Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Christian fiction

Saturday smiles: groundhog edition

We’ve been talking groundhogs in our house for a week now. Last week at the library storytime (which is a recurring smile that I don’t mention often enough) Isabelle learned about groundhogs, heard many stories about groundhogs and made a groundhog craft. She’s been eager for the day since then.

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Watching a bunch of old guys in hats and tuxedos pull a scared and innocent-looking groundhog from a tree stump early in the morning to tell us we have six more weeks of winter is not necessarily my idea of a good time. I’m not normally sympathetic for the rodent types, but the poor thing looked pathetic. Actually, the kids’ commentary made it all better: Isabelle said, “Corban, it’s called Punxsutawney Phil.” And Corban responded in song: “Tawny Phil, Tawny Phil.” For the rest of the day, they danced around the house to this song. We watched the drama unfold on TV. Maybe if we’re still in Pennsylvania in the coming years, we’ll make the pilgrimage to Gobbler’s Knob in the western part of our fair state.

Other smile-worthy moments this week:

Having friends over to play.

Receiving confirmation that a piece I wrote will be published by a local church for a Lenten devotional.

Surviving the first day/night of my husband’s last seminary semester.

Singing with my husband in church. And with my kids when they go to sleep.

Playing outside. When it’s almost 60 degrees. In February.

Zumba.

Long walks by myself around town.

A good book. This one particularly. (Stay tuned for a review and interview with the author in a couple of weeks!)

Hearing our almost 4-year-old use the word “apparently” like it’s her job. “Apparently, I do know how to do this.”

Our 2-year-old’s response to almost everything right now is “oh-kay,” kind of drawn out but not sassy yet. Just cute. What can I say, I kind of love my kids a lot and mostly think they’re adorable.

A clean house. (Not that I ever really see this, but I did a fair amount of cleaning this week. The thing is, the more you clean, the more you find to clean. At this rate, I’ll have a perfectly clean house when I die.)

God speaking a similar message to my husband and me, offering us some comfort about the future.

A cumulative 10.4 pounds lost since the first of the year.

Sleep. Which is what I’m off to do soon. For me, there’s not much that beats a good night of sleep. Except maybe a great cup of coffee. And if I have the former, I don’t so much need the latter.

Good night, and keep smiling.

All I ever learned about Presbyterians I read in a book

A small-town southern church seeking a pastor assembles a search committee of seven parishioners who spend months secretly attending services at other churches auditioning candidates for the job.

A promising premise. Unfortunately, The Search Committee gets lost along the way. That’s not to say there aren’t some highlights of Tim Owens’ debut novel. Owens borrows three real-life sermons throughout the book, and I appreciated the messages in those sermons, as well as the messed-up lives of the committee members. Their struggles are the real struggles of churchgoers and nonchurchgoers alike. I could identify with aspects of several of the characters’ lives.

However, I think Owens spread himself too thin with the characters. I never got a sense that anyone was a main character, and trying to make seven people the main characters in a book left me feeling like I didn’t really get to know any of them. And because I didn’t know them, I didn’t care that much about them. I wanted things to work out well, I guess, but I wasn’t invested in their lives. I was hoping for more depth from one or two of the characters. It just didn’t work for me.

The whole concept of a search committee was new to me. Our church denomination doesn’t do things that way, and I was kind of surprised by it. The committee often admitted that it felt like it was trying to steal a pastor from another church. Maybe that’s more prevalent than I know. I also didn’t know much about the Presbyterian Church. Owens opens many chapters with excerpts from the Presbyterian Church’s Book of Order and Book of Confessions, which I found interesting but not exactly entertaining. I couldn’t decide if Owens was trying to educate readers about Presbyterians or if he was just drawing on his experience. (His bio says he was once a Southern Baptist and is now an elder in the Presbyterian Church.)

I wanted to like this book, but it fell flat. I stuck with it till the end, hoping it would redeem itself, but I was more relieved than rewarded to have finished it.

FAVORITES: One of the committee members keeps a running list of church signs the group sees on their travels. I get a kick (and sometimes a groan and a shake of the head) out of church signs.

FAULTS: Because of all the characters, the individual storylines felt rushed and underdeveloped. Even the resolutions seemed hasty. I wasn’t crazy about the dialogue either. Some of it felt unnatural.

IN A WORD: Disappointing. I was thinking the committee was going on a road trip in search of a pastor, not that they would set out on several Sundays over several months on day trips. Maybe my expectations were too high.

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In exchange for this review, I received a free copy of The Search Committee from Tyndale House Publishers.
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