My Life and Lesser Catastrophies A memoir by Christina Schofield

What is a memoir? It is a reflection. it is not the complete story,but a perspective. It is what God has done in our lives, or is doing in our lives.
The subtitle of this book is an "unflinchingly honest journey of Faith". That is what I liked about this book, Christina Schofield is not afraid to tell her story. She's not afraid to share her disappointment when things don't work out when they are supposed. She's not afraid to share the fact that God 's will for us is that everything goes smoothly.
What is her story. She is married to Allen, a Christian student minister and has one child. She works as an illustrator in Christian publishing. her life seemed to be the American Christian dream, until one morning they are taking a belated anniversary ride on their motorcycle and hit some gravel. They are both injured. Christina has a concussion and Allen is left paralyzed.
She then wrestles with whether God is still faithful and still good. She wants God to heal her husband physically but does he have other plans for them? She learns to rely on God's presence in her life.
I sometimes struggled reading this book. I think I wanted Christina to see God's faithfulness faster. I haven't really had a life where I could relate to her feeling that bad things hadn't happened to her until this moment. My life has been messy and I've grown up trusting God to guide me through these days and not because my days are good, but He is.
In the end this is what Christina learns and her story isn't over. I can't not like her story because it is her story, my story is different.
 I am glad that people are willing to share God working in them. That God loves us....He writes our story...Maybe it isn't happy ever after...He is the hero and we are loved...
What is your story???

I received no compensation for this review of this book, other than a free copy of this book from Chosen, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Wonderland Creek by Lynn Austin

Can you read too much? Can you be so lost in stories that you forget to live life? This is the dilemma of the heroine Alice of Wonderland Creek.
She loses her job, her boyfriend breaks up with her because he thinks she is out of touch with people. Is there nothing left for her but books? The only thing left for her is to go to Kentucky and take the books that she has collected for a rural library. She goes herself is the hope that there is more to her than books. She wants to touch people with books, which is proof that she does care about people.
So Alice shows up uninvited and gets caught up in an adventure. This adventure involves how to cope without the comforts of home. She gets caught up in the middle of a murder and a town broken up by a feud between two families. She also becomes a librarian who rides a horse to the homes of poor families and learns how to be involved in the lives of people.
I can relate to reading too much, but I like to believe that I have a balance of living. This book was a good reminder that the adventure is with people and not with books.

As far as this book goes, it really wasn't a page-turner for me, which maybe helps you to not get caught up in a book. I think it took a long time for me to like the characters in this book. Alice isn't very likable until she has her big adventure and then you begin to care about her.
I recieved no compensation for this post other than a free copy of this book from Bethany House.

To Have and To Hold Bridal Veli Island by Tracie Peterson and Judith Miller

To Have and to Hold by Tracie Peterson and Judith Miller

This is the first novel in the Bridal Veil Island series. This is a fictional island near Savannah, Georgia.  The name Bridal Veil refers to how the Spanish moss on the trees look like the lace of a brides veil. I happen to love this part of the country--so I have a natural curiosity about that area. I am also a fan of Eugenia Price novels which all take place in St. Simons Island or Savannah. So the comparison occurred naturally for me. I would say this novel is not quite as epic as a Eugenia Price novel. It takes place in a shorter period of time and almost everything occurs on the island or on the nearby coastal city.

I really enjoyed the main character, Audrey. She seems lost on her native soil after returning home having been raised in the North following the civil war. Her father had moved his young family north to make a living for his family after the island and the South are destroyed by the civil war. Instead of prosperity in construction, he found a life of alcoholism and the loss of his wife. Prior to moving with her father to their ancestral home, Audrey is a household servant. She comes to Bridal Veil to be with her father in his new life of faith and sobriety. I liked that she is able to forgive her father, but is still haunted with prejudices and suspicions. I like that she has a struggle to imagine the worse and let the proposed drama get the best of her. She is also old for a heroine in this time period. She is in her late twenties and never been married at a time when most barely teens are becoming wives and mothers.

