Gravel Road Musings

By Ricky Texada This book was given to me by Bethany House for the purpose of reading and writing a review on it. These days I find myself drawn to books that talk about grief and healing and tough times.  This is a book that talks about the loss of Ricky's wife in a car accident, his subsequent remarriage and then the loss of at least one child through miscarriage. Ricky had a lot of good points in this book, but I'll be honest.  There were parts that left me disillusioned and maybe that is to my shame.  While I believe he really did grieve deeply the loss of his wife, he describes his experience as though it was just a big drawing closer to God time in his life. As I read it, immediately upon hearing that his wife had died, he chooses to draw closer to God, he asks God to not be silent and he prays that Debra's death is not in vain.  I am not doubting his sincerity in all of this, but I just wonder where was the anger, the grief, the "whys", the tears? ...

It might appear that I am on a grief kick again and maybe I am, but I don't think you ever really know when grief is going to hit.  For instance, I came home from work today feeling good.  I opened the TLC (Together Learning to Cope) newsletter and read two poems and they both made me cry.  And I want to share them here.  I don't expect everyone to be able to relate to them or to even appreciate them, but they touched me. Before that though, mark your calendars: October 15, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day and if everyone would light a candle at 7PM on that day and let it burn for at least one hour, there will be a continuous wave of light over the world on that day. Strength by Terry Jago In the early days of my grief, A tear would well up in my eyes,  A lump would form in my throat,  But you would not know- I would hide it. For the strong do not cry-- And I am strong. In the middle days of my grief,  I would look...

I saw this on Facebook this morning and decided to share it.  I never thought of it in this way before, but it is so true.  It would sometimes irk me when people would express sympathy and offer condolences and their arms and/or belly was full of baby.  And I would vent to D and say, how easy it is for them to tell us this is all part of God's plan when everything seemed to be going good for them.  And yet, I did want to accept their heart and their well-meaning wishes despite the frustrations you could sometimes feel. A comment on Facebook said something to this effect: God doesn't need anything, but He welcomes His children home.  That is a beautiful thought. Okay, I'm done now and should get back to the myriads of work I need to be getting done today.

This book was given to me by Bethany House for the purpose of reading and writing a review about it. You may wonder why I chose a book about answering my kids' questions.  In reality, Nicole doesn't need any questions answered, she could answer many for me if I were given the opportunity to ask her.  Someday, I will have that opportunity and I will have questions.  But, maybe someday, we will have children that do have questions and besides I am always interested in hearing an author's take on the big questions of life. Elyse Fitzpatric and Jessica Thompson are a mother/daughter team that wrote this book and I would have to say they did a good job.  They talked about each question first and then broke it down into age groups and gave age-appropriate answers to the questions. The questions were as follows: 1. What is sin? 2. Why do people die? 3. What is Satan? What is hell? 4. Why do people get divorced? 5. Why does the Bible say that? (difficult Bible sto...

So, it has come to my attention that school just isn't done the way it used to be and I wonder what happened. When I went to school, you went on a Tuesday, the day after Labor Day--No Exceptions.  You went at 8:30 in the morning, you listened to the chairman talk about school and whatever else he wanted to.  Then you listened to a list of dos and donts for the school year and then by 9:30 or so you got to work.  You spent your day studying vocabulary words and perhaps paging through your Lightunits and seeing what you were going to learn about in your new books.  Everything felt new and exciting. Then at 3:00, you went home.  Most teachers let you go home without homework that first day of school, a really generous teacher might even give you the whole first week off from the fear of homework.  You came back the next day and the next and you studied.  Yeah, there were the occasional parties and things, but the teachers were busy and didn't have time ...

This book was given to me by Bethany House for the purpose of writing a review about it.   Miracle in a Dry Season by Sarah Loudin Thomas I'm really not sure what I want to say about this book.  I don't know if I really know what I think about this book. It was interesting and yet rather different; well-written and yet too simple.  Let me try and explain.  I would give Sarah credit as a good author with the ability to use language in a way that writes a vivid story line, but some of the events seemed too unbelievable.  Yes, I know it's fiction and you can do what you want with fiction, but I still like it to be a little real to life. Okay, now I think I'm confusing everyone, myself included, so I'll just say some of the things I liked and didn't like about the book. It's a nice story; an unwed lady comes to town with her 5 year old daughter and a 35 year old bachelor slowly falls in love with her after her overcame his judgment of her and her illegi...

This book was given me by Bethany House for the purpose of writing a review about it. Help, I'm behind on my blogging reviews because I spent the last three months consumed with a reading program.  But now I have 7 brand-new free books coming in the mail--all books I've never read.  Now, who doesn't love the sound of that.  And I have a total of 5 books, this one included, waiting to be read and have a review posted about it. $10 Great Dates is a nice little handbook for when you feel out of creative juices, want to do something fun for a date and don't want to break the bank to do it.  I haven't read through the whole book--it's not the kind of book that most people will pick up and read from cover to cover. Probably only weird people like me will do something like that.  But I've read enough of it to know I want to try some of the suggestions they gave. There are definitely a few ideas that won't work for us.  For example, one date i...