Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

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What a picture is worth

“You should know before we start that we are not a precious family.”

I prefaced our family photo shoot with these words, wanting the professional photographer who was taking our photos to understand our expectations. She laughed, whether at the bluntness of my statement or something else, I don’t know for sure. I’m not even sure why I felt the need to say it except that I wanted to lower my own expectations for these photos.

See, there was a time in my life when I wanted the picture perfect family. The picture perfect life. 

But I’m 40 now and life has been far less than perfect and even the pictures that might make it seem so don’t show the whole story.

More than anything right now, I want a real life. I hoped the pictures would show that realness, even as a little part of me hoped they might show us in a slightly better light.

I need to pause here and say a word or two about our photographer. She was amazing and put us all at ease. Her creative vision was inspiring and I trusted her completely with our family photos. (Check her out here.) I also asked her to take some photos I could use on my blog and in other writing related ways. I’m slowly increasing my professional presence on the Internet and new photos of me was something I’d put off for a while. (Because let’s be honest, I don’t like to be the center of attention except on rare occasions.)

It was a fun hour for us. The day was beautiful, even if the ground was soggy. We walked through a park and managed to make a few of the spaces in and around our house usable for photos. When the shooting was over, the waiting began, and I hate waiting in these instances because I want to see how everything turned out.

I didn’t have to wait long. Less than a week.

And this is what we got. (It’s a sample. Click around on this blog and you’ll see some of the fantastic work Rachel produced.)

Photo by Rachel Lynn Photography

I’m always nervous to look at the final product. I’ve never felt like I photograph well but I’m ever hopeful that the real me will shine. (I don’t worry about my family. They’re all completely photogenic.) 🙂

I focus so much on my own image sometimes that I miss out on the whole, and my first impression isn’t always favorable. I will admit that on my first run through these photos, I was disappointed. Not in the quality of the work but in my own appearance. I’ve taken great care this year to become more physically healthy but I didn’t go to any great lengths to prepare for this photo shoot by getting my hair professionally styled or applying makeup. (Because, again, those things aren’t me. I’ve seen professional photos of people that don’t even look like how they look in person, and I’m on the fence about how I would feel if that were me.) I want my online image to match my IRL (in real life) image.

Can I really be “disappointed” if that’s what happened?

Let me be clear: I am thrilled with these photos. And I have to adjust my vision when I look at them. 

Photo by Rachel Lynn Photography

Because at first glance, I would not call us a beautiful family. I couldn’t hold a straight face looking at my husband when it was just the two of us being photographed. My son rarely flashes a “normal” smile. Like my disclaimer, we aren’t “precious” in matching outfits with gorgeous smiles. I’ve always had what I call an awkward smile. It’s lopsided and often looks forced unless you catch me in a moment of unguardedness. (This is rare. I feel like I’m always “on guard,” constantly aware of what’s happening.)

I’m never as awed by photos of myself as I am of photos I see of other people. Maybe this is part of the secret to seeing the beauty in the world–turning your eyes toward others instead of self. Maybe none of us can truly see our own beauty because the lenses with which we look at ourselves are distorted. 

But maybe there’s another secret to seeing beauty. Maybe it’s learning to focus on what you can’t see.

I can see the beauty in our family when I zoom out and consider the context. It’s been almost 10 years since we had a professional take family photos, and in that time, our family has struggled. And we’ve overcome. (Or maybe I should say we’re still overcoming. I don’t know if it’s ever a complete process.) Our physical bodies aren’t the only things that have changed in that time. The fact that we are still a family of four is nothing less than a miracle, and the smiles we share, that we’re okay with being ourselves for a photo shoot, is the result of hard and difficult work.

Maybe surviving is its own kind of beauty.

It’s been a couple of days now since I first looked at the photos. I’ve chosen some to include on my various online sites (like this one), and the more I see them, the more I love them. (Sometimes first impressions are a lie.)

Photo by Rachel Lynn Photography

In a world where we capture everything in photos and can take unlimited selfies, sometimes it’s worth letting someone else be the one behind the lens. Sometimes we need to see what others see in us, to see ourselves through a different set of eyes.

That’s worth more than money.

