SelahV Today by hariette petersen

GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU

Whenever my granddaughters get in one of their sibling spats, I pull out this little book and read it.  It is simply precious.   

A mere 20 pages in this board-book gently coaxes the reader into a contest of love between Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare.  As the little hare tries his best to express his love to the big hare, the big hare's love proves far greater an expression than Little Nutbrown Hare can meet or even conceive possible. 

The content easily serves as a conversation starter between parent and child on the dimensions of love.  The love described between the covers can even promote a comparable discussion on God's surpassing love to each of His children.  That's what happened between my granddaughters and myself. 

The illustrations are simple and visually show the height and depth of immeasurable love.  In one illustration Big Nutbrown Hare extends his arms outward to express how much he loves Little Nutbrown Hare.   

Having read this to my 5 year-old and 9-year-old granddaughters, I might personally add that they love hearing it as their bedtime story.  I rarely finish it before they are in slumberland dreaming of the love they have for me and I for them.

I highly recommend it.  If your local bookstore doesn't have it you can order one by clicking on the publisher's link below.  It's well worth the money.  SelahV 

[ GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.  Written by Sam McBratney and illustrated by Anita Jeram.   Printed first in 1994 and later in 1996 in Board Book Edition.  Publisher is Candlewick">http://candlewick.com/">Candlewick Press.  It sells for $6.99 U.S. and $9.99 in Canada.]

URGENT, A Book Review by Hariette Petersen

Profoundly moving.  From the first sentence to the last, "URGENT" gripped my heart and mind.  It penetrated my spirit and touched my soul.  With heartbreaking clarity and honesty, author, Joe Donahue, shares the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his father.  "Urgent" is an accounting.  Donahue gives an account of the sin of his father, and how those sins nearly destroyed him.  He writes:

"Like Bartimaeus, I was just a blind beggar...covered in whatever filth I had been crawling through...blind at heart...worn out clothes wrapped my shivering body during cold nights...Injuries and wounds that would not heal--some wounds caused by my father...I walked bent over in shame...The weight was so great that it often became unbearable...I would weep with my face in the dirt...I could not lift my head. I was useless. Pathetic. Helpless."

He uses clear, simple language. His illustrations are perfect pictures of the urgency he has in his heart for a lost world--a world ravaged by the kind of sin that imprisoned him in a shell of insecurity and anger.  A world without Jesus.  A world in need of a Savior--a world blinded by sin and deceived by Satan's lies.  Donahue's message is clear.

Sin is real.  Sin is nasty.  Sin breeds sin.  Because of sin, people are hurting.  Lives are broken and children feel worthless.  Yet, we have the hope to heal, to mend, to repair and regenerate the soul of man's brokenness.  That hope is Jesus.

Donahue's urgency to share his personal story is palpitating.  He does not whitewash his childhood; he doesn't make excuses for the damage it did to him.  He takes you from empathy for his broken little life to a desire to live the power-filled life he now lives in and through Christ.  Donahue shares how he came to a reckoning with his heavenly Father and how that led him to reconciling the pain inflicted upon him by his earthly father.  Joe shares how Christ healed his past and gave him new life.

The theme of the entire book is as urgent as the title.  It is "igniting a passion for Jesus".  Joe Donahue's need as a little abused boy was urgent.  But no one came.

Joe sees the world's need today is just as urgent as his once was; he works with teens who deal with heartache just as real, just as painful.  He knows the church's need is urgent.  He longs to ignite a passion for Jesus--Jesus the Christ, the Redeemer of lost blinded souls.  In his small volume of 101 pages, Joe weaves scripture throughout his story in such a way that a reader clearly sees who Jesus is, and what He does for those who call on Him.  Joe's transformation could not be more evident...from a blind beggar crying out to Jesus, to a redeemed man of God telling the world they can have Him, too.  Joe's passion gives new meaning to the word URGENT.

Youth need this book today.  Every youth minister should read it and have extra copies to give out.  Every Christian should read it and give it away when they're finished.  It needs to be in every church library.  Buy two copies.  You will want to give at least one away, right away.  Why?  Because it is "URGENT" that you do.

Book can be ordered directly through FreeChurchPress.com.

Joe Donahue is a husband, student pastor, and evangelist.  He's been featured on television shows including The 700 Club and is a popular conference speaker.  He presently serves as the Student Pastor at First Redeemer Church, North Metro Atlanta, GA.  You can find Joe on the web at www.youthevangelist.com.     

I'm Reading: "Get Out of That Pit"

Beth Moore calls it a "pit".  A miry, slippery, dank place.  It's not necessarily a literal 20-foot cistern.  It is more of a discouraging, debilitating place of emotional, spiritual imprisonment.  It's a state of mind.  A state in which you find yourself trapped with seemingly no way out. There's three ways to get into a pit:  you're tossed in; you slipped in; or you jumped in.  As I read this book I see a trail of pits I've encountered throughout my life, and I see the way I got out of those pits.  I've been underlining and looking up scriptures.  I've been praying for folks whom I know are in some of the pits she describes.  I'm halfway through the 249 pages and it's already convinced me of a pit I, myself, am squirming to get out of at the moment.  Until I read the book, it wasn't quite as clear as it is right now.

