In an interview when Rain Dance was first published, the journalist asked me, “What do you think should be done to mothers who kill their children?” I asked her to clarify her question. She explained she wanted to know how an infertile woman, a Christian, who is prolife would respond to mother who had killed one or more of the children she was raising.  I asked her if she had read Rain Dance – my answer is in the book and she admitted she’s only skimmed the book.

Soon after, a woman who lives in this area, killed her children. Then, a mother in another place killed her autistic children. Suddenly, friends, family, and readers were asking me the same question. Then a PR person I hired to help me promote the book asked if I believed like Jonica, and challeneged me to elaborate.

Yesterday, I posted that article in my blog/column on The American Chronicle. http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/278046

The article isn’t a rant or a sermon – it’s me showing readers a little bit of the struggle I have with this terribly difficult issue. I received an annonymous note asking why I cared so much about 200 children a year when thousands are aborted everyday. I know numbers are important – but so are the 200 plus children a year killed by their moms. I can’t seperate the two.

Can you?

Joy

To order Rain Dance for your Kindle for 99 cents, click on the book cover.

Choosing to adopt is an excellent option for increasing the size of your family, but it is not as simple as saying yes. Every adoption decision includes some practical, personal, marital, and financial pre-planning.

Perhaps you’d like to write your responses to the following facts and questions in a notebook. Leave room after each for additional notes after you’ve had time to think and re-think your answers.

Practical Considerations:

In some states, you can choose open or closed adoption. This decision must include the needs of the child, adoptive parents, and the birth mother. Which is in the best interest of everyone?

If your adoption is closed, will you provide the case worker with updates to be given to the birth mother periodically or when the child is eighteen?

How will you tell your child about their adoption?

How will you answer their questions as they mature and want to know more?

What will you tell others?

If you adopt internationally or a child racially different than yourself, what ethnic traditions will you include in your child’s life?

Personal Considerations:

Is adoption your desire or is it expected of you?

How old do you want your new child to be when he or she enters your home?

Are you willing to adopt a child with mental or physical challenges? Why?

How do you feel about the birth mother and how will you communicate that to your child?

Is there room in your heart for the woman who gave you your child? What does that look like?

What do you know about the birth father? How do you feel about him?

What are you afraid of?

What are your sure of?

Do you have a support system in place? Who are they?

Marital Considerations (all: (All couples have to make the following decisions when they decide to have children. To complete your list, ask other parents where they struggle in their marriage after children. Preparation doesn’t guarantee bliss, but it allows you to consider your options and potential responses.)

Your dream of having children naturally has not gone the way you hoped it would. Have you grieved this? Are you angry? Do you blame anyone?

How will you prepare to welcome this child into your home and heart? What does this celebration look like?

What does your marriage look like with the addition of a child? How do you want to raise this little one and do you, and your spouse agree?

Financial Considerations (adoption: (Adoption can cost from $15,000 to $75, 000)

With international adoptions there will be travel costs as well. Depending on the country, you will also have to cover your own travel, lodging, and food expenses.

There are expenses involved in adoption. Many insurance companies do not cover the cost of the birth or the birth-mothers medical expenses. Check with your agent to see if the mother has health insurance or Medicaid how they might work in conjunction with your policy and state requirements.

Legal costs are also the responsibility of the adoptive parents. International adoptions may require you to hire an attorney in your country as well as in the child’s nation of origin.

Call your insurance agent and find out what is covered. Is there coverage for a baby born with complications? A pre-existing medical condition?

How will you cover these known and at times unknown expenses?

The considerations offered in this article are not conclusive. As your think and plan your way through them, others will surface. Welcome them into your mind and answer them with your heart. They are part of your parenthood map and an essential part of the journey.

There are no right or wrong answers. There are only your answers.

Joy

Order HERE.

99 cents/for Prime members:  FREE.

In as little as one generation, if left unpreserved, your faith stories will be gone. You might be remembered as a Christian, but the ingredients of your faith won’t be. The only one who can change this fact is you.