Saved the best for last: Review of Searching For You by Jody Hedlund

I’m usually sad to see a book series end, and in the case of Jody Hedlund’s Orphan Train series, I’m especially sad because she saved the best for last.

You can read my reviews of the first two books in the series here and here, and if you haven’t read them, I’ll try not to spoil too much for you with my take on this third and final story. Each book tells the story of one of three sisters who have had to make hard choices about their life and future in order to survive, and for all of them, the choices ultimately led them to board an orphan train heading west from New York to rural towns in Illinois.

Maybe you can already tell why I’ve liked this series. (It’s Illinois, in case you’re wondering.)

Searching For You tells the story of Sophie Neumann, the youngest of the three sisters and the one who has been on the run and missing from her sisters’ care. She has been caring for two young children, themselves orphans, and doing whatever it takes to keep them all alive and fed. When her current living situation becomes too dangerous, she is forced to board an orphan train with the two children and head west. Sophie plans to disappear with the kids in Chicago but that plan doesn’t work out and the three of them land in a rural Illinois town where the two younger children are taken in by a family and Sophie goes to live and work on a farm with a Scottish family who embrace her as one of their own.

And it’s here that Sophie is reunited with her one-time neighbor Reinhold Weiss. While she learns more about farm life and hears about her sisters’ lives since they separated, Sophie enlists Reinhold’s help to get the two children she’d been mothering back into her care.

That’s all I’m going to say about the plot, specifically, but here are some of the things I loved.

  • The way Sophie settles in to rural life and finds belonging. She blossoms with stability and learns to stop running from her problems.
  • The family of Scots, who are a delightful addition to this community. The mother, Euphemia, is full of grace and wisdom, including this gem: “When we’re finally willing to let go of the messes we’ve made, the good Lord can step in and salvage the scraps.”
  • And I’m especially fond of stories where a romance blooms out of a friendship because it mirrors my own love story. (This is not a spoiler, exactly, because Jody Hedlund writes historical fiction chock full of inspirational romance.)

I’m a big fan of Jody Hedlund books, so I won’t spend another blog post gushing about how I drop everything to read one of her books and let everything else in my life go until I finish it. (This is the highest compliment I can give to any author.)

If you are into historical romance, I would recommend anything by this author. If you don’t want to start with this series, I can point you in a good direction for where to start.

Disclosure: I read an advance copy of the book from the publisher. Review reflects my honest opinion.

An unsurprising confession: Review of I’d Rather Be Reading by Anne Bogel

The title of Anne Bogel’s new book, I’d Rather Be Reading, could be a tagline for my life. Anyone who’s known me for more than a day probably knows this about me. It’s no offense to the human interactions in my life, but I’m drawn to books and characters and words in an almost irresistible way.

This won’t be a long review because the book is short and also it’s aimed at a very specific audience–those who are unashamed bibliophiles.

Reading this book, I felt so understood as a lover of books, and this book felt like a conversation with a like-minded book lover. Bogel addresses such topics as to-be-read piles and library visits, the books that have changed us and how we change as readers.

After reading this book, I realized I talk a lot about books I love but not as much about my life and journey as a reader. Bogel gave me a lot to consider about the books that have accompanied me on my life’s journey.

This is a must-read for anyone who can’t leave the library empty-handed and thinks wandering through a bookstore is the perfect way to spend free time.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of the book from the publisher. Review reflects my honest opinion.

That was then, this is now

I never thought I’d be the kind of person who wanted to go out running, much less who chose to run three miles on Thanksgiving morning before preparing a meal for guests.

But then again eight years ago, when I ran my first 5K, I couldn’t imagine how running would change my life and my marriage. Or how much I would need it to.

In sickness

I always tell people of that first time that we were running to save our lives. I know some people joke about this–If I’m running, it’s because I’m being chased–and although our threat wasn’t necessarily visible, it was true for us that we were in danger and running was one of our best options for survival. It was a desperate and unconventional attempt to save our marriage, and for nine weeks we trained together, sometimes pushing a jogging stroller with our young children squeezed inside. I won’t go into all the details of that time of our lives. You can read some of that journey here.