So what am I gonna do about it?  Firstly, I came to the conclusion I'm in it.  Secondly, I decided I don't want to stay here.  Okay, personally, I think that's half the battle--recognizing there is a pit and I am in it.  Now, I'm going to finish the book and see what Beth offers in the way of advice to get out.  I'll try and keep you updated on my progress.

In the meantime, let me suggest if you're struggling with a relationship, to get out of a particular situation, feel weighed down by some outside force, long for a brighter day, then get yourself a copy of Beth Moore's book and begin today to "Get Out Of That Pit" that is controlling your life.  BTW, as much as I've heard about Beth Moore, this is the first time I've ever read one of her books.  So, take that for what it's worth.  selahV

[Special thanks to my friend, Rose, who sent this to me for Christmas because I told her I planned to buy it.  It was a great surprise.]  

"Lessons From A Broken Chopstick" REVIEWED

I've always been fascinated with stories shared by missionaries.  Often I am challenged in my own walk with Christ as I read the personal sacrifices missionaries make to serve God around the world.  I've sometimes wondered how missionary kids (MKs), handle cultural changes, and how they grew in faith as a result.  Mary Anne Phemister is a missionary kid.  Her book, LESSONS FROM A BROKEN CHOPSTICK, surprised me.  Reading her "memoir of a peculiar childhood" saddened me; at times it angered me.  This book is a sobering revelation of how some missionary children can be the most sacrificed in a missionary's effort to reach a lost world.

Mary Anne chronicles snatches of her childhood memories that may break your heart.  The book seems a therapeutic endeavor, a search to understand her past and how it connects her to her present.  She survived a seemingly loveless relationship with a father, whose quest to share the gospel with an idolatrous world did not allow room to enjoy the blessings of God.  She cradled isolation, abandonment, and insecurity, as companions throughout a childhood fraught with hardships.  Shuffled from school to school, and left to the care of other missionaries and natives of China, she and her siblings adjusted to separation after separation from her mother and father, as her parents worked as missionaries in Asia.  These were not occasional separations; they were years of separation.

How did she cope?  The author shares several anecdotes that give insight into the diversions she had, and people from whom she gained strength, and comfort.  It reminded me of the verse: "Though your father and mother forsake you, the Lord will lift me up." Psalm 27:10

The author touches upon her mother's skewed understanding of a wife's biblical role as a helpmate.  She gives the reader glimpses into how her mother suffered spiritual and verbal abuse as a wife.  Phemister shares how her father ignored his missionary board's urgings to leave China when communists were taking over their province; this resulted in his family being placed under house arrest for 16 months.  Years later, he refused to follow the board's policy to leave Vietnam and was fired.  He literally abandoned his wife and family to preach to the lost in an Asian world. 

Chapter after chapter left me with questions.  As I waited for the happily-ever-after ending, I found unanswered questions and Mary Anne's resolve, "Many things in life I cannot fix, nor should I even try."  There is wisdom in that statement, and an unbreachable peace.

Today, Mary Anne Phemister is the wife of noted concert pianist, William Phemister.  She is a nurse, author, mother and grandmother.  In 150 plus pages, Phemister opens a place inside her heart, and reveals her struggle to understand memories lost, and memories never created.  She exemplifies a lady who rose above hardship, and grew stronger in her Christian faith as a result.

IS FAMILY HARMONY POSSIBLE?

Think about the most ideal family you know.  What are the characteristics you see in their actions that lead you to that conclusion?  Do they live in harmony?  Is everyone nice to one another?  Loving, kind, generous, and patient?  Do you find yourself longing for a husband as attentive as the other lady's?  A wife as humble and sweet-spirited as your friend's?  Children as obedient as another family?

I grew up in, what "experts" call, a dysfunctional home.  Mother abandoned my two elder brothers, myself, and Daddy, when I was just 3 years old.  Daddy married my step-mother when I was 5 and a half.  She brought two boys into the marriage from two previous marriages of her own.  Life was a hodge-podge.  It was hardly "ideal".  I often looked at some friends I had that had the "perfect" family.  I determined in my mind that I would have "their" kind of family when I grew up.  I believed it was possible to live without the heartache, turmoil, divisiveness, arguments, favoritism and jealousy that I grew up with.  *Ironically, the family I believed represented the most "ideal" in attaining this possibility was Pastor James Weaver's at the First Baptist Church in Triangle, Virginia.  I would sit in the back of the church, Sunday after Sunday, and watch them.  Their mother was so attentive to them, and they were always dressed so perfectly.  After church, I'd watch them skip happily across the street and enter the little brick parsonage and imagine how wonderful their lives must be.

These idealistic musings played a role in the difficulties I had in the earlier portion of my marriage.  According to FAMILIES OF THE BIBLE: How They Coped With Today's Problems), the "ideal" we imagine can be quite troublesome.