Audrey and her father in order to relieve a family tax burden begin to take in boarders as their northern friends begin to build on the part of the island that the family sold long ago. This brings many men to the island which begins the drama for Audrey. This is even more complicated by a family friend "Aunt Thora" who hated northerners especially after the war. There are opportunities for love, dealing with prejudices, mistrusting people,a mystery and dealing with loss.

Sometimes the novel seemed a little predictable like with the title you are sure there is a wedding coming.  I did like that the faith seemed genuine and a part  of their lives unlike many inspirational novels where it is sometimes seems to be in the background.

I could relate to the character and her struggles. So for me it taught me when I am to quick to figure out a situation or to judge someone when I do not have a clear picture. then I like Audrey let my imagination run wild. I need to hold by every thought captive to Christ. I'm so thankful he forgives me. Oh grace it is amazing!!

I received no compensation for this review other than the book that I did receive free from Bethany House.

A Who Dunnit!

Do you love a good mystery? I do.
 I recently read Pattern of Wounds, A Roland March Mystery by J. Mark Bertrand. I have not read many crime novels recently. I tend to read the classics, chick lit, or Christian inspiration targeted to a female audience. it was refreshing to read something that engaged my mind in trying to figure out who killed this young woman brutally stabbed by the pool. No spoilers here but I did figure it out a little bit before detective Roland March and his team.
I really liked Roland March. I have not read Back to Murder of which this book is a sequel. it was easy to get to know Roland. he is really looking for acceptance. He has found acceptance through notoriety. Yet he seems to be misjudged by all his colleagues and superiors. They think he is a rogue cop. I think he is just passionate. He has a very loving relationship with his wife, they mourn together for the loss of their only child. Yet even she tries to dress him up into the elegant clothes of her recently deceased father. Roland is not of the social or financial class of this father, so he seems like a kid playing dress up. His other issue with his wife is her new found faith in Christ that she shares with their neighbors. She pushes him to come to church. He isn't quite there yet but he seems to be wrestling on does God really control the world and if he does, why do these bad things happen to this girl in the pool, to his own daughter,his longtime missing cousin,and the people he meets along the way. The obvious suspect is the estranged husband who is trying to get it all together, but seems to "backslide" into drunkenness and brawling. Roland doubts his faith, but I think the husband is just like all of us struggling with sinful patterns that haunt us
I guess this pattern of wounds is more than the pattens of wounds on the body, it is the pattern of wounds that are past had left on all of us. Only a good God and his grace can heal these wounds. He takes our wounds.
I received this book and no other compensation from Bethany House for this review.

Great Quote-I'm done being a "Good Girl"

Good” People




Jesus offers us so many gifts. But the one we seem to have the hardest time unwrapping is the gift of grace—the gift that allows us to become who God desires us to be if we would simply trust Him and quit trying to be “good” for goodness’ sake. We are saved by grace and faith in Christ.

We become like Him by the same radical strategy. Faith that He has changed us into a new creation. And understanding the grace that gives us good gifts even when we don’t deserve them.



— Excerpted from When Bad Christians Happen to Good People by Dave Burchett

"I Want Somebody to Love"

Sometimes this is the cry of my heart. A husband, a boyfriend, a child, or even just a good friend.

My next thought is that I am so ashamed for feeling that way. He loves me and yet I ignore him. He who gave his life for me. He who sets me free. Yet I pretend so often that he is not there and go my own way. I choose isolation so often.

Sometimes my cry is "oh God but I want some one with skin Someone whose touch I can feel and who I can touch."

Yet I have many beloved people in my life. Friends, family, and precious nieces and nephews. I have been blessed much.

So often I feel like a square peg in a round hole. Round wholes are married, round holes are young, round holes are mothers, round wholes have jobs they love. Yet when my house is full, I want to be alone. Oh this fickle heart of mine.

maybe this loneliness, this feeling of not fitting is just how Jesus calls to me." People don't fill your heart, only I do. You will never be satisfied this side of heaven. Your singleness is saving you for something special, even if it beyond the grave."

