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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Author Archives: Catherine Lawton

Mother Loss and Connection

12 Monday May 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in grief and loss, losing mom too soon, the healing journey

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Christian spirituality, future hope, life and death, Mother, Mother loss

Cemetery - near where my mother was buried

A resting – and remembering – and rising place

I have only visited my mother’s grave site a few times. It lies on a hillside, near sheltering trees, overlooking a river valley, facing the rising sun, three states away from where I now live. But those visits have reassured my soul and spoken to me in some mysterious way. I know she isn’t really there, not her spirit, not the essence of Mother. However, her body lies under the ground there in that grassy, flower-strewn slope. And when the Son of Righteousness appears in that eastern sky, she will rise there to meet him. Just being in that blessed place where that meeting will happen, and seeing her name engraved on that stone, touching and tracing her name with my fingers helps me feel a connection to her.

The loss of a mother, and the lasting connection to her, provides a theme that runs through literature and poetry. Reading these works can help us carry the burden, embrace the mystery, and release the emotions of the loss of Mother.

I just finished reading one such novel, The Messenger of Magnolia Street by Jordan River. In this book, the main character, named Nehemiah, returns to his hometown and visits his mother’s grave. There, surrounded by trees and flowers and gravestones, he stands before his mother’s burial place.

Nehemiah doesn’t know what else to say except, ‘Hi, Momma’ and ‘I miss you.’ He thinks about all the times he has needed her advice, all the times he’s thought he’d just reach out and pick up the phone and call her, but then, how silly was that? How many times he’d wanted to call her from Washington and tell her something to make her proud. … If there had ever been a time that he needed her sage words, he felt that time was now….

I can relate to this fictional character’s feelings, as I’m sure other contributors to this blog can. Treva, for instance, lost her mom to a violent, tragic event when she was a teenager. Ellen’s mother died just before Ellen’s birth. My mother died of cancer when I was in my twenties.

We hold and internalize their love for us and the wisdom they left us. And we cling to the hope that has been given to us. We are alive and we must live and carry out our purposes here. That’s what our mothers would want us to do.

Someday it will be our turn to rest — and rise!

~Catherine Lawton

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Inspiration for Your Journey ~ Only 99¢

10 Saturday May 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in encouraging each other, Mother's Day, the healing journey, Uncategorized

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Book for Mother's Day, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiveness

Journeys-on-Kindle

Announcement!

You can buy our book Journeys to Mother Love on Kindle for only 99¢ during the next three days.

This is our Mother’s Day gift to our friends and followers. If you already have the kindle book, consider buying it as a gift for a friend.

Click to Journeys to Mother Love in the Kindle store here: http://amzn.com/B00905EDSQ

Blessings on your journey.

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My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

19 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, grief and loss, Jesus on the cross, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Emotional and spiritual healing, future hope, God the Father, Healing love

I have felt forsaken, especially at specific times in my youth. During this Holy Week it really does something for me to know that Jesus also felt forsaken. What this means for all of us who have suffered and felt abandoned, writer Jasona Brown expresses well:

The Deepest Love

I agreed to speak on these words at our church’s Good Friday service.  Then I thought, What have I done? I now must teach on the worst words in the entire Bible?  Campion_Hall_Jesus

Jesus cried these words moments before his death, not long before he screamed, gave up his spirit, and died.

Exposure and Vulnerability

The Romans stripped Jesus of his clothes, exposing his body; they stripped him of his skin by scourging, exposing his sinews and muscles; but with these words, Jesus himself exposed his heart, laying it bare and raw before the human race. He could not have made himself more vulnerable.

So, I move forward with trembling. How can I presume to speak of the mystery of this most excruciating, vulnerable moment in my savior’s life?

