Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Lisa

The one where I tell you I wrote a book

I don’t know how to tell you I wrote a book.

So here it goes.

I wrote a book!

Those words shouldn’t be hard to say or write, but they are surprisingly more difficult to proclaim than I ever imagined.

For the last year-plus, I’ve been working with a client who is also a friend to tell her story, and while I did technically write the words, the story is hers. Maybe telling you I wrote a book would feel different if the story was mine alone.

That’s not to say that I’m not proud of the work or ridiculously excited to see my name on the cover of a product that looks, amazingly, like a real book. It’s a step I’ve needed and wanted to take in my writing career for some time, and a long recovery from the disappointment of it not happening with a client more than two years ago.

As it stands now, I have written a book and you can buy it on Amazon in both print and Kindle formats and I have another client on deck. What is my life? For years, I worked from home and dreamed of doing this kind of work and now that I have a part-time job and fewer hours in the day (so it seems), I have good writing work to do.

Honestly, one of the best things I ever did for my writing was to get a job that had nothing to do with writing but everything to do with giving me life and purpose. My writing is better because of my job, even on the hard days. And there are plenty of those.

But back to the book. 

Another reason it’s hard to tell you about this book is because it’s so important that you read it. Not because it will make me rich or famous. (I will never be either of those things, thank you very much.) You must read this book because the story is courageous. Here’s the back cover copy:

January 29, 2015.

In a small central Pennsylvania town, Deb Gruel awoke to early morning knocking on her front door. A small band of police officers entered her home, searched it and questioned her husband, Dave, while her sons slept upstairs. Two days later, Dave was charged with multiple felony counts related to child pornography.

The next 18 months would become a nightmare for Deb and her family as they weathered attacks on their character, social standing, finances and mental health. Raised to believe in the power of God to overcome, Deb wondered: Could anything good come from this?

God answered in a surprising way.

Instead of hiding and pitying her life, Deb is determined to tell you how it is to be the wife of a man convicted of a crime most of us would rather not even talk about. She wants you to know how hard it has been to keep her family together and how much hope she has found clinging to Christ.

Arrest stories, especially ones relating to sexual crimes, get a lot of attention when they happen but rarely is there follow-up. What happened to the person arrested? How did their family react and survive? Prisoners are a forgotten population in our society, and I’m so grateful for Deb and her husband Dave being willing to share a little bit of what they’ve gone through.

Whatever the issue, if we can put a name and a face to it, if we can personalize the story, we’re more likely to have compassion and sympathy and maybe even a change of heart. This has been my experience, anyway.

It’s my hope that it’s yours when you read this book.

The book includes letters written by Dave from prison to his wife, another area in which Deb showed complete transparency. She gave me access to all the letters and told me to use whatever I wanted. What I’ve included helps paint the picture of life in prison when a family waits on the outside.

So I wrote a book. My first. And yes it has someone else’s name on it, too but it won’t be the last book I write.

One final request: If you read it, would you leave a couple of sentences on Amazon as a review? If we’re friends or related, don’t mention that because they might take the review down, but letting others know what you thought of the book makes readers more likely to make a decision.

To all of you who have been on this journey with me for years, I thank you. And I encourage you to hang in there a little bit longer.

There’s more to come.

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

I wore a costume to work yesterday, maybe the first time in 10 years I’ve purposely dressed for Halloween to go out in public or for others to see. It’s not my favorite holiday but because I work at a school, I wanted to participate in the fun. A last-minute Pinterest search netted me the idea of “smarty pants,” so the night before Halloween I was supergluing smarties candies to a pair of pants and questioning my life decisions. (Like, why don’t I have a glue gun already?)

Here’s what I ended up with: Pants with smarties glued to them, a button-down shirt belonging to my husband as well as suspenders and a bow tie on loan from him. Hair in a bun and sensible shoes completed the outfit.

For those of you who need a visual:

Confession: I was really nervous to walk into the building. If you’ve seen the movie version of Bridget Jones’ Diary, you’ll remember the scene where Bridget shows up to the annual Tarts and Vicars party (yes, it’s as terrible as it sounds) dressed as a “tart” only to find out that it’s not a costume party that year. That is my fear every.single.time there is a costume/dress-up/dress-different day. I am certain I will have gotten the day wrong or that no one else will be dressed the way I thought we were supposed to dress. I always look for someone else dressed differently to alleviate my fears.

But my fears weren’t enough for me to not do it, although my husband questioned my decision that morning when I was grumpy about the whole thing. (I thought for sure I’d be leaving candy all over the school. The kids would have loved that.)  Let’s just call the whole day a major psychological win for me, though. Not only did I go through with it; I OWNED it. When you know you’re clever or cute or whatever, it doesn’t matter what other people think. Not as much anyway. I’m at a point in my life where fear has won far too many battles, and I’ve decided it’s time to treat fear like the loser it is. (Mostly. Those are strong words that I don’t always live up to, but I’m trying.)