We ran that 5K from a place of sickness. Our bodies, our marriage, our minds were unhealthy, and this was a drastic measure for us that was only the start of a long road toward healing all of these things.

But I couldn’t have known that at the time.

In health

I was thinking of that first 5K because of our participation in a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. So much of this year’s race was different from that first time. The biggest difference is us.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the last eight years, my husband and I have run a few 5Ks, either on our own or with our daughter when she’s participated in a running program for school. We haven’t run one together since that first one, and while we didn’t intend to run this one together, as in, side-by-side, we were still in it together. We showed up at the start together and ran the same race.

Us, after it was all over

There is something significant about that.

For years, our recovery from the crisis that almost broke us was separate. Individual. It was my husband taking steps toward health and me just trying to get through a day of diapers and clinging kids without crying. Or me finally getting the mental health help I needed while my husband struggled to provide for our family in difficult job positions.

In the last year, we’ve been on a track of being healthy together, and I would go as far to say that it’s probably been our healthiest year yet both as a couple and as individuals. We both took ownership and control of our mental health as well as our physical health. My husband became a regular at a gym. I committed to running regularly and did a food experiment to reset my relationship with food. We both lost some pounds that were weighing us down. We are stronger in mind and body, and choosing to run a 5K on Thanksgiving morning is in line with the kind of people we’ve become.

Even when temperatures were below freezing with an even colder wind chill.

I may have questioned my mental stability on the morning of the race as wind stung my exposed skin. Still, it felt like the right thing to do.

For better or worse

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about running since I started doing it regularly in February it’s that I can’t wait until conditions are perfect to run. I wouldn’t have gotten where I am today if I had.

I started running regularly in February and only took a three-week break in July when schedules were hard to coordinate. I’ve run when it’s pouring down rain, just after it has snowed, when it’s been unseasonably cold, and hotter than I thought I could bear. And I’ve made it through every kind of run. I’ve had to adjust my schedule some days when the weather hasn’t cooperated fully, but I make weather a rare excuse to miss a run.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

There is something to be learned about marriage in this. Not all the days are sunny. Few are perfect. We keep going anyway. (This is not to say that all marriages must endure everything no matter what. I am only speaking of our personal journey.)

When we signed up for the Turkey Trot a month or so ago, we had no idea the temperatures would feel like the teens on the day of the race. When we signed up to join our lives “for better or worse till death do us part” I wasn’t really thinking about the “worse” part, and I surely couldn’t imagine what it might actually mean. (It was worse than any “worst” I could imagine for myself.)

We could have opted out of the race. No one forced us to run a race we’d already paid for. We could have opted out of our marriage, too. No one made us stay together. I have found a kind of satisfaction I didn’t know existed in sticking with something even when it’s difficult. Especially when it’s important.

I do

Whether it’s marriage or a 5K, this much I know: No one can do the work for me.

The Turkey Trot was my first on-my-own 5K ever. I was nervous and scared and excited and cold, but somewhere deep inside me, I knew I could do this. My husband and I layered clothing and joined the throng at the starting point. I kissed him, and said, “See you at the finish line,” knowing he would cross before me, The gunshot signaled our start and we jogged/walked until the crowd broke up and then my husband was gone and I was on my own in the crowd, focusing on my breathing and keeping my face protected from the wind.

Photo by aquachara on Unsplash

The first mile passed fairly quickly, as it often does for me, and I was surprised to see my time at 11:40. The second mile was a little more difficult as we descended a hill I heard people call “puke hill” and then gradually made our way back up a zigzagging path. I kept running even though some people chose to walk the hill. I wanted to walk but only because my mind is sometimes weak. I completed a 2.4-mile run on Sunday, so I was determined to keep going until I made it at least to that point. My goal was to run the whole thing, no matter how long it took.

Setting a goal, remembering my past accomplishments, seeing how far I’ve already come–these are lessons for other areas of my life, too.

The second mile was the longest, which is the same thing I said about the second mile during our first 5K. But at the marker for mile 2, I was at 23:15, the fastest I’ve run 2 miles in all of my training, so I was confident and hopeful that I could turn out a good time for this race. Meeting one milestone and then another is no reason to let up.