"The ideal home in which everything is harmonious and always pleasant is an exercise in deceit.  No two people can agree on everything.  When people live in close proximity--as they do in a family--strong feelings emerge.  Some means is needed to deal with them." p. 24.

The "deceit" I think I exercised with this "ideal" view of homelife was that all is always as perfect as the picture I had in my mind--all the time.  I left no wiggle-room in my mind for differences in taste, in dreams, in goals, in the traditions of extended families.  Nor did I take into account that I would not always like everything my husband did, or enjoy every aspect of homemaking.  I did not take into account that I could get tired, be pressured, and be sick.  I didn't allow for the fact that I, myself, could be disagreeable, rude, angry and apathetic at times.  The bliss of the "ideal" met with the brutal honesty of reality.  And as a young wife and mother, I was unprepared to "deal" with it. 

It took many years for me to come to terms with this--and the history of a dysfunctional childhood peppered with imperfections.  Even after I understood the role Scripture played in guiding me and my husband and children, I had a tough time admitting it was not always going to be blissful.  After all, I was not perfect, nor could I ever be.  I was a work in progress--and so was every single person within my immediate and extended family.

How about you?  Do you struggle with perfecting your family and making everyone fit into that perfection?  Do you know someone finding it difficult to accept the "ideal" is just that--an ideal?  If so, they might benefit from the book I've listed below.  selahV

[FAMILIES OF THE BIBLE:  How They Coped With Today's Problems, by Howard Hovde and Louis Moore, Hannibal Books]

* "Ironically" because I later became a minister's wife. 

A BOOK RECOMMENDATION by SelahV

FAMILIES OF THE BIBLE:  How They Coped With Today's Problems. by Howard Hovde and Louis Moore, published by Hannibal Books.

When I first thought of reading this, I thought it was probably another one of those books on Bible characters and families that simply gave you a Biblical account (which anyone can read in a Bible), and left you to consider the "moral of the story" for yourself. 

This is not that kind of book. 

Nor is it an attempt to translate and interpret specific passages, or fill one's mind with irrelevant facts.  It is written simply and gives simple situations with complex problems we face today.  There was not one single chapter in which I did not see myself, or someone I know, at one time or another in life.  Alongside Biblical accounts are illustrations of modern-day situations.  So many circumstances we deal with today were once dealt with by others.

These circumstances are reflected upon and help place the reader smack dab in the middle of Biblical individuals' turmoil and struggle.  Change, change and more change.  Moving.  Loss.  Grief.  Marriage.  Immediate and extended family influence.  Results of emotional, spiritual and physical upheavals.  Tests of faith.  Consequences.  It helps us imagine what they might have faced when they made the choices they made and how much family effects decisions and patterns.  The authors write in Chapter Four:

"We do know that much behavior is created, encouraged, and supported by a particular family system.  When change does occur, the whole system is affected.  But when change occurs, the system will do all it can to nullify the change and bring the family back to its original posture."

Then they offer in Chapter Five: 

"...One way to break the cycle of negative history is to learn everything possible about one's family (the family origin) and decide what you want to retain and what you choose to discard."

Authors Howard Hovde and Louis Moore do not claim this to be a work of "precise, historical scholarship".  However, I see the evaluations and observations they make from biblical families and relationships as extremely helpful for today's families and individuals--especially those who cannot understand how to fit their square peg into a round hole of extended family interactions.  It's seems it is a battle of wills at most all stages in life.  It's not easy to do, to be sure.  And that speaks more to the purpose of this book.  To me, it is examining where we have come from, so we can understand where we are and where we can go to live more productively and in greater harmony with others. 

If you want a way to connect dots with today's culture and biblical times, this is a great read.  If you want a book to give a young couple who is contemplating engagement or marriage, this is a good one to include.  If you know someone who is experiencing difficulties in marriage or family relationships, you'll find a bevy of insight in this little 119-page paperback.  If you wonder why you relate to others in life the way you do, then this may shed some light on the way you act and react to folks.

Suggested uses for this book include:  1) a study book for small group, or the basis for a Bible study.  2) assigned chapter reading for Christian mental-health professional dealing with family counseling.  3) a launch pad for Mom and Dad to use with older children in discussing family situations.   The authors make this ideal because of their inclusion of a section at the end of each chapter: "Questions to Consider".  I see it fitting in perfectly for a Discipleship class on Sunday evenings, or a Ladies book-study, or Single Adults study. 

I like it and will recommend it to our Minister of Education, my favorite counselor at the Christian Family Counseling Center, and several of my friends.  I may even do what the authors suggest and pass it around among my friends.

A few words of caution, though: Should you decide it is a book you'd like for a small group or discipleship class, I strongly recommend a mature spiritual leader as a facilitator.  This book could provoke some deep emotional thoughts and hit some areas of discord within couples, families or individuals within a group.  We are all at various stages of Christian growth and some flaws we may see in ourselves or others may need to be weighed carefully in public discussions.  selahV   

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