10: Esther: It's Tough Being a Woman

For the past few months, a few ladies and I have met on a somewhat regular basis (usually weekly) for Bible study, this time focusing on Beth Moore's study of Esther.  What a time this has been!

Moore is simply gifted.  Her studies are so well researched; just a well of knowledge each member book is.  From being born for "such a time as this" to learning that God's name is never mentioned in this book of the Bible to coming to a deep understanding that He truly is all over every page, chapter, verse.

Designed as a five-day, individual study and followed by a video, this allows time for that in depth study.  Okay...yes...at times I got behind!

I simply loved the affirming that we are born for the moments God is preparing us for.  Esther, an orphan, a niece...and then a queen, had to have often felt overwhelmed yet still at such peace knowing that she was doing what she had been born to accomplish.

Tonight, we begin our next Beth Moore study...Breaking Free.  Our group is growing.  May they each be blessed as I have been.

9: The Prayer Box

I started this novel today...and read until I had finished it.  Just that good.

Lisa Wingate's The Prayer Box is about just that...80+ prayer boxes left behind by Iola Anne Poole and discovered by her tenant who has been asked to clean the house while legal issues are resolved concerning the house's ownership.  What a powerful idea:  prayer boxes.  More information here from the author about prayer boxes.

Main character Tandi and her children, running from a past and to a future, arrive in Rodanthe with little and gain a family, a background, a bond.  As Tandi works and reads the prayers, she grows into herself, finding grace, finding the desire, the strength to reveal yet save what meant so much to Iola Anne.

Wingate tells two tales via the genre of letter writing.  Via this letters, the reader takes Iola Anne's journey.  These are some of my favorite lines:

Yet amid all this, there is the water of grace...All in need of the water of grace from one another and from you...There is so much good.  So much grace.  So much pouring into the river.  A quiet water, this river of grace.  Its work done in ways that do not seek attention.  Yet it is there.  Always there.

Many lessons to learn from this novel; lessons that I want to experience, for I want to become a prayer box owner myself.

Upon completing the novel, I discovered the existence of a novella that goes back in time and sets the scene for this novel.  Now, I have to have it and the rest of the novellas and novels in this series!

8: Three Good Things

This past Monday, while on a trip to take our Student Council to their district meeting, we stopped at the mall, and I, of course, never left the bookstore.  While there, a lady asked if I were looking for anything specific.  When I replied that I was just looking, she picked up this book off the shelf and suggested I read Three Good Things.

Author Wendy Francis takes her readers into the lives of two sisters, a bakery, and challenged loves. Both missing their mother, sisters Ellen and Lanie, close and supportive of one another, share secrets...well, most of them.

While getting to know Ellen, the reader also learns about kringles, or, at least, I did.  This pastry sounds tasty...glad the recipe was included in the final pages of the novel.  This bakery, often a means of therapy for Ellen, provides the door through which several of the minor characters are introduced, as well as the man that just might hook Ellen's heart.

I enjoyed the storyline, quckly learning that character development is a strength of this writer, resulting in our visiting the lives of three of the main characters...both the sisters and Lanie's husband Rob, which was interesting rocking back and forth and seeing their marriage through the lenses of both spouses.   All of these characters I liked as I enjoyed getting to know them, happy when their lives began to reconcile as I had hoped.

Wendy Francis' next novel The Summer of Good Intentions releases this July.

Happy reading!