In the third mile, my training–or lack of it–began to show.  The 2.4 miles I ran four days before the race was the longest I’d run and while my body had gotten used to running 2 miles and pacing for that, the extra mile was trickier. Sometimes we will find ourselves in unfamiliar territory, places that we have no experience navigating. This is hard, no doubt, but not impossible. 

I started to take it easy because I wanted to finish strong, and there were a few more gentle hills before the finish. The race ended inside the stadium and the last mile was close to the stadium the whole time, which was slightly deceptive but also encouraging. (If I could give one piece of advice to anyone about anything it would be “pace yourself so you can finish strong.” Easier said than done about anything.)

A police officer yelled encouragement to all of us passing by and offered energy-boosting high fives to all who wanted one. This is my favorite part of running a 5K, all of the encouragement from strangers and friends alike. I always wonder why we don’t offer this same kind of enthusiastic encouragement to friends and family going through difficulties or tackling some new challenge. I’m striving to be more of an encourager in the small things.

Near the stadium, a volunteer manning the route called out that we were at 2.6 miles. Okay, I thought, only half a mile to go. My legs were feeling weak and my body was warm and I wanted to finish strong. I couldn’t find it in me to push harder because I wanted to finish and I wanted to run the whole thing. Forward progress, no matter how slow, is still progress.

As I rounded the corner to enter the stadium, a friend who had finished called out my name–“Go Lisa!”–and then my husband was there on the first curve of the track, calling out encouragement and clapping his hands. I ran the track as best I could, trying not to listen to the people around me who were just trying to make it through, including a girl who said she was going to puke. That propelled me forward like nothing else could because no way did I want to hear that.

And then the finish line was in front of me and I crossed it before the clock ticked over to 38 minutes. I was relieved and a little disappointed but mostly just glad to have finished. My husband found me and I clung to him while we waited in line for water and a banana. I ended up needing to sit for a minute because my vision got a little blurry, but we stuck around long enough to greet another friend and her family before heading to the car to warm up.

From this day forward

“Finishing” and “finishing strong” mean different things to different people and seldom will it be tidy or pretty. A three-mile effort is exhausting, even when you’re fit. (Isn’t it? I’m assuming here.) You don’t have to come out the other side of a challenge or trial looking or feeling the same as when you went in. It’s going to change you somehow. And it’s probably going to hurt a little. (Two days later, my muscles are still aching from the effort.)

My official time was 37:54, and it was the third mile that did me in. I went back to see what our time was during that first 5K and it was in the 35-minute range. This astounds me because I know how unhealthy I was then and how much healthier I am now, but I also know that my husband set the pace during that first 5K and this one was all me. (Another piece of advice I cling to: “Run your race.” I was in the 800s out of more than a thousand runners. A lot of people ran faster than me. Some ran slower. Or walked. Everyone went at their own pace. All I could do was run my race.)

After Thursday’s results, now I have a new goal. To keep working on that third mile and to run the next one a minute or so faster. Always improving. Striving for better. Seeing where I can grow and improve.

This is true for life and marriage as well.

We are in a place of health. But we have not arrived.

New goals. Continued improvement.

Now and forever.

Belonging

Driving home from work one day, I passed two vehicles from our local fire company. While I was stopped at the stop sign, I waved to the driver of the fire truck, a man we attend church with, and I was struck with this sense of feeling like I belonged. There we were, two people of thousands in the community, and our paths crossed and we acknowledged each other.

Two days earlier, our family made a spontaneous decision to go out to eat after church because it was Veterans Day and some local restaurants were offering free meals to veterans. I had just finished a weeks-long eating experiment so we hadn’t been out much, and we like to treat my husband to freebies like this for his service in Iraq a lifetime ago. My family slid into the booth and I went to the bathroom and on the way back, I recognized one of the servers.

“What are you doing here?” she asked at the same time I said, “Are you serving my family?” She had just walked away from our booth. We both were left shaking our heads because although we see each other often during the week as co-workers (she’s a student teacher), obviously we didn’t expect to bump into each other outside of the school where we spend so much time.

