Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

christmas

5 on Friday: Books to get you through winter {plus a giveaway!}

It snowed here this week, which has me thinking all things winter. Hot drinks. Warm blankets. Pretty scenery (viewed from inside, of course!). While I’m not much of a play-in-the-snow kind of person, I don’t mind snow. If it’s going to be cold, I’d rather have snow than nothing.

1. A Wreath of Snow by Liz Curtis Higgs. I read this novella last year, and I’ll probabl

No matter the season, I have books on the brain. And I’ve been thinking of some Christmas-themed ones and winter-themed ones that might make your winter a little warmer. Here are five that come to mind. (And I’m giving two of them away!)wreath of snow

y pick it up again. I didn’t used to read Christmas stories around Christmas, but there’s a charm to it.

sweethave christmas2. A Sweethaven Christmas by Courtney Walsh. This is the third book in a series, but if you’re from a small town that has a Christmas walk/parade/festival, then this book will take you back there. I haven’t been to something like that in years but when I read this story, I felt like I was home. (Keep reading to find out how to win a copy of this one!)

3. Snow on the Tulips by Liz Tolsma. A new release I read this week (and it was on sale on Kindle!). Set in 1945 in the Netherlands, the book focuses on Dutch Resistance efforts and one woman’s internal battle with living safe or living free. Also, based, in part, on a true story from Tolsma’s family.

4. Winter in Full Bloom by Anita Higman. Another good one about a woman becoming who she truly is. I love that the main character’s name is Lily Winter. As she recovers from the loss of her husband and her daughter’s transition to college, Lily heads to Australia in search of a twin sister she never knew she had.

wildflowers from winter5. Wildflowers from Winter by Katie Ganshert. (I guess I have a thing for flowers and winter imagery!) In it, a small-town girl making it big in the city returns to her hometown to deal with tragedy and finds that leaving her past behind isn’t as easy as she thought. And I happen to have an extra signed copy of this one in the house, so I’d love to give it away. Consider it a Christmas present to you, my book-loving friends! Is there any better present than a book? Maybe, but books are near the top of the list for me!

And I’ve got a copy of A Sweethaven Christmas to give away! Two books, two winners!

So, how do you win? Just leave me a comment about what you love/hate/appreciate/despise about winter, or answer any of the questions below. Also, if you’d prefer one book over the other, let me know that. One winner per book, though! I’ll pick two winners on Tuesday, December 17 (my grandmother’s birthday!). (Contest open to U.S. readers.)

What other Christmas/winter books would you add to the list? Have you read any of these?

What stories do you like to read when the temperatures drop?

Saturday Smiles: Milestone year edition

Every year as the new year approaches, I take time to transfer birthdays from the previous year’s wall calendar to the next year’s calendar. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve paid more attention to people’s ages and anniversaries, especially as I’ve added friends and family as they’ve come into my life.

This year, as I wrote the names in the 2013 calendar, I noticed a trend: milestone birthdays. 5’s and 0’s are wild this year, and I’m not exactly sure why it stood out to me. Maybe because yours truly turns 35 or because family members who still get carded are turning 50 (you know who you are!) or my husband’s great-aunt will be 100 (woman of valor!).

One of the hardest things for me in the last four and a half years of living out of state from the rest of the family is the number of family birthdays and get-togethers and celebrations we’ve missed. If the birthdays or celebrations have fallen during one of our two to three visits per year, we do our best to make it.

So it was with great joy that we ended our most recent trip home with birthday celebration after birthday celebration after birthday celebration.

We cooked a meal for my mother-in-law on Thursday for her milestone birthday.

Today we celebrated our nephew’s first birthday …

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… and ended the day with a birthday dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant with my uncle, aunt and cousin for my uncle’s milestone birthday (which would be significant in its own right but is more meaningful because of what happened to him last year).

Our visit has been full of family, which is typical when we come home to visit, but for some reason this time, I’ve felt the love more OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAdeeply. Twice, we’ve been a party of 9 at a restaurant, and while I don’t tend to seek out large crowds, my heart has swelled with an emotion I can’t quite capture when so many people with a common bond of love have gathered around the same table.

Watching my husband be an uncle has been another love-inducing experience. It’s different, somehow, than watching him be a dad, and I love him more and differently than I did before this week.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI wish I could record and replay all the moments these weeks have brought us. Because it will be months before we have more of them. While I love the memories we make as a party of four, our lives become richer when we open them to others who love us.

Maybe I wouldn’t appreciate the moments as much if we were here all the time. Maybe it doesn’t do any good to wish we were here for all the milestones or wonder what our lives would be like if we didn’t live so far from family.

Maybe it’s just better to be thankful for the times we have.

For family dinners.

For three Christmas get-togethers and a van full of presents that show love.

For shared memories and laughs about days that have passed.

For unplanned lunches out with family we bump into at the store.

For catching up with friends and finding out we’ve changed and grown in a lot of the same ways.

For a place to be who we are despite who we’ve been.

We’re leaving again in the morning, and my heart will tear, as it always does when we leave one place for the other.

It will mend and break many times more. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if I want to love, I must risk pain and heartache because my only other option is to love nothing and let my heart turn cold and dark.

I refuse the latter.

Shoot. This was supposed to be a post about what makes me smile. Instead, I’m close to tears.

Sometimes the two aren’t all that far apart, I guess.