When I first started sharing the Your Life, a Legacy seminar over 20 years ago, it was titled, Journaling With Joy. I know – awful. However, those initial few retreats revealed the message underneath the fluff was more important than I first thought. Way more important.

Lately, the book and the seminar is gaining more attention. Because I enjoy the topic, that’s cool, but the best part is this: people all over are preserving their stories – many are taking their faith stories and transforming them into Legacies.

At a recent women’s retreat, I shared with them my favorite part of our time together: when I watched them writing their faith legacies down for the first time. There were smiles, tears, as they verbally shared their stories later.

Each us of was moved by the power in the stories of the others.  

Don’t make the mistake of thinking there is nothing of value in your ordinary stories – when they involve God, He is the One who can and will transform them into extraordinary legacies.

If you want to preserve your faith, please sign up for a seminar today. If you’d like me to bring this message to your church group or book club email me at joydekok57@gmail.com or call me at 507-358-8332.

When you preserve your faith legacy, your testimony lives much longer than one generation.

Joy

Order the Kindle Copy

    Order the paperback 

I want to welcome Staci Stallings back to the blog and apologize. The power source on my computer burned out and it took awhile to get a new one. I’m back up and running, but late. Today is the last day Staci’s book Deep In the Heart is free on amazon – if you want to order it, jump to the bottom of this post and click on the link. Then, come on back and read some more of Staci’s journey.

This is another lesson worth repeating and cataloging as its own. There are two types of love. One loves the object because the object is valuable. This type of love believes that once something has lost its worldly value, it is expendable. When an employee gets too old to work, they lose their value and are expendable. When an expensive vase is dropped or chipped, it loses value, and the love you had for it (if you love it only for the worldly value it has) wanes.

The second kind of love is the love you have for an object not because it is necessarily valuable to someone else, but because your love gives it its value. Take a ragged teddy bear for example. Say that this bear is 20 years old. It has only one eye, the fur is gone, and one seam is letting tufts of stuffing go free at odd intervals. It is valuable to no one—except you. This is the teddy that you held the night of that horrible rainstorm, the teddy you cried your heart out to when your first boyfriend broke up with you, the teddy you lovingly packed to go with you when you went to college because you couldn’t bear to face the uncertainties of this new life alone. True, you couldn’t get 10 cents for it at a garage sale, but that really doesn’t matter. Your love for it gives it the value it has.

Or maybe the loved object is your grandmother’s gravy boat. It’s chipped in several places. The handle has been glued and reglued, and the bottom rocks a bit because of the chip it has sustained when you dropped it setting the table for Christmas dinner. But you still bring it out of the cabinet to use. Why? Because it’s beautiful? No, not really. It doesn’t even match your other dishes. Its beauty is in your memories of it being on your grandmother’s table at Thanksgiving and Christmas. How your grandmother sat and told you about how she had watched her grandmother use it on her table. Valuable to the world? No, probably not. But it’s valuable to you because of the love you have for it, and that love gives it value.

I had a glass (still do although it now only occupies a special space in my heart). It was a Care Bear glass from Pizza Hut. I had that glass for nearly over 20 years. It was my favorite. Sure I liked it because it was just the right size, and I liked it even though it was Grumpy Bear. But I loved that glass because my then-boyfriend, now husband gave it to me for my 15^th birthday, because he had thought to get me something, and that to me was so awesome. I loved that glass. And then one day as happens with objects in this world, my kids knocked it off a table, and it shattered into a gazillion pieces. I still love that glass even though it’s just a memory now.

After Raef’s death, I was thinking about many things, how sad I was, how much I wished something would’ve worked and “fixed” him, how angry I was that we’d gotten to that point. And then after letting my feelings run their course for awhile, I said, “Yes, but do you still love him?” There was no question. Yes. I still love him–not “loved” but “love.” And the voice said, “That’s all that matters, it is all that has ever mattered.”

I related the story of the vase and the gravy boat to a couple of guys who came up to talk to me in the graveyard after the funeral. I was telling the story of the first vase, how it was valuable because it was expensive, but if you dropped it, or chipped it, it would lose its value. One of the guys stopped me when he said, “Oh, but the chips are priceless.”