Anyway, the costume was a big hit. I had to explain it to a couple of students, but others got it right away. And more times than I expected I was asked for a piece of candy. (NO, BECAUSE THEY ARE LITERALLY GLUED TO MY PANTS.) Other teachers smiled. One told me I looked adorable, which really is one of the best compliments you can get on Halloween in my book. (I don’t do scary or sexy or culturally inappropriate costumes. “Creative” is another good compliment but I gave all the credit to Pinterest for this one. I didn’t have a clue what to do.)

At one point when I looked at myself in the mirror I saw my grandpa, who died two years ago. Suspenders and bow ties were his jam and with my hair pulled back into a bun I could see his face for the briefest of moments. That almost made me sad for the rest of the day, but I chose to cherish it as a happy memory. I wasn’t working at a school when he died but I like to think I carry some of the teacher he was inside of me. He would have approved not only of the bow tie and suspenders but of the work I do every day. Gosh, I miss him.

This Halloween costume also got me thinking about Halloween costumes from past years. The most memorable one is the time I dressed up as my husband, long before he was even my boyfriend. He had a unique way of dressing (we called it vintage, I guess; he had a thing for clothes from the ’70s) and sported a mohawk and some facial hair back then when we were all just friends. My roommate and I thought it would be a fun idea, and I probably wanted to back out at some point, but I went through with it, wearing magenta pants and using some kind of costume glue on my face along with a bald cap for the mohawk. I have a picture somewhere but I’m not sure where. I know you’re all wanting to see it. If I find it, you’ll be the first to know.

That costume is memorable because it’s sort of the beginning of the story of us. I don’t know if I was trying to lure Phil with that particular move, but he was flattered enough that he started to look at me more seriously. Or so the story goes. Or so I’m choosing to remember. I count that among the best decisions of my life, and it makes for a great story. Maybe I’ll have to use that in a novel someday.

Another time, when I worked for a newspaper in Illinois, I dressed as a bandwagon Chicago White Sox fan. (I am a diehard Cubs fan FOR LIFE.) It was either the year the Sox won the World Series or were playing for the World Series or the year after that. My boss at the time was a Sox fan so I thought it would be funny to wear my fiancé’s Sox jersey with a player who no longer was on the team and make a “Go Sox” label to tape to my Cubs hat. I don’t know if anyone thought it was funny. Fellow Cubs’ fans weren’t too keen on it. But it got attention. Sadly, I’m pretty sure that costume would only play in Illinois.

One year I also dressed as Lois Lane but because I didn’t have a Superman by my side, I wore a name tag so people would know who I was. I was in late middle school or early high school. I probably shouldn’t have been trick-or-treating. C’est la vie. I lived to tell about it.

There must have been other costumes but those are the ones that stick out. Of course, I have pictures of childhood Halloween costumes, like the year I went dressed as a present. We wrapped a box and I stuck my arms and head through some holes in the box and slapped a bow on the top of my head.

While waiting with my kids at the bus stop Halloween morning, I told them some of these stories, as well as how their Papa, my dad, liked to wear this creepy green monster mask and answer the door to screaming children. My husband told a similar story of how he would sit on their porch like he was a decoration and then scare the living daylights out of trick-or-treaters. Ah, the memories.

I don’t know what my kids will remember about Halloween. We don’t make a huge deal out of it. We spend as little as possible on costumes while still being creative. We adopt a neighborhood to do our trick-or-treating in since we don’t really have one. The candy gets eaten or goes bad or gets thrown out, but the memories are the things that last.

I want them to remember that life is fun and silly and dressing up doesn’t have to be something you outgrow. I got the biggest smile on my face today seeing my co-workers dressed as Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, a triceratops, and PB&J. Maybe the students won’t remember that their middle school teachers dressed in costume, but maybe they won’t forget that they can still have fun when they’re grown-ups. I know I need the reminder sometimes.

I also want them to remember that Halloween is one of the most unique and interesting times of the year. Neighbors flock to each other’s houses and people willingly give out candy to kids. The community and generosity on Halloween floors me every year. Last night, one guy gave my kids two handfuls of candy. Whatever the motivation, I’m always reminded of the goodness of the human spirit. I love seeing the neighbors who go all out for Halloween with decorations and scary music and the ones who are content to casually hand out candy while they’re watching TV.

Mostly, I just love seeing people in contact with each other. God knows we don’t get enough of that.

When I was a kid and trick-or-treating, we knew the names of every person who lived in the houses where we were trick-or-treating. Not living in a neighborhood complicates that for us, but the neighborhood we do choose to go to is full of kids my kids go to school with. One of my best Halloween memories from the past two years is all the kids who run up to my daughter and hug her, and the boys who run up to tell my son a funny story. They are like rock stars in that neighborhood.

What do you remember about Halloweens past and present?