The Help

Last week was Thanksgiving and I had a pretty busy week. Monday & Tuesday I had to work. Tuesday night my family went out to dinner for my parents' 50th birthdays. I took the day off Wednesday to make a Turkey for a family my sunday school class decided to help out for the Thanksgiving Holiday. Thursday was Thanksgiving. And I spent Friday, Saturday & Sunday taking care of Michael, who got a cold, putting up the Christmas tree and finishing laundry.

I guess since I had a lot going on I couldn't really get settled enough to start a new book. I was lucky enough to have some time at the beginning of the week to finish The Help. This book was recommended to me and at first I wasn't sure if I was going to like it. I didn't really pay much attention to what the book was about but thought I'd give it a shot. And I am so glad I did. It took me a few pages to get into the book, but once I did, I could not put it down. I was completely drawn into this story of black maids in the 1960's and the white women that employed them. I've seen plenty of movies and heard about racial segregation in the 1960's, but I've never considered

it from this point of view. I can only hope that if I had lived in this time, I would have been brave enough to stand up for what is right. I did not want this book to end. But it did and as I read the last few pages I could not help but notice the tears rolling down my cheeks.

I finally picked up another book to read last night: Last Kiss. Its been on my shelf for a while and I need to get some off to make room for new ones I seem to accumulate pretty quickly.

The Blind Side

I did not grow up watching a lot of football and therefore did not find a great deal of interest in it. As I got older, the interest I did take in it was mostly just because I noticed everyone else around me taking interest. I can vividly remember sitting in sixth grade science, the teacher being a Tennessee football fan, reviewing by way of a game set up to be a lot like the way a football game works: each team had four chances to get the answer right before having to forfeit their turn. And I could just not wrap my head around what a 'down' was. Even after several people in the class, the teacher included, tried to explain it.

Football for me was just something that would allow, every once in a while, a bunch of people to get together and hang out. Even in high school Friday night football was just to go and hang out. I paid attention mostly my junior year when we made it to the state championship, but it was hard not to get caught up in that excitement. I don't think I really started to really pay attention to football until sometime in college and it was an off and on thing.

After I started dating my husband my concept of football really changed. College was really all I watched. And it was really just Tennessee football. Pro football became something I loved to watch because my husband plays fantasy football. I think if I had to choose between college and pro, I'd choose pro.

If you don't like football, this book might be a tough read. It is a great story about a black kid from one of the poorest parts of the country who finds his way into the home of rich, white family and how it changes his life. It will tug at your heart strings. What makes this book interesting (and probably pretty boring to some people) is that it seems to take two entirely different pathways: the first being history and evolution of pro football, the second Michael Oher's (pronounced 'oar') life and shows how, against all odds, they happen to converge into one.

If you can muddle through the history side of it, the story of Michael Oher's life is truly worth reading about. And if muddling through the boring stuff doesn't sound appealing, then definitely check out the movie: The Blind Side.

Picture Perfect

I started reading this book about two weeks ago. It usually doesn't take me this long to read a book, but I had some school things, like finals, to finish up. I love reading this author. She writes on hard subjects but her stories are so captivating, I always get drawn in.

PIcture Perfect is about a woman who finds her the love of her life in the middle of Africa. She is there for work and happens to have the right expertise to consult on a movie set. There she meets her future husband, the star of the movie, and begins her life living out a fairy tale most would be envious of. But things are not as they seem and soon her fairy tale turns nightmarish.

On to finish my next book, The Blind Side. The movie comes out this Friday and I am looking forward to seeing it!

Two Sides

One of my latest reads (along with a few of my friends) was 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Overall, I am a fan of this author. She writes on some hard subjects & I absolutely love reading books that make you think, that make you experience real emotion instead of the surface emotion.

19 MInutes is about a boy who, after years of being picked on, walks into his high school & starts shooting. Not long after I started the book I read online that the mother of one of the shooters at Columbine was going to be writing an article in Oprah's magazine talking about her point of view. I kept meaning to get it when I would be out at WalMart or Target and just never did.

I finally picked it up this week and sat down to read the article. Its maybe 4 pages, as opposed to the 455 pages in the book, & I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I ended up being just that has the amount of similarities in the long book & the short article.