The day before that, I saw a friend at an event our sons were both participating in. We mostly interact online and only see each other occasionally in person. Our kids attend different school districts, so this, too, felt like belonging.

I used to think things like this were no big deal. In fact, I expected to run into people wherever I went. (Maybe you are wondering why I am making such a big deal out of this.) But that was when I lived in the town where I grew up. The town where my parents grew up and my grandparents had lived for almost the entirety of their married life. In my hometown, it is unusual to not see someone you know when you’re out at a restaurant or running errands. The town is smaller than the one in which I currently live, which may be a factor, but I’m not ruling out the family connections as important in this equation.

Photo by Slava Bowman on Unsplash

This all got me thinking about how little work I had to do to be accepted in the town where I was born. I belonged to a family and just by knowing my last name, people who were practically strangers could determine where and to whom I belonged. When you can trace multiple generations back, you get a free pass for belonging.

How different it is when you move to a new place. We have lived in Pennsylvania for 10 years now, working on our 6th year in our current community. This is how long the work of belonging sometimes takes, and I will be the first to admit that we are bad at it.

When you weren’t born in a place and you don’t have generations to trace back and no one can correctly pronounce your last name, you begin to build barriers around your heart almost without trying. (At least I did. Maybe you are different.) Every cultural reference you don’t understand, every butchering of your name, every way you look and sound different–they all become the bricks you use to wall yourself off from the ones who belong. And you ask yourself a lot of questions about how to belong.

And “will I ever belong?”

Sometimes you even convince yourself you’ll never belong so you stop trying. Instead, you do everything you can to convince people you’re so different and weird that you could never belong anyway, with the secret hope they’ll agree and reject you. (Spoiler alert: the “you” in this story is “me.”)

But your kids will make friends and you will know all the teachers at the school and you’ll find jobs that you love with good people and some of your best friends will live a short drive away. And you’ll start to see people you know when you’re out in public and not just at major events like the Christmas tree lighting or school or church events where almost all of the people you know get together. You’ll find out your kids go to school with the daughter of one of the librarians at the main branch downtown. And when you attend a prayer vigil, you will see a friend you haven’t seen in a long time.

Your world will suddenly feel smaller and bigger all at the same time. You will start to feel something like belonging.

You will know the backroads, the best pizza places,  the names of your neighbors, and the first place to call when you need a good deal on an appliance. You will start to care about things like local government and building projects in your neighborhood.

When at first you felt like a seedling vulnerable to uprooting at the slightest wind, you now feel like a tree with a sturdy trunk and deeper roots, one that could survive a gale.

—

There’s something else about belonging, though. Something I can’t quite put words to or hold in my hand. While I feel more belonging to this place and the people around me, I can’t explain my current obsession with this song which complicates my sense of belonging.

There are still times that I feel like I belong nowhere. Or maybe what I mean is that I belong everywhere. And to everyone. My allegiances and loyalties cannot be neatly packed into one box, and maybe we’re never supposed to fit neatly into a box anyway. As much as I feel a part of things, there are still parts of me I hold back in certain circles, for fear of rejection. (I am a complicated human, sometimes wishing for rejection, sometimes fearing it.)

If you came here looking for the perfect answer about how to belong, then I’ve disappointed you because I don’t have it. I barely have imperfect answers.

All I can say is that sometimes belonging seems like it takes no work but that’s probably because others have done the hard work before you. When I think about my hometown, I think about the work of building relationships my grandparents did before I was a twinkle in anyone’s eyes. I think about the work my parents did in staying in their hometown. Staying is its own kind of hard work.

And if belonging seems an impossible dream, give it time and know that it takes work, but even those are no guarantee. Some circles will never be cracked open to new people. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other circles waiting to welcome you.

So, let me ask: where do you belong?

What do we do now?

The morning after the election, I’m tired for a lot of reasons, although while watching the results roll in on Election Night, I could honestly say I was less anxious than at the same time two years prior. So many of the 2018 election results gave me hope.

But I’m sitting with some serious disappointment about our local race for the U.S. House seat. Fear-based politics won again and I had such hope that the vision presented by the challenger would be enough to draw people out of their political strongholds. I can’t say for sure that people vote out of fear but I know that fear drives more decisions than it should and sometimes how a person votes is one of those decisions.

