mary and Daniel's story (opens with divorce, then rewinds to how they fell apart), and long-distance couples Annie and Lucas, Jenny and Michael. The hosts react: real people behind the stories makes them ring truer than fairy tales or Disney movies. A co-host shares that his daughter, dating her boyfriend five years, faces the same dilemma after he joined the Marines and moved to Kentucky while she has a year and a half of undergrad left before dental school. Crystal's takeaway from interviewing couples: relationships demand sacrifice of pride, location, and family — exemplified by Sarah and Chris, whom she never met and researched through Sarah's blog; Sarah moved to England for Chris's Air Force posting, including the scene where she kicks a coffee maker that won't work on English voltage.

Field-goal-kicker joke and where to buy the books

Dodging the hard relationship question, the hosts joke about escaping into fantasy jobs — place kicker, field-goal specialist ('you only show up two or three times a game'). Then the plug: Completely Captivated is at Barnes & Noble, Nook, Kobo, and Amazon; Completely Yours is Amazon-only for now, heading to bookstores later.

Reading habits and the writing craft

The conversation turns to print vs. e-books: Crystal loved old print books until her toddlers (son 3, daughter almost 2) kept ripping them, so she caved and got a Kindle. The host buys physical study books to mark them up but keeps $3 Kindle match copies for travel; he once ditched a garage-sale Dickens that smelled of 'minestrone and neglect' and loads free classics like The Count of Monte Cristo onto the iPad, borrowing the kids' Wingfeather Saga from the library. Crystal describes editing: digital track-changes with a critique partner, then a final printout she highlights and crosses out by hand; Shackled Heart took seven years, so rereading it now is frightening. Her critique partner writes Christian suspense and kills off too many characters — Crystal once 'was done' when she killed one at the very end.

Shackled Heart: character-driven fiction, guilt and moving on

Crystal describes writing Shackled Heart, her first fully fictional novel, after five revisions: she is a character-driven writer who started with a man going home who didn't want to go home — because home felt like prison — so he went to prison. Charlie lost his wife in a horrific car accident he was driving, and carries immense guilt, wishing it had been him. His parole officer, McKenna Christensen, is a workaholic who witnessed the accident and saw his wife's body, so she dreads having him on her caseload. The hosts contrast critique of fictional characters (personal — 'that's my Charlie') with fictionalized real people, whom readers only get attached to; one reader wept with joy to learn Annie from Completely Yours is now engaged. Asked what writing about love has taught her, Crystal says people undervalue their relationships and that every story showcases sacrifice — pride in arguments, location in long-distance love — which has made her more comfortable with sacrifice herself. A host adds his own joke version: when called to sacrifice his pride, he likes to 'walk it up the mountain and say, just send the ram, Lord.'

Interview close and book recommendation

The host wraps the interview: Crystal's books are clean, sweet romance — not explicitly Christian fiction but appropriate. He gives a two-part recommendation: the stories are genuinely entertaining with real twists, and knowing they're based on real relationships helps readers think about their own story instead of sacrificing relationships to time, convenience, habit, or schedule.

Drive-time reflection on wife and kids

A host reflects on driving alone for work the previous week: with two hours of quiet he spent more time thinking about his wife and kids than usual, realizing his wife has little time for her own hobbies and skills lists the way the kids and he do, and resolving to be an encourager of her life rather than only focused on his own work and meetings.

'Is This Love?' game with Crystal Joy

• A man's wife asks him to watch all eleven seasons of Frasier with her — is this love?
• A man posts 'my girl' with a heart-eyes emoji on Facebook — is this love?

The hosts play their rare 'Is This Love?' game — 'the top shelf bourbon of games,' only broken out when Crystal Joy visits — with Crystal judging five scenarios. The host running the game (addressed as Mike on air) poses each scenario to the others (addressed on air as Ben and Dan Hudson): (1) a man's wife asks him to watch all eleven seasons of Frasier with her — verdict YES, love, because she noticed he secretly watches Frasier late at night and wants to join him without embarrassing him; (2) a man posts 'my girl' with a heart-eyes emoji on Facebook — verdict NO, that's attention-seeking weirdness, not love; (3) a woman posts 'my man' with his photo and a heart-eyes emoji — no definitive verdict, Crystal says yes-with-backstory (maybe he's celebrating something) and earns points for the backstory while Ben says no; (4) a young man's letter 'Do you love me? Do you want to be my friend?... check yes or no' (the old country song) — verdict NO, he's selfish and talking about himself the whole letter; (5) a woman leaves a letter in her husband's briefcase for him to find while he's out of town — verdict YES, both because absence makes the heart grow fonder and because she's teaching him to read, one letter at a time (the beef jerky red herring means sustenance for the long haul). Crystal wins the game by far, as she did the last time.

Improv scene: Charlie's first parole meeting

As a comedy bit, the hosts act out the first parole meeting between McKenna the parole officer and Charlie the parolee from Shackled Heart, with Crystal judging how close they get to the real book. The improvised scene derails: Charlie claims a job with 'Ted over at the auto shop,' McKenna reveals Ted died six months ago, and a stray dog follows Charlie into the office and makes a mess. Crystal's verdict: there IS a dog in the book, just not at the meeting — and there really is a metaphor about cleaning up a mess. The host jokes about releasing the novel on WikiLeaks as a 'secret document' for publicity.

Dear LFTP: hiring an undocumented nanny off the books

• Is it acceptable to hire an undocumented babysitter off the books when on-the-books nannies are too expensive?

A listener writes that she's going back to work and needs a babysitter; the moms she knows all hire undocumented women off the books, and she worries about getting in trouble, while on-the-books nannies are sky high. The Secular persona answers that it's true many families, including in New York City, employ undocumented childcare workers as part of the US economy, but it isn't legal — she should hire someone who files with the IRS and pays taxes. The hosts agree she should go the legal route, and push back that her question misses the point: nothing in it is about what's best for her child. They share childcare vetting stories — a daycare lady with a breakable porcelain cat on the table ('you're not a daycare'), and a woman whose house left a child crying by the stairs for months without mentioning it, after which the host's wife quit her job that day — arguing you must know who watches your kids 'real well,' preferably someone you already know.

Dear LFTP: kids, toy commercials, and materialism

• How can I teach my kids Christmas is about giving when they're inundated with toy commercials?

A listener writes that her kids are already demanding Christmas presents because their channels are cluttered with toy commercials; she wants Christmas to be about giving and joy, not loot. The Secular persona answers that the parent's job is to teach their values: limit TV exposure, set gift boundaries (one main gift, wish-list limits), and change the conversation. The hosts largely agree with Secular — rare, they note. A host argues the parent is the filter: stop letting them watch the commercials, and say no joyfully — he demonstrates his 'magic hand' trick for telling his 10-year-old no so it lands as a joke rather than harshness. He shares how his kids picked up narcissistic entitlement from watching YouTubers narrate their own video-game play, and how the attitude vanished completely after a two-week break. Crystal suggests having kids give away old toys (Toys for Tots) before Christmas. The hosts add grace for young kids: a five-year-old only sees past their own hands; expect real change around eight to ten.

Outro and vinyl-bound Mark commentary

The hosts thank Crystal Joy, plug Completely Captivated and Completely Yours on Amazon and the forthcoming Shackled Heart, then riff on bookbinding: the host rebound his falling-apart commentary on the Gospel of Mark in vinyl from Hobby Lobby instead of leather ('there's a certain brand of man that sheaths his own commentary on the book of Mark, and then bails out on the material for vinyl'). They sign off with the show's catchphrase: 'be faithful in the means. God will handle the ends.'