Gravel Road Musings

Yup, I'm pretty sure this is a controversial topic and I am also pretty sure I would like some feedback from you on it. This is something that I have thought about off and on over the last couple years maybe, but it has really been driven home to me over the last six months.  First off, this is not a plea for money--we are abundantly blessed, as I plan to point out.  Second, it is not a diatribe against health insurance.  Third, it is meant to hold me accountable for putting my money where my mouth is about to be. Let me share our story:  We have Samaritan Ministries--we send our money to a family in need every month. If there are more needs than money, the need is prorated, which means you will not get enough money to pay off your whole hospital bill.  So when Nicole was born, we turned in our need.  It was prorated to 85%, meaning we had close to $1000 that was not going to be covered by the ministry.  To my money-bothered brain, this looked big....

This book was given to me by Bethany House for the purpose of writing a review about it.  This was a great chick flick that I read in about 2 days or so.  A couple of months ago I had posted a review about "A Sensible Arrangement" by Tracie Peterson.  This was the sequel to that and focused a little more on Alice who had been hired to be Marty's personal maid in Colorado.  The economy took a serious downturn causing Jake and Marty to lose everything and they returned to Texas, very much against the will of Marty who blamed Texas for the bad things that had happened to her.   Alice falls in love with Marty's nephew, Robert, and he with her and they lived happily ever after.  There was, of course, the normal fiasco, where Alice ran off because she thought Robert was engaged to another woman and didn't want to come between them.   There's one paragraph I want to put on here that stuck out to me tonight as I was reading.  Robert was talking...

This book was given to me by Bethany House Publishers for the purpose of writing a review. I like Dee Henderson.  She is a good author, but in my opinion her best works were the O'Malley series and everything else is just a little beneath that level.  However, she did do a very good job with this one and I did really like it. The plot is the normal man and woman falling in love, etc., but the surrounding story was almost over my head.  It was a Navy story with the leading man being a submarine commander and the leading lady being a civilian with a brain I can't even dream about.  In college at the age of 14, she had made some amazing discoveries by the age of 29.  Cross-sonor, sending pings without being heard, discovering other subs by the quiet they create, etc. etc.  It blows my mind how a mind could even pull all this out.  I have to remember it is fiction, but there must be some element of truth to the ideas or Dee wouldn't use them?  Or ...

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mothers out there.  Yes, I know it is a week late, but that's okay--this is my blog and I can do what I want when I want to on it. Was it a Happy Mother's Day for me?  The week before was more appropriate.  Did you know that the Sunday before, May 4, was Bereaved Mother's Day?  Appropriate, I think. I didn't answer the question did I?  It's a tough question to answer--May 11 was the day I had been looking forward to it with great anticipation since September sometime.  It was extra cool that it was going to be on Mother's Day, but Mother's Day was just the side benefit.  Then January 13 came and with it came the dread of Mother's Day and the dread of May 11.  Now, it was a day to look ahead to with dread--the weeks were counted, the tears were shed and finally it was here. We left for the weekend--just went away and hid.  Call me a coward if you want, but, quite frankly, I wasn't about to risk hea...

The bathroom floor was hard and a bit cold, but it was refuge from the caring eyes all around.  I sank down and opened my book, my daughter's scrapbook.  I opened it with the purpose in my mind of reading everything I had written and allowing the tears to come.  I fulfilled my purpose.  I have no idea how long I sat in there.  I know I got a little uncomfortable--the motel bathroom floor wasn't very big and it definitely was hard.  I looked through Nicole's book and I cried, not gentle tears that slowly trickled down, but gut-wrenching sobs.  Not loud wails because I didn't want everyone to know, though I think they suspected and they cared.  But it was better than crying in Marshall's and having a complete stranger ask me if I was okay. It's not that friends didn't care--they did and they loved me in spite of my sadness this weekend and for that I will always be grateful.  But when I need a good gut-wrenching cry, I don't like people watch...

This book was given to me by Bethany House for the express purpose of reading it and writing a review about it. This book gets a thumbs up from me.  It was an edge of the seat gripping story.  Obviously because Edgar was the one writing the book from a first-hand experience, you knew he survived, but what he went through and still survived is nothing short of a miracle. He was aboard the USS Indianapolis when it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine during World War 11.  Within minutes the ship had sunk and the 1000+ people aboard the ship had either already died or were left to survive in the ocean.  This whole catastrophe was especially sad because it seemed somewhat preventable.  Higher intelligence realized that the waters they were sailing through was enemy territory, but because they didn't want the Japanese to realize they had broken their code, they refused to have a destroyer ship accompany the USS Indianapolis. They also didn't have a plan in pla...

This book was given me by Bethany House Publishers for the purpose of reading and writing a review about it. Lost and Found by Sarah Jakes This book is the story of Sarah Jakes daughter of Bishop T. D Jakes.  She got in with the wrong group, had her first baby at 14 and then wound up marrying a man she was determined to love and also sure that he would give up his womanizing ways and be devoted to her even though he had showed no signs of faithfulness.  She is 25 years old at the time of the writing--divorced with 2 children and she tells the story of her journey. I don't normally quote from books in my reviews, but for this book, I just want to pick out some of the quotes that stuck with me when I was reading the book.  I don't really like when they put quotes in bigger letters on the same page that it is written on because I feel like I am reading stuff twice, but it is nice for later on. "Time, like life, isn't about how much we have; it's about what we ...