He’s right. The chips each of us sustain in this life are priceless. They are what God can use to help others through us. Unfortunately for many years, I believed Satan’s lies that the chips were meant to be hidden or fixed at all costs. I couldn’t let anyone see I was less than perfect. I couldn’t let them ever know that I didn’t have it altogether, that I was scared, that I doubted myself and second guessed myself on a minute-by-minute basis. I couldn’t because then I wouldn’t be valuable.

See, I loved everyone else like my grandmother’s gravy boat—chips and all, and as I loved them, they began to see their own worth. But I thought others loved me like the vase, and if I wasn’t perfect, if I had any chips (even small ones), they couldn’t love me, and I wasn’t going to let them make the mistake of loving me either.

I have let that go, and like I told a friend of mine, when I let that go—when I let go of “I can’t have any chips”, when I started letting others see my chips—the more I appeared the perfect vase to the outside world. I can’t explain that, but I know it to be true. When I speak truthfully about my chips, people say, “Wow. I wish I could be that honest. I wish I could let go of having to do everything right. I wish I could let God determine my worth. It’s so neat to be around you because you have the peace I want.” Suddenly I look to them like I’ve got it altogether. Why? Because I finally admitted that I don’t.

What lesson is in this one for you? I don’t know. Do you need to begin to treat others like Grandma’s gravy boat—valuable because they just are? Do you need to recognize that their chips are priceless? Do you need to find ways to treat yourself that way? Do you need to allow others to treat you this way? I don’t know. All I know is that this lesson changed my life, and I hope it changes yours as well.

Copyright Staci Stallings, 2007

Staci Stallings, the author of this article, is a Contemporary Christian author and the founder of Grace & Faith Author Connection. Staci has a special surprise for you today and tomorrow only…

FREE ON KINDLE TWO DAYS ONLY!

April 18 & 19, Staci’s novel:

Deep in the Heart

                         ”This is more than a romance.  The author cuts straight to the heart of God–love.  God is love. Even through unexpected tragedies.  And we can overcome evil with good–by His love.”

–Betty Anne Bantz

Can Keith defy the most powerful men in Texas to follow his heart? 

Available as a free download from Amazon!

Order Deep in the Heart HERE.

Joy

On March 30, 2007, my life changed forever. That was the day my older brother, Raef, who was 42 years old at the time killed himself.  He was bi-polar, but I also believe other forces were at work that convinced him that life was no longer worth living.  This is a piece of his story and mine…

One of the biggest lessons of my life was when God started showing me how disastrously hard I was being on myself. Even when I started to come out of striving for perfection and I started to try to learn to do life differently, one of the hardest things to learn was to not beat myself up over not relying on God and His love. I know. That sounds bizarre, but it’s the truth.

I would get mad at myself for not remembering to let God do it, for trying to do it myself, for not putting all of it in His hands. It took me awhile to see that God did not require me to beat myself up even over my perceived missteps. I had accepted His forgiveness and love of me, but it did no good if I did not forgive myself and love myself. Accepting that was a hard step because I wanted to do whatever I was doing “right,” and if it wasn’t right, my go-to emotion was “I failed.”

God began to show me that what I perceived as failure was not failure at all to Him. To Him, it was about me learning, not about me being perfect. A friend of mine told me about bending light. She said that if you have a candle in a jar, if you look at it through the glass of the jar, the flame seems to wobble and split. That’s because of the bending of the light through the glass that the flame appears not to be perfect. But if you look not through the glass but from above, the flame appears as it is meant to be—whole and perfect.

That’s the way God sees us—from above. He doesn’t look through the cracked, chipped, and broken glass of our lives the way the world does. He looks only at the whole He created, and He loves that whole and wants only for the whole to come to once again love itself.

And so I had to learn to be gentle with myself. I had to acknowledge that I wouldn’t get it right all the time, that sometimes I didn’t have all the pieces and that in those moments of failure, I had done my best. I had to come to understand that my best sometimes wouldn’t attain what I wanted, but that was okay. It was a learning experience, and God uses each and every one of those for His glory.

