As an INTJ female (for those into Myers-Briggs and the like), I am a hard person to know, and an even harder person to love. I wonder if someday my children will want to know what really went on in my brain. I shall leave them this gift. Well, maybe not so much a "gift" as an extremely uncomfortable last will and testament.
The equally interesting Iya has won a free copy of Life, In Spite Of Me not only because she was the only entry, and not only because she complimented me (although that will always get you into the top 3 of my giveaways), but because she was brave enough to share a snippet of her moment of despair. Iya also deserves this win for putting up with my finicky Zachary in her class at co-op this season. Let's face it, she deserves way more than a free book for living through that trial.
Send me an email with your mailing address, Iya, and I'll get your book to you!
And for all you homeschool moms out there in the Chester/Lehigh/Montgomery county PA areas, Iya runs a fabulous homeschool co-op in Bechtelsville! Email me for more details, as there is not a website to point you towards (something to think about, Iya??!! ;).
Life, In Spite Of Me is an amazing story of teenage angst gone horribly wrong. An incomplete suicide in a moment of despair leaves Kristen Jane Anderson physically torn apart, but God's perfect plan uses Kristen's struggles dealing with a broken body to push her towards a full and healthy relationship with Him.
Every young adult has had moments like these, when they wonder if it wouldn't be easier to not be alive. Some, like Kristen, make impetuous decisions to end their lives in these moments. Suicide to a teenager can sound romantic and glamorous. I would make this book recommended reading for all pre-teens and teenagers, to highlight the painful reality of suicide.
Twilight's got nothing on Life, In Spite Of Me. Bella's got nothing on Kristen. Treat your teenage daughter to a heroine who overcomes her teenage self-pity to realize the one thing that makes life worth living is understanding the sovereignty and grace of God, which is only easy to spot in hindsight.
WIN A COPY OF LIFE, IN SPITE OF ME!
To enter this contest, share a moment from your teen years when you felt like life wasn't worth living anymore, and what happened to get you out from under that cloud of despair. It can be something as frivolous as ripping your favorite pair of designer jeans to something as life changing as losing a parent. Funny, heart-wrenching, casual, all stories are welcome! I will choose a winner the way I always do, on a whim. So tickle my funny bone or poke at my tear ducts! The winner will be announced in tomorrow's blog post.
"I grew up in a Pentecostal Church. When I was in middle school, I'd raise my hands and worship to the music. While doing this one day, my leg started to shake violently- an obvious work of the Holy Spirit. I noticed that once I shifted my weight onto the leg, it stopped. After being convicted that I wasn't allowing the Holy Spirit to work in my life, I shifted back to allow the Holy Spirit to shake my leg.
The Holy Spirit shook my leg for several weeks. I soon grew tired of it and stopped allowing Him to destroy my leg muscles."
When I read this, I laughed out loud for 3 minutes straight. I've been repeating the phrase "I shifted back to allow the Holy Spirit to shake my leg" in my head over and over, and it makes me laugh every time. Try it, it's fun. So for that reason, Mike Van Hal wins Matthew Paul Turner's book! Congratulations! Send your mailing address to shmoozanne74 at gmail and I'll send the book asap.
While Mike wins first prize, I must acknowledge some of my favorite entries. You all kept me very entertained last night, and I thank you for that. This was my first blog contest, and it taught me that I really love judging people. It's my calling. There will be more giveaways in the future, so keep checking back.
Second prize goes to seeitblind's worldy parachute pants story. I absolutely adored it:
I remember my dad taking me to see my first concert at the age of 8...Petra's "Not Of This World" tour. One of the things that stuck out in my mind, beyond the lights, the stage setup, the songs, the decibel level...was the parachute pants. As a soon-to-be hip 9 year old, I knew having a pair of these rockin' trousers would thrust me to the heights of coolness, just like it did for Greg X Volz. Alas, after getting home and reflecting on such an amazing experience, I conveyed to my mother my desire to be the coolest kid in my Christian school by getting a pair of shiny, royal blue parachute pants. My mother's response?
"No way. Those are too worldy."
Thus began a life inside Christendom that would include no parachute pants, being forbidden from watching cartoons like He-Man, and not being allowed to ride Six Flags' "The Demon" rollercoaster, simply because of the name.
Chad Estes takes third prize with his Psalty story. I was a HUGE Psalty fan, and Chad's "Psalty, Men In Tights" story is hysterical:
I found myself a little self conscious when I was backstage moments before the start of my church’s children’s program. Even though I was in 7th grade the Children’s Pastor had asked me to be in the musical “Psalty the Singing Songbook.” I was excited to have the lead role, to have several solos and to have the attention of thousands of people. But just before going on stage for the first of five performances I realized that these thousands of people, including my friends, who were going to see me wearing blue tights. Wearing pantyhose, no matter what the color, is a poor decision to start out your Jr. High experience. Trust me.
And last but not least, fourth place goes to my niece Bonnie's smart Mastercard comment, which made me laugh because I was the one who directed her 10 year old rendition of "The First Noel" and let me tell you, it was priceless. She could have won a ventriloquism contest, that's how much her lips moved...painful.
Copy of Hear no Evil $10.19; Amy Grants 'My Fathers Eyes' album $7.99; My rendition of "The First Noel" for the Childrens Christmas concert.... PRICELESS!
Oh, andJonathan Stegall gets 10 points for using the phrase "Jesus metal". Using Jesus as an adjective always scores major points with me.
Thanks again for playing! Come back anytime, you're a funny bunch.
