Recommendation/Book Review:

Thin Places, a memoir by Mary E. DeMuth is being released today by Zondervan Publishing. I had the privilege of reading an advance copy.
It isn't a book for everyone. But if you've had a life of heartaches, Mary's search through her past may take you to the “thin places” also.
She removes the multi-layered masks of her life so you, the reader, can see how her heartaches of abuse, abandonment, addiction and more are in the on-going process of God's healing love. She calls the “thin places” those “snatches of holy ground, tucked into the corner of our world, where we might just catch a glimpse of eternity. They are aha moments, the beautiful realizations.”
It is not a happy-ever-after book in the sense of being sugar-coated with total, instant healing. It is a long, winding road of hope, as she puts it: (of) my titantic struggle with God's love for me...He loves me, this I know. And yet I struggle. Because I don't measure up. My mind says yes, but my heart says,”He will love me ONLY IF I...”
Sound familiar? It did to me.
Mary's deep love of God flows throughout her unforgettable story. It may be just what you need to give you hope... to bring you closer to the Lover of your Soul.

"Little Ones to Him Belong"

Recently I watched an elephant family on PBS &, if I learned nothing else, I learned that you don't mess with a baby elephant. Not only will the mother come to its aid, so will all of the adult females. When a baby is in danger the female adults surround it like the covered wagons pulling into a tight circle when under attack.

A friend just put a poem on her website called "Listen to the Weeping Child" I encourage you to read it AND to act upon it. Go to http//:www. mariane holbrook. com (leave out the spaces) and click on home then poetry.

I want to mention that there are all kinds of abuse- physical, sexual, emotional- that can forever damage a child.

Here is a true example:
Being short has been a handicap in many ways, but one day, while shopping, it was an asset. I was hidden by a rack of coats & overheard a conversation that made me bristle with anger. The mother was trying on coats; once she found the one she liked, I heard her say, "You know what to do, but wait 'til I get a couple of aisles away."
A small voice replied okay.
As I came out from behind the rack, a pre-school aged child began crying and running down the aisle- in the opposite direction of her mother. Clerks quickly came and attempted to calm this distraught, lost child. It didn't take much imagination to realize that the coat would be taken out to their car and the mother would return for her lost child. It also was apparent that this wasn't the first time this ploy had been used.

Guess you could say, I became as angry as a mother elephant. I ran to the child & told her bluntly to turn off the crying. Told the shocked clerks to call a manager or security a.s.a.p. as a coat was being stolen. At first they hesitated, but thankfully someone picked up the phone. The child, having been caught, stopped crying to say an unkindly word to me, but I still was going to protect her.

To steal is bad enough. To teach a child to help you is reminiscent of Dicken's Fagin and his pickpocket boys.

Folks, there are times we need to circle the wagons, to become like mother elephants. Please, don't look the other way; don't think that someone else will do something.

That day I stopped an abusive mother; no one interceded for me when I was a child.

Selah-

No "shalom" today, Connie