When Raef died, one of the hardest things was to remember to be gentle with myself, to remember as I found holes in what I could’ve said, should’ve said, could’ve done, should’ve done that I had done my best. If I had known one other thing to do, I would’ve done it. But I didn’t know what else to do, and so in this most difficult time, I had to forgive myself and be gentle with me.

I had to be gentle with me and not try to be the rock, to accept the help of others, to admit my limitations—like I needed sleep and food. I had to be gentle with myself when heartache came out as anger, and to the best of my ability to be gentle with those around me. My sister Shelly said at one point she got so angry, and then she said, “I realized, if this had been me, Raef would’ve been mad too.” She found gentleness with her honest feelings. That is one of the lessons I’m most grateful for, and the one I am most constantly learning and relearning.

Copyright Staci Stallings 2007

Staci Stallings, the author of this article, is a Contemporary Christian author and the founder of Grace & Faith Author Connection. Staci has a special surprise for you today and tomorrow only…

FREE ON KINDLE TWO DAYS ONLY!

April 18 & 19, Staci’s novel:

Deep in the Heart

                         ”This is more than a romance.  The author cuts straight to the heart of God–love.  God is love. Even through unexpected tragedies.  And we can overcome evil with good–by His love.”

–Betty Anne Bantz

Can Keith defy the most powerful men in Texas to follow his heart? 

Available as a free download from Amazon!

Please join us tomorrow when Staci generously shares another part of her journey with us.

Is Emma trying to buy love when she adopts twins? All she wants is a family of her own. When one of her daughters needs a doctor, she is seen by Emma’s first love, Travis Taylor. Can Emma trust him with her little girl, and what about her own heart?

I enjoyed reading Texas Whirlwind. I know why the author, Bonnie Blythe gets positive reviews – she is a modern day Grace Livingston Hill. When I first came to faith in Jesus, I didn’t know who to read – who to trust with my mind. I was fifteen and romance was number one on my list. When I discovered Hill, I was delighted. Notice I said Blythe is “modern.” The author doesn’t shy away from hard topics or temptation. Her characters feel real, and their circumstances are contemporary.

Texas Whirlwind was a fun, and fast read.  If you enjoy a good, clean romance, Blythe is an author you’ll enjoy. She’s a prolific writer, and I have three of her other books on my Kindle waiting for me.

You can order the book HERE.

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a review for Blue Like Elvis by Diane Moody.

Until then,

Joy

It all starts with a stagecoach robbery, a strong-willed young woman, and cowboy with a past. Author Karen Baney has knit together an excellent story full of real characters, who are likeable except for a lying, scheming, cattle rustler who made me mad. I would have liked him to fall face first in a puddle of fresh manure. I really did not like him, and I’m hoping the author has very bad plans for him in the next book in the series.

It’s probably my age, but I enjoyed the “older romance” between Ben and Betty – it’s nice to read a book where love isn’t limited to the young.

I’ve read Karen Baney’s contemporary novel, Nickles, and enjoy the cadence in her writing. There is a natural rhythm to her stories – unique to each story that makes reading her books a pleasure.

The author includes the most human of wants, and mistakes which helps readers connect with the characters, even when they’re from another time in history. Baney weaves faith into the characters lives without preaching although her preacher does what he is called to do – he preaches and gets under one characters skin. That’s his job in the story, and he does it well.

Most of all, A Life Restored (#3 in the Prescott Series) reminds readers that while we all have pain and shame in our pasts, God is the forgiver of all – we only have to ask.

I’ll be glad to when it’s time to read book four in the series.

Joy

Order A Life Restored HERE.

To get to know Karen better, visit her website at www.karenbaney.com

Tomorrow I’ll review Bonnie Blyth’s book Texas Whirlwind, and on Saturday, Blue Elivs by Diane Moody.

Until then,

Joy

My first cowboys were Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, and John Wayne. Author Linda Yezak combines a little bit of each of my favorites into the hero of Give the Lady a Ride. He’s a bit of a loner when it comes to women, cleans up nicely like Roy, and has the stubborn grit of John Wayne.