Photo by Parker Johnson via Unsplash

The day after an election, no matter the outcome but particularly when it doesn’t go the way I hoped, leaves me asking the question, “Now what?” I have come to understand, especially in the last two years, that whatever happens at the government level does not absolve me from responsibility in my own life and community. No matter who is in office, I still have obligations.

I confess that I have not been as engaged publicly in justice and advocacy in the last year as I was right after the 2016 election. I feel like my part-time day job has elements of both justice and advocacy and is a good use of my time. Still, I cannot leave everything completely to others.

What now?

Maybe you’re asking yourself the same question. And if you aren’t, that’s okay, too. Maybe you can’t think about it right now. Maybe you don’t see any need to concern yourself further with politics. I’m not here to tell you what to do.

But I will invite you to participate in what I feel is the best way forward. At least, it is for me.

Now that the election is over, here is what I plan to do:

1. Reinstate spiritual practices into my life. I have a complicated relationship with church and Christians sometimes, but I could never give up on Jesus. For me, if I am to do the work I feel is required of me as a human, I need to be connected to a Source that is unlimited and beyond me. That Source for me is Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The first thing I thought of when I was considering this question of “what now?” was the phrase “against such things there is no law.” I looked it up to be sure I knew where it was found in the Bible, and it follows the listing of the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

The fruit of the Spirit cannot be cherry-picked or forced. It is a result of deep connection and being tended by the Gardener. There is no law against love, joy, peace, kindness, etc., and if I want those to be words that describe my life, attributes that flow out of me naturally, then I need to start with the Spirit.

2. Regularly contact my elected officials. I was in the habit of doing this after the 2016 election. For the first time in my life, I made phone calls to my representatives and sent emails and tweeted at them (to them?) a lot. Then I sort of stopped. I think in part I was discouraged. I’m not good at repetition without result, and I’m deeply averse to conflict so calling to make my dissenting voice heard felt like constant conflict.

But that’s no excuse. There are email options. And I can call from time to time. I need to use my voice to defend the values I’m passionate about. On the morning of the election, I read in the Book of Common Prayer, a prayer for an election, and it begins with “Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges …”

In the last two years, I have become more aware of the powers and privileges I have as a white woman living in the United States. I must give an account to God for what I did with that power and privilege and it is my desire to use it on behalf of those who have none or less. In Proverbs 31, before the wife of noble character is introduced, are these words: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

I need to speak up more.

3. Listen and learn. When I’m not speaking up, I need to be listening and learning from those who have different life experiences, different heritages, different points of view than I have.  This includes reading, of course, which is not hard to do but also in-person listening and learning whenever possible.

Photo by Sandrachile via Unsplash

4. Scatter kindness. Related to no. 1, when I am rooted in the practices of my faith tradition, kindness and love toward others overflow. I’m not a naturally optimistic or bubbly person but I find that I can’t keep these things–kindness and love–to myself when I am full in my spirit. I hold doors open and smile and talk to strangers. I give compliments away like candy at a parade, and I’m more free with charitable giving. (I love that Lancaster’s Extra Give is only 10 days after the election. Giving money to organizations I support and watching the amount given overall in one day is healing work when I think the world is hopeless.) I write letters and thank you notes and check in on friends. These may be small acts but they are just as necessary as the big ones. Maybe more so.

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash

5. Pay attention. Some of us (myself included) are glued to our screens for news and analysis and entertainment. There is a place for all of this, but we can’t forget that there is an IRL (in-real-life) world around us. Every day there are people passing through our sphere. Every day there are needs and chances to do good. Yesterday, I missed a chance to help a woman whose first language wasn’t English fill out a medical form at the dentist. I didn’t want to offend her, even though she looked like she needed help. I didn’t want to make a scene in the waiting room. (I always have excuses.) Seeing the needs and chances to help are just one part of the equation. Acting on them is another.

What would you add to this list? How do you move forward when you are disappointed and frustrated with election results? What is next for you?

And if you aren’t disappointed and frustrated with election results, what does the work ahead look like for you?

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? 

