One.
I really appreciated this raw and vulnerable post by Sarah Forgrave. I remember my crisis of faith five years ago, when I sat on a chair and had to decide if I had enough faith to continue trusting in the God I'd walked with for years. {My answer was yes.} It was HARD, because I questioned if He could be trusted. He's proven he can be. Though life is considerably brighter now than it was that day, I still struggle with the waiting and the disappointments, and her post reminded me HE MOVES.
Two.
You know I've been doing all this cleaning and purging in the last month or so, and my sister found and shared this article...kind of a guide on things to clean out that perhaps you might not have considered. {Or maybe you DID, but you were hoping you were just overzealous.} If you need a jump start on simplifying, check it out!
Three.
I don't know whether or not you caught this post by Melanie Shankle, but if not, you have to read it. It made me laugh SO HARD. Although I would like to stop and discuss the frightening mention of the possible resurgence of perms. Shall we???
Four.
Five.
I don't think I've said so this time around, but Ryan and I are in the market to move again, so our house is for sale and we've been praying for God's favor to allow us to move close to Ryan's work and cut out his commute. So of course my little eyes are hyper-sensitive to anything about moving, and this article on creating a packing station was so helpful!!
Six.
Wrapping up this week with a book review! After FAR too many years away from reading fiction, I am delighted to have the time to get back into it in this new season. I'm discovering authors I'd not known before and thoroughly enjoying their styles of storytelling!
And so it was that I learned about Irene Hannon. She's not a new author - actually has almost 50 published books to her credit - but Hope Harbor was my introduction to her. This contemporary romance has all the promise {based on the cover you should never judge a book by...} of a sweet, feel-good read, and there are things about it that are blissfully that. But thankfully it goes deeper than that.
The book tells the story of Tracy Campbell, who lives in the Pacific Northwest...in the kind of town you'd want to move to, actually: Hope Harbor, Oregon. It's the small-town, water's-edge, taco truck, bike-riding kind of place that makes your heart rest with ease. And that's what Michael Hunter was hoping for when he rolled in to town after a cross-country drive from the pace and stress of being a CEO in Chicago. He's taken a leave of absence from his job to sort out his life, which has been crushing in too hard, and he's counting on this town to give him the space and comfort he needs to accomplish that.
But the town, for all its quaint charm, does have real people living in it - and with them come the same things that come with all of us: stresses and secrets, wounds, and worries, floundering and faith-testing. And that's the true delight of this book. It offers just enough feel-good to accomplish what a good novel does: an escape from life pressing in...but it also offers just enough real-life to make it a read laced with lessons and understanding of what the characters feel.
I loved the characters of Hope Harbor. I cheered for them and ached for them to find healing for their wounds and solutions for their problems. I appreciated that they weren't sickeningly perfect, and that not everything came easily for them. But I also appreciated that they were the kind of people I wanted to like. And my biggest delight was finding out that this book is not standing alone...a new installment for these characters I came to love will roll off the presses next summer!
The book isn't suspenseful in a heart-pounding way, but it's captivating in story and well-crafted in romance. I'm looking forward to book #2 and more storytelling from Irene Hannon!
{Thank you, Revell, for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. And thank you for making clean, faith-inspired romance a reality for readers!}
3 comments:
Moving to a new house? That sounds (almost) equally parts stressful and exciting to me... I look forward to what you decide to share on your blog regarding your house sale and house hunt. I know the Lord will place you where you are meant to be.
Maria - After the debacle we went through owning Ryan's home AND mine, we are pretty adamant about not moving until our current house has sold. We don't like owning two homes - especially in two different towns. YUCK. I may or may not have a slight {read: ridiculous} addiction to realtor.com, so I house hunt every day and fall in love with so many...and then they sell. Essentially if you want your home to sell, get me to fall in love with it and BOOM, you've got a sale. Ryan is doing MUCH better at resting in trust with this one than I am. He says it might partly be because the house we're trying to sell now wasn't HIS. {There's a weird sense of pressure and responsibility that comes with being the original owner, at least for us. I was far less stressed about his house than he was. Annoyed, to be sure, by the end of the 141 day contract, but not stressed like he was. And now I'M the stressed one and he's fine. I guess this is why we're a team! But when we have actual news to share that isn't wishy washy and boring, I can't wait to tell you!!
Ack. Perms. Gah. As you can tell, the thought of them making a resurgence scares me speechless.
That post by Sarah Forgrave was so spot on. And relatedly, I am praying for you as you go through the house selling process yet again. I pray that this time it sells quickly and easily.
I am definitely going to check out Irene Cannon and that "barn" is gorgeous. I sure wasn't expecting that inside!
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