Why can't I wait? Better yet, why don't I wait with Him. Jesus lover of my soul--I know you are waiting for me.

grasping Him,
Dawn

Being Free!

I feel like I have spent much of my life living up to expectations! Fortunately, I have survived. I wish we would all just see that God's grace makes us free!!! We need to rest in this!!

The following is a Blog post from Tullian Tchividjian:  The Pitfall Of Perfectionism

I recently read this from Steve Brown and had to share it with you:

She was only twenty-six years old. She was a Christian working in a church. After college she had served for a year on the mission field. I didn’t know her well, but I liked her a lot. She was a strong witness for Christ and she was an articulate spokesperson for evangelical Christianity. This morning I got the message that she had taken her life. I was absolutely devastated. I didn’t understand.

As if that were not enough, shortly after hearing about her suicide I got a call from a man who listens to my radio broadcast. “Steve,” he said, “I haven’t told anybody in the world what I’m going to tell you. I have decided to leave my wife and I told God that if I get through to you, I would do whatever you told me to do.”
I asked him what prompted him to decide to leave her.
He told me, “I became a Christian at fourteen and all my life I’ve been seeking to live up to the expectations of others. I work full-time in a ministry, I teach the Bible, and everyone thinks I’m the model Christian. I’m just tired of it. I’ve decided to do something for myself for a change.”

Let me share a letter with you that I received a couple weeks ago. There was no return address and the person gave me no name.
Dear Stephen,
Please pray for me as I am on the edge–a total failure as a Christian. I have failed as a husband and as a father. God has probably given up on me. I feel so very alone and abandoned. It’s a horrible feeling that words alone cannot describe. Please don’t judge me. Pray for me.

At first these three incidents didn’t seem related. They were just about individuals for whom I prayed. But in the silence of my prayer it dawned on me that they all had the same problem: They all had created a false standard of perfection (or accepted someone else’s standard) and concluded they couldn’t live up to it.
What advice would you give them? If you had talked to the young lady before her suicide, or the man thinking about leaving his wife, or the anonymous correspondent–what would you have said?
Most Christians would say that they should try harder. The problem is that all three already had–and they were at the end of themselves.
Others would try to help them trace their despair back to some unconfessed sin in their lives–drawing a straight line between their spiritual depression and their spiritual failure.
And still others would tell them to have faith. And yet, they discovered that the faith they needed couldn’t be turned on and off like a faucet.
But what would Jesus have told them? We don’t have to guess: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).
Perfectionism (or performancism) is a horrible disease. It comes from the pit of hell, smelling like rotting flesh. Someone convinced these folks that they were called to measure up to an unattainable standard. They couldn’t do it and each in his or her own way simply quit trying.

Nobody told them that Jesus was perfect for them, and because of that they didn’t have to be perfect for themselves. They didn’t understand that if Jesus makes you free, you will be free indeed.
Christian, please remember that Jesus plus nothing equals everything. That,
Because Jesus was strong for you, you’re free to be weak;

Because Jesus won for you, you’re free to lose;


Because Jesus was Someone, you’re free to be no one;


Because Jesus was extraordinary, you’re free to be ordinary;



Because Jesus succeeded for you, you’re free to fail.



Preaching the gospel is the only thing that helps us take our eyes off ourselves and how we’re doing and fix our eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. Jesus fulfilled all of God’s perfect conditions so that our relationship to God could be perfectly unconditional.



You’re free!



Check out Steve Brown at http://www.keylife.org/ 

I listen daily and it ministers to my soul. He also has a great talk show which is hilarious as it interviews all sorts of people that make up the crazy world of Christianity http://stevebrownetc.com/

Check out Tullian's blog at http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tullian/
and his sermons http://www.crpc.org/resources/sermons/preacher/u/2/tullian-tchividjian
 

Grasping Grace,

Dawn