Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns
If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…
I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…
I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…
One by one, the kids trickled into the small room, shoes off, yellow sheets in hand. It was Health Screening Day at the school, and a crowd of volunteers gathered and recorded heights and weights, and administered vision tests.
I stood off to the side, writing the numbers on the yellow sheets, then entering them in the computer. It was my first time at this gig and I watched the kids from the corner of my eye. Some of them had zero inhibitions about having their height measured and stepping on the scale. Others approached with a let’s-get-this-over-with attitude. We were told from the beginning not to announce any weights, especially with the older kids, and I could 100 percent identify with the reason for that. I was mortified anytime anyone had an inkling of my weight as a tween/young adult.
We saw kids of all shapes and sizes, no two of them alike. But they did have one thing in common. I’ll get to that.
Heights were measured in inches only, so we had to calculate a bit, which meant the heights were often spoken out loud.
“Am I tall?” some of the kids asked. “How many feet is that?” “How tall am I?”
We answered as best we could with encouragement and truth. But it was the questions and comments after the scale that had my heart breaking.
“Is that good?” “Is it okay?” “This scale weighs me five pound heavier.” (That last comment has to be something they’ve heard at home, right?)
Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash
Weight. It’s such a tricky thing. And it wasn’t just the girls asking. Some of the boys hopped off the scale and announced their numbers, even though they had been told not to. One boy was relieved that he could still play football.
A lot of the girls were silent. If I could read the silence, though, I know what some of the thoughts were. Because I was a girl whose number was always too big compared to her friends, too embarrassing to repeat. Even now, at my heaviest apart from pregnancy, I can hardly stand to admit the number out loud.
With a prepubescent daughter, though, it’s long past time for me to tackle these issues head on. Because she is strong and beautiful and her body is so different than mine was at that age, but the words and attitudes and pressure are just as damaging. Maybe more so.
But that’s not what I came here to talk about. Not really. There is another question behind all those questions that had nothing to do with height and weight. It takes many forms, but at the heart of it all, this is the question I think they were really asking:
Am I enough?
Read the rest of this post at Putting on the New, where I blog on the 12th of each month.
It’s an extra-good book year when one of your favorite authors releases more than one novel. A few months ago, I reviewed Courtney Walsh’s Just Look Up and I’m back today with another contemporary romance, Hometown Girl. (With such a cute cover!)
In it, Beth Whitaker is stuck at a job in her hometown when she was the one in high school who was desperate to leave. A failed relationship and a mistake for which she’s trying to atone keep her tethered to the small-town life. When her sister impulsively buys property consisting of a rundown orchard and farmhouse–a former tourist attraction–and asks for her help, Beth reluctantly agrees after she runs out of excuses.
Drew Barlow used to visit the farm with his family but hasn’t been back since tragedy struck when he was a boy. Word of the owner’s death and the curious urge to uncover the truth about the tragedy takes him from his Colorado ranch job to the Illinois tourist town he’s trying to forget.
It’s a romance, so of course, Drew and Beth’s paths will cross, and as they work to rebuild the farm, they’ll experience some healing work in their lives, too.
Courtney’s writing always takes me back to my hometown. I can picture the people and places she writes about, and the characters remind me of people I know.
Although this book isn’t set in the fall, it takes place at a rundown apple orchard, which I thought about when my family visited an apple orchard recently. I enjoyed the story of Beth and Drew and their respective issues holding them back from moving forward in life. (I received an electronic copy of the book from the author. Opinion reflected in review is my own.)
Reading Hometown Girl had me thinking about home, with all of its pleasant and painful memories. If you’re longing for home or wondering if past hurts can be healed, this is a book to pick up.