 

The power of words to heal: Review of Things Left Unsaid by Courtney Walsh

She’s done it again. Courtney Walsh has set a deeply moving story in the tourist town of Sweethaven and not only did I love this story but now I want to go back and re-read the other Sweethaven stories she’s written! (To read about her other Sweethaven novels, you can check out my reviews here, here and here.)

Things Left Unsaid brings us a new set of characters and a story that is full of tension, and Courtney delivers the story with grace and excellence. I could feel the weight of what the characters carried.

In Things Left Unsaid, nearly every character is living with a burden that could be lifted or lightened by speaking words aloud. Some have been holding their feelings and the truth inside for a decade. A wedding and a celebration of life for a tragedy that happened 10 years ago brings all the characters together again in Sweethaven, and since so many of the burdens are related to the night their friend and daughter died, the words they won’t say hover over them like a cloud.

Throughout the story, the burdens and secrets are hinted at, and I kind of enjoyed being in the dark about the specifics until the very end.

While the story started out a little bit slow for me, mostly because I was reorienting myself to Sweethaven, by about one-third of the way through, I couldn’t put it down. I think that’s about the time all the characters came together in Sweethaven. The tension built and I kept turning the pages to find out what would happen.

Things Left Unsaid is such a powerful reminder of the importance of saying things out loud when we’re carrying burdens and secrets and how much freedom we can find when that happens.

Disclosure: I read an advanced copy of the book. Review reflects my honest opinion.

Broken and Whole

I came home crying from work one day last week. This is not something I make a habit of but it’s been a stressful few weeks with more stressful weeks to come, and I was fed some misinformation by someone whose intentions were good but whose word I should not have trusted. This was the kind of ugly cry sobbing that scared even me because I couldn’t control it. Thankfully it was a day my husband was home when I got there and I could get it all out of my system in a safe place and way.

For weeks now, I have felt strong and capable, convinced that whatever life has to throw at me will not break me. I have said these words in my head, “This will not break me.” And it is stunning to hear my inner voice say something so definitive. I have convinced even myself that whatever “this” is, it will not break me. I used to be the girl who thought any small criticism was the end of the world, any deviation from the plan a disaster. (Confession: I’m still sometimes that girl.)

So. Many. Things. are wearing me down right now, but I no longer feel like my house–in this case my mind,  my will, my spirit–is made of straw or sticks. It is a fortified house of bricks, a shelter from the blustery wind outside.

This will not break me, I say to myself, and I live as though it is true.

—

Part of this newfound strength and resolve has to do with my diet, i.e, the food I’m putting into my body.

For the last 30 days I’ve embarked on an experiment with food called Whole30. (If you aren’t familiar with the program it’s a 30-day elimination process for foods to help you reset your body and discover the effects certain foods have on you.) For 30 days, I have cut out sugar, dairy, legumes, and grains, and focused on eating high-quality meats, veggies and fruits along with good fats like avocados and olive and coconut oils. It was nerve-wracking at first and a little overwhelming to attempt but I made a plan and bought ingredients to have on hand in my house and a few days before my official start, I started thinking like I was doing a Whole30. I began the slow elimination of the temporarily forbidden foods.

Before this, my health was already improving. I had lost 12 pounds since the beginning of the year, partly due to having a job outside the home for the first time in almost 10 years and partly due to a commitment to running two to three times a week. But I needed to take this next step to reset my relationship with food and try to discover what exactly was causing me such distress.

I won’t chronicle everything about the month for you. Maybe at some point I’ll write more of it down, but at the end of these 30 days, I feel more amazing than I imagined I could. I happen to look good, too, in my own opinion, but it’s the feeling good part that has me convinced that some of the foods I’ve been eating are not doing me any favors.

I still don’t understand the mental shift that takes place when you change your eating habits and I’m about to enter the phase of the process where you reintroduce your body to the foods you eliminated, but no matter what the scale says or how my pants fit, I cannot deny the way I feel. Even in the midst of stress, I have not been paralyzed by anxiety. Even though I’m still sometimes impatient, I haven’t felt like exploding as much as I used to. I still get tired, but I don’t feel exhausted by the middle of the day. I feel too good to go back to how things were.

