As I mentioned previously, I read An Unlit Path in two installments… the first one in the car, using a penlight, on the way home from Chicago last weekend, and the second one late Monday night when I should have been catching up on my sleep from a grueling weekend! In between those two opportunities to read, I scoped out Deborah Hannah’s website. The picture you see here shows Deb, her husband Joe, and five kids. Hmmmnn, I thought, I am reading about a family that has four biological kids, an adopted sib group of three, and an adopted sib group of two. That makes nine kids… Halfway through the book, she was already down one, so that makes eight. I had a feeling things were going to go south in the last half of the book, resulting in a family portrait that showed five kids… but I still hoped the missing members were simply unavailable for such an important photo shoot. You see, that’s how we moms of tough kids think… My head tells me those kids are not in the picture for some really serious reasons, but my heart prefers to assume they simply couldn’t be there… but wanted to! You’ll have to read the book to see what happened.


But just to make sure you do go get this book, let me share a few more of my favorite passages. Continuing on from my quote of yesterday, this piece reframed my perspective on the Big Picture…

I struggled with that in my relationship with God. I had prayed the same prayer since I was a child—that He would use me, that He would find purpose for my life—and yet through the pain, heartbreak and shame I saw none. I still had not accomplished anything on His behalf. In my brokenness, I continued to pray. God spoke to me yet again in another dream. This time I was walking with Him on his journey to Golgotha. I was weeping because I did not want him to bear the pain. He looked at me and said, “I never wanted you to bear that pain, but it was yours to bear as this is Mine.” When we arrived at the terrible place where I knew He would be crucified, He said to me, “Simon from Cyrene helped me carry this cross. His gift was no less valuable because our journey still ended at this place or because he couldn’t change what was about to happen. His gift was his gift, and it bore its own purpose. Your gift is only your gift, and even though the outcome is no different, the journey was.”

OK, are you crying now? Keep the Kleenex handy, because the next installment is even tougher…