Patricia Talbert arrives on her inherited ranch ready to sell and pocket a nice profit. She has no idea how the land, the man, and the danger of bull riding will charm her. The cowboy’s good looks and determination attract her, but it’s his faith that tug at her heart the most. Will she believe again and what will that mean in her life?

Can a city girl learn to ride a bull? Oh  yeah – in a New York minute.

This modern day western has the right amount of romance, humor, conflict, and faith.

I enjoyed Patricia’s sass and determination. As a character, her struggles and victories felt real. Readers who enjoy romance and cowboy boots will find Give the Lady a Ride a 5-star read.

You get the idea the author knows a thing or two about ranching.

Joy

 To get to know the author better, check out her website at:  http://lindayezak.com/

You can order both the print and kindle copies of Give the Lady a Ride at amazon.com  http://amzn.to/Hv6gJh

One of my favorite lines in the book tells nothing about the story. Here it is: Lilyan opened her eyes to a gun-metal sky and shivered under the blanket clammy from the morning dew. The smell of rain hung heavy in the air. Okay, that’s two lines. If you’ve spent time outside or camping, you know this feeling well. It’s writing like this that helped me connect with a Revolutionary War story.

That and the chamomile. I enjoy the tea, and for several years grew chamomile in my flower garden. When I’m tired, but can’t sleep a cup of chamomile tea helps. The daisy-like blossoms are elegant in their simplicity. This delicate plant has a unique quality: its scent is released when crushed underfoot.

The author wove the story of the chamomile naturally into this novel of war, family love, friendship, and romance. Lilyan gives up to help in the birth of a nation – her losses are great. Although fiction, the book represents those who lived it and reminds us: the freedom we enjoy everyday came with a hefty price tag, paid for by others.

I give The Chamomile 5 blossoms! If you read historical romance novels, you’ll enjoy this one. If you enjoy history, the author provided an abundance of facts in the back of the book – I love it when that happens!

On our land, I have an acre of wildflowers. I try to add a new flower to the mix each year. This year I will place some chamomile seeds into the ground and when they bloom, I’ll remember the lesson of the chamomile.

Joy

You can order the kindle version of The Chamomile at Amazon.

To get to know Susan F. Craft better you can visit her website at www.susanfcraft.com.

Join me tomorrow for another Romance Week Review. I’ll be writing (again briefly) about Linda Yezak’s Give the Lady a Ride.

I’m a romantic at heart. When the kids I love fall in love, I enjoy the bits and pieces they share of their romances. When they get married, I celebrate with all my heart. One of my favorite private things to do is remember the most romantic moments I’ve shared with my husband.

For a while, I avoided romance novels because I was “exhorted” that they were dangerous because they could cause me to have unfair expectations of love. Or worse, they could cause me to have unhealthy fantasies.

First of all, I’m not a reader of what are sometimes called “bodice rippers.” Second, all the Christian women I know had/have high hopes for their marriages in the intimacy department, whether they read romance novels or not.

Although I read a lot of books in a year, and am willing to step into unfamiliar genres and read unknown authors, I am sort of picky. I’ll take a chance in both areas if the writing is good. For the most part, I want a clean to read, but I want that balanced with enough realism that I can connect with the characters and the stories. A rotten word now and then or a little heat isn’t going to stop me from reading or giving a book a good review. The words that will get me to shut a book is if a character uses the Lord’s name/s as swear words. Extremely crude words or scenes will do the same.

As for the fantasy concern, I married mine.

Next week, I am going to review a few of the romance novels I’ve read recently by authors:

• Diane Moody (Blue Elvis)
• Karen Baney (A Life Restored)
• Linda Yezak (Give the Lady a Ride)
• Susan Craft (The Chamomile)
• Bonnie Blythe (Texas Whirlwind)

I hope you’ll stop back and see what I have to say about these authors and their books.

It’s going to be a fun week here at Books by Joy & Others.

Joy

Heart graphic purchased at fotolia.com  © OnFocus – Fotolia.com