A Good One

'Twas the night before vacation and I was at Walmart....

The kid had asked for a book so I was in that section. You may or may not know this about me, but I'm a bookworm really bad! Once I pick up a book I can't put it down. I'm like the robot on the bad 80's flick "Short Circuit". If you know the movie you'll understand the reference "Ahhhh...input!" And... oh how I love to pick up a book. So, anyways, I was at Walmart in the book section. I thought to myself, "Self, you should get a book."

I feel I must take a moment to explain my method of book pickage. For the most part it hasn't failed me. That could have something to do with the notion that I'll read most anything.....anyway.... the first criteria when hunting for a good fiction paperback (yes, there's a difference for hardcover, but I won't bore you with that today.) is cover art. The good thing about the Walmart book section is that generally the covers face out. This makes the process much easier. This part is much harder at the library. The second part of the process is to read the synopsis on the back. The third and 4th parts of the process have to do with general storyline and reviews. On this particular trip, though, I zeroed in on one pretty quickly.

I finished it last night. It was really good. It should be a movie. It would make for a really good chic flick! Now... with that said.... it's written by a very secular author. Toward the end especially it had lots of very colorful language. I don't use that kind of language, ever. It was, however, warranted given what was happening in the story. I don't condone it but definitely understand it.

The book was ultimately happy and sad. It contained lots of dysfunction but was really honest and I believe very realistic about how life goes for those that don't have the Lord in their lives. I wondered at the end if the author has had lots of experience dealing with very callus so-called "Christians" who haven't the foggiest notion what an actual relationship with Christ is like. I would love for her to come to a saving knowledge of the Lord. She's a gifted writer. I could get really excited about nonsecular books written by her.

Anyway... I wanted to share an excerpt. It's so very good and ultimately relateable to the masses.

"I was standing in that place they call 'bittersweet'. That place that, if you could find it on a map, would be the mountain that sits between happy and sad. And I thought about how when you stand on that mountain, you can almost feel God's hand on your head and you just know, deep down inside, that even if you don't understand everything that happened to cause those mixed feelings, you still know there was a good reason for them happening."

I just love it. I feel like I've stood in that place they call "bittersweet". That's exactly how I feel right now about my children. I'm happy to have my family. I'm also very sad that the price for my new family was the utter destruction of another family. Though the destruction of that family isn't my fault, I'm sad for my children because even though their home life was bad, there was love there. DNA runs deep and there will always be a piece of them that doesn't belong to me. Sometimes that's really hard to stomach. The hardest part is that there is practically no one who understands. Adopting older children is emotionally difficult. The larger percentage of people who adopt choose to adopt a baby or a very young child. Unless you've walked the path that we've been on since 2/29/08 you can't understand. There aren't any words that lessen the emotional weight of it.

Sorry... I didn't mean to go all serious all of the sudden. That excerpt just really struck a cord with me. There are a couple of other excerpts too that are probably worthy of mention. "Bittersweet" though... that was good stuff. I call that particular book pickage a success.