You always, always go straight to feeling for the victim & the victim's family. And how can you not?Suffering a tragedy like Columbine... as much as you felt that to your core as every other high school student in America, how much more did it hurt to be there? But how many of us consider the flip side? How many wonder how devastated the family of the shooter feels? Probably not very many. I can't imagine losing someone that way. To love someone so much & not see how much they hurt inside. To wake up one day to find that you have no explanation for the actions of someone you love & on top of that the whole world is looking at you like you did something wrong.

There are two sides to every story.

Books on Ipod

I have been listening to some audiobooks on my ipod recently - I listened to The Shack on my way to North Carolina a few weeks ago. It took almost the whole trip there and back, but I finished it. I have started to listen to Mercy by Jody Picoult - its 17 hours long. Its going to take me a while to get through this one.

I love the idea of listening to a book - I love to read so I discovered this week that while I did the dishes and laundry I could just listen away. The only draw back is that you have to listen to the same voice for however many hours and on top of that, the narrator is using different inflections for different characters. So listening to a male narrator do a female voice or a female do a male voice can be a turn off. Which leads me to wonder if I would be capable of doing a better job. Which leads me to this memory...

The summer before my senior year of college my family and I went on vacation. We went with some family friends. We were going to a quiet little island off the gulf coast of Florida. A week of sun and sand. The catch was we would not be staying in a hotel or condo or house. We were basically going to be camping on this island for a week - as in take your own food, no hot water unless you boiled it and cold showers in a shower stall on the side of a bath house. I know most everyone will be thinking that this is NOT AT ALL what you call a vacation. But I will say that I like to camp. And going to this island sounded like an adventure.

Well.... let me tell you it was not the kind of adventure I would sign up for again. It was hot. There were mosquitos everywhere. We would go through a whole can of bug spray a day. The beach was not a beautiful sandy beach - but more of the broke up shell kind. And it stormed BADLY almost every night.

Maybe its because when you have a bad experience the good parts stand out even more, but one of my favorite memories has come from that trip. I took a few books to read that week and I'm not sure if it was during one of the bad storms or just a moment when no one had anything better to do, but at some point I picked up a book and started to read it out loud to everyone. And for whatever reason, everyone decided to listen. So throughout the week everyone would gather around and listen as I read more and more of the story until I finished. I didn't use different voices for the different characters. I don't even think I changed the tone of my voice depending on the situation. I just read. And people listened.

I have not found a narrator of a book that has reminded me of that moment. The book I read was The Five People You Meet in Heaven and it was a great book. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it yet.

Feels Like Home

I think it would be amazing to be able to travel around the world. I can think of several handfuls of places I would like to go. Often I will see a picture of or hear someone describe a place and find myself wanting to go. Maybe even with just a small bag and a camera to capture incredible moments. I am about to go on a trip to see my sister in North Carolina and one of the things I am looking forward to (other than actually getting to see my sister) is the drive through the mountains. I am praying the leaves have already started to change into brilliant shades of reds, yellows and oranges. I'm not much of a photographer, and I'm hoping to change that soon, but I plan on having a camera ready in case I do get to catch some of those beautiful colors.

But as I am going through my head all the things I need to remember: tickets to a speaker we are going to see, what clothes I need to pack and some things I need to take to my sister so she will have warmer clothes for the coming months, I can't help but feel a little sad. This has been a busy week and I have not gotten to spend that much time with my husband. And now I am leaving for 3 days. I can't help but get that feeling that creeps up after I have been gone for just a little too long: longing for home.

Because while there is a huge world at my fingertips, I know there is a beauty in being home. Especially when most everyone you know and love is there. And while there is a huge part of me that wants to embark on adventures, I believe there is just as big a part that enjoys finding the beauty that is all around me. The things we see everyday and sometimes miss. And finding those things over and over again, for what feels like the first time can feel like home.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true. We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

....This is not something I wrote but read somewhere. And it absolutely floored me. It was part of a story about saving a girl from all the wrong things and showing her the right ones. I found in reading that story that I wanted the courage to step out into this world and make a difference in it. Not in a huge way where everyone might know who I was, but in a way that would change people one life at a time. I hope that my life is on a journey to becoming a person such as that.