Matthew Paul Turner's Hear No Evil made me laugh out loud. It's the story of an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist's passionate and sometimes illicit relationship with music, from childhood to puberty and beyond. Turner tells his story with a combination of self-deprecating honesty and deadpan sarcasm that will have all but the strictest of Fundamentalists dissolving in a fit of church giggles. Grab yourself a copy today from Amazon.com, but not before you scroll down and try your hand at winning a free copy from yours truly!
Having come of age in an Independent Baptist church in the late 80s and early 90s, so many of Turner's stories brought back memories for me. My forward-thinking and independent minded father was the pastor of our church, and he spent so much time trying to get the parishioners to step out of their IFB boxes. He convinced the elders to approve a contemporary worship service in the summer, and even country line dancing (can you imagine!!?!), but both activities had to be held in the semi-detached gymnasium. That way if God smote us, the organ and the baptismal would be safe.
Turner explains how much of an impact Christian music had on his life. Having an older brother who was a worship leader, and being a musician myself in the church at that time, I was right there with Turner when he was describing his wide-eyed love for the contemporary Christian artists of that time period. Thanks to my older brother Andrew, Keith Green was my first contemporary Christian music crush, but Amy Grant joined him as an object of my affection immediately the first time I heard My Father's Eyes.
And now, because he made me laugh out loud, Matthew Paul Turner has become one of my Christian Author crushes. Maybe he'll autograph my Bible someday...
Win a copy of Hear No Evil!!
To enter, all you have to do is post a comment in regards to music and church. It can be a childhood memory, an opinion, or simply a favorite song. At 10pm tonight, I will choose the comment that tickled my fancy the most, and announce the winner tomorrow morning at 6am. So try not to be boring, folks, and get your comments in by 10pm EST.
I picked up this really great book at the airport on my way to Indianapolis last week, Still Alice by Lisa Genova.
This is a haunting novel about a 50 year old Harvard professor of cognitive psychology who finds out she has early onset Alzheimer's. The story, told from her perspective, allows you to listen to her thoughts as her brain rapidly deteriorates. You get to experience her palpable horror as she realizes what she isn't going to be able to realize for much longer.
There are chilling moments in the text, a couple that stood out to me so much that I dog-eared the pages. One is this moment in the hospital, when her daughter visits:
"...Alice looked at Lydia in pieces, close-up snapshots of her features. She recognized each one like people recognize the house they grew up in, a parent's voice, the creases of their own hands, instinctively, without effort or conscious consideration. But strangely, she had a hard time identifying Lydia as a whole. "You're so beautiful," said Alice. "I'm so afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are."
"I think that even if you don't know who I am someday, you'll still know that I love you."
"What if I see you, and I don't know that you're my daughter, and I don't know that you love me?"
"Then I'll tell you that I do, and you'll believe me."
Alice liked that. But will I always love her? Does my love for her reside in my head or my heart? The scientist in her believed that emotion resulted from complex limbic brain circuitry, circuitry that was for her, at this very moment, trapped in the trenches of a battle in which there would be no survivors. The mother in her believed that the love she had for her daughter was safe from the mayhem in her mind, because it lived in her heart....."
I also loved the passage in which Alice yells at her weak-of-character husband:
"I don't think I can do it, Alice. I'm sorry, I just don't think I can take being home for a whole year, just sitting and watching what this disease is stealing from you. I can't take watching you not knowing how to get dressed and not knowing how to work the television. If I'm in a lab, I don't have to watch you sticking Post-It notes on all the cabinets and doors. I can't just stay home and watch you get worse. It kills me."
"No John, it's killing me, not you. I'm getting worse, whether you're home looking at me or hiding in your lab. You're losing me. I'm losing me. But if you don't take next year off with me, well, then, we lost you first. I have Alzheimer's. What's your fucking excuse?"
There are so many great moments in this book I can't list them all. You'll have to read it for yourself.
This story made me realize that, for me, this would be a fate worse than death. To imagine that there might be moments of lucidity where I would realize what I had lost....I can completely understand Alice's desire to plan to take her own life when she reached a certain point of memory loss.
Would I want to live if I couldn't make my thoughts clear? Does life, for me, have any meaning outside of my cognition? Would I still be able to trust in God if I couldn't even remember how to spell god? Right now I would say absolutely not.
If one of my parents had Alzheimer's and wanted to die, would my instinct be to entertain that idea, or to keep them with me for as long as I could? I guess I would have to believe that God has a purpose in Alzheimer's. It's not a disease that kills you physically, so there has to be a reason why God would want you to go on living without your memories or ability to think logically.
I just finished reading Sarah's Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay. It was one of those delicious stories that wrenches your soul apart and leaves it in pieces on the ground.
I had a visceral reaction to the key moment in the story, the moment that defines Sarah's life. My stomach actually convulsed at the horror that I knew was about to happen. As the parents and the girl were taken away, I could physically feel what the parents were feeling, knowing what was most likely going to happen to their son. That feeling, knowing you have absolutely no control over the situation, and there is nothing you can do to fix it...horror. Complete horror.
When the girl goes back, I knew what she was going to find, and yet my brain kept whispering, "Oh please let it be different, please let it be different..."
I couldn't identify with Julia's driving need to find Sarah's son and tell him the story, but it was interesting to find out about Sarah's adult life. Realizing how that moment had dictated the rest of her life... Understandably so, especially if you don't believe in the sovereignty of God.
I always say that without a belief in the sovereignty of God, suicide IS the only answer that makes sense. Nothing makes sense without that belief. If you don't get your peace from the knowledge that everything has been planned and ordered by God for a specific purpose, why live?
Anyway, if you're in the mood for a soul wrenching, horror filled novel (what? that's not what everyone is looking for in a book??), pick this one up.