It’s called the Whole30, I think because of the nature of the foods you eat while doing it, but in my mind, this process has made me feel more whole, like I’m giving my whole self to my life now. And while I don’t consider myself to have arrived or finished the work of healing, the Whole30 has been like finding another piece to the puzzle of me. When I stripped away some of the comfort foods and crutches I’d relied on to see me through tough times, somehow I discovered that I was stronger than I knew, that I didn’t need those things to get me through.

It’s confidence building, and I’ve never had confidence in abundance, no matter what it seems like on the outside.

—

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

This is a line Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms. I’ve not read it, or if I have I don’t really remember it, but this quote is tossed around often and that last part sticks in my brain like a piece of food between teeth. The more I try to free it, the more stuck it becomes.

Strong at the broken places. I think I know what it means. I think maybe I’ve even experienced it. Or I am experiencing it now. If the quote ended there it would be inspiring and encouraging, but anyone who has read Hemingway or knows about his life knows that inspiring and encouraging are not really his jam. Which is why the next line makes a lot of sense, too.

“But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.”

Now A Farewell to Arms is a war novel, and I might have to pick up a copy just so I can find this line in the story and see if its meaning becomes any clearer, but I get it. Sort of. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe Hemingway himself didn’t understand it. I know all too well how it is to be a vessel for words. I can’t pinpoint the origin of many of the sentences I string together. I sit down to write one thing and something else entirely emerges. Maybe Hemingway knew this. He is the same man who said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

It is like that, sometimes, when I’m ready to let it, like bleeding my thoughts and feelings and observations onto the screen. It’s hardly ever about gratuitous attention. I release my thoughts so I know what I’m feeling, so I can make sense of the world. If you also take something from that, that is a bonus side effect.

I don’t know if Hemingway meant “broken places” as an actual physical location, like the site of a battle, or if he was meaning metaphorically, like the places inside of us that are broken, but I believe that experiencing brokenness can make us stronger.

—

There is a broken place in my heart. Not the literal one that pumps blood through my body but the one we talk about when we talk about spirit and emotions. A crack runs right through it. Probably more than one. The broken places are many. And they are mended.

There were days–and weeks, months, and years–when I was sure I would be broken beyond repair. When I thought the breaking would kill me.

In a way, it did. A part of me died, but even the broken places allowed some light to penetrate. Growth springs from cracked and broken all the time. Look at the trees whose stumps sprout with new branches. Look at the cracks in the sidewalk where flowers and grass and weeds push up, straining and striving for the light.

Photo by Abhishek Pawar on Unsplash

Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of light to convince you you’re not finished yet. Sometimes you’re broken and think you’ll always stay that way. But all the while you’re healing and you don’t even know it until one day instead of feeling like life is beating you down with every chance you get, you stare it right in the face and say, “Bring it.”

You are strong because of the broken places. Somehow the cracks have contributed to your strength. Maybe you could have been strong without them, but maybe you couldn’t. Maybe you needed the broken places to prove you couldn’t be broken forever. Or that you could be broken but you would survive it.

It is a weird thing to feel strength in your spirit when you know how weak you have been. It is almost like you are a different person. Or you had a dream about someone else’s life.

I think Hemingway is right that the world breaks everyone. We all have a breaking point, and maybe that changes based on the day. Maybe we are not always strong at the broken places or anywhere. But maybe we could be. Maybe we hope to be.

I wish I had a formula to tell you how, but all I have are years of life experience, much of which I wouldn’t wish on anyone. All I can say is if you think you can’t survive it–whatever “it” is–give it another day.

—

I don’t fully understand the relationship between broken and whole, how they can work together and how you can sometimes be both at the same time. I have known seasons of broken that I thought would never end and I’ve had glimpses of whole that I wished would endure, but what’s happening now is like an ebb and flow, like the tide coming in and out with regularity. I no longer believe I will only have one or the other but they will both be present, maybe in equal measure, maybe not. But I have hope that the broken won’t last forever and the whole will come, and I have confidence that the whole will be more than a fleeting glimpse.

This week I have felt them both. They both make up a part of me. They both contribute to my life.

I am broken but not destroyed. I am whole but not yet finished.