Joy Under Despair

I must speak, however, not only because I said I would, but because the longer I sit with these words the…

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What to do with Sadness ~ Maundy Thursday and Good Friday

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in the healing journey

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Journeys To Mother Love

William Blake's Holy Thursday (1794). William Blake’s Holy Thursday (1794)

“Holy Week” (the week before Easter during which the last days of Christ’s life are commemorated) was not a term I grew up hearing a lot. In our family and church we celebrated the joy of Palm Sunday and the victory of Easter Sunday. But we didn’t have Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services that I can remember. Our denomination emphasized that we serve a risen savior and he has provided for us the grace to live in resurrection life, and I’m thankful for that heritage. Yes, the cross was sung about and preached about. I remember my father calling people to repentance and faith based on Jesus’ finished work on the cross. And all during the year we sang rousing hymns and gospel songs about the power of the cross and the blood. But Easter week was altogether a joyous experience of colored eggs…

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When Mother Love Must Be Tough Love

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in challenges of motherhood, childhood memories, God's healing love, rejecting lies, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Family, Finding our identity, Mothering, Women's Issues

Water Under the Bridge

A mother’s love may be tested and tried almost beyond endurance, until it has the opportunity to shine like gold refined in a furnace.

Such is the case with the mother described in the novel, Water Under the Bridge, by Verna Simms (Verna is also a contributor to the book, Journeys to Mother Love and this blog.)

Verna’s novel surprised me with its vivid characters and setting and its powerful themes. If you have read Verna’s short memoir in the Journeys to Mother Love, this novel will provide background that will give you even more appreciation for Verna’s personal story. While Water Under the Bridge is fiction, it is based on Verna’s experience as a child. I am sure the wonderful main character of the story, a nine-year-old girl named Amelia, is very much like our Verna was as a child.

What was it like in the early 20th Century, when a father converted to Mormonism, sold the farm in Missouri and moved his family to the dry desert of Arizona, where he found freedom to embrace the teaching of polygamy? As the family struggled to make ends meet during the Great Depression, what was it like for the wife and children to have their husband and father bring into their home young wives no older than his eldest children? What was it like for the young daughter to deal with conflicting feelings of love for her family, normal experiences of growing up, and yet increasing disappointment and disdain for her father … and finally fear for her own future as she overhears what her father has planned for her?!

Where should the wife and mother’s loyalties lie?

An unusual and profound story! In places it is, perhaps, not for the faint of heart. But if you read it (and it is available in both paperback and Kindle) you will be rewarded with a great read, an engrossing story, and a beautiful picture of tough mother love!

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Filling the Mother-Loss with Tangible Grace

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Adopted children, emotional needs, encouraging each other, generations coming together, God's healing love, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, the healing journey

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Adoption, caverns of the heart, Emotional and spiritual healing, future hope, Healing love, life and death, life stages

CG1girl

When your mother dies, especially if she is still quite young, you can feel forsaken and forlorn. And even when your heart embraces the mercy of these true words: “When my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will take me up” — there remains a mother-shaped cavern in your heart that reminds you every day of your loss.

But the Lord has shown me that He wants to fill that hole in my life with the most unexpected, beautiful gifts. I have been wanting to tell my readers about the wondrous gifts that have been coming to me. And I think it is time now. So, with a sense of Heaven’s nearness, a smile of awe, and a few tears, I’ll share the rest of the story….

This week my pastor concluded his sermon with the words, “Filling our imagination with Jesus, we increasingly live in touch with reality, while the whole world is out of touch with reality.” I know this is true. I’ve experienced Jesus working through my imagination to enter and heal the losses and wounds of my life. Our minds can believe all sorts of lies, and our hearts can be oppressed by darkness; but when Jesus steps in to fill a mind and a heart, light shines out the darkness, and loving truth dispels crippling falsehood.

You can read my story — of how Jesus “took me up” and healed my heart — in Journeys to Mother Love. Part of that story is that for many years I have lived with a mother-cavern in my heart since my mother died when I was in my twenties. Since Mother was adopted as a young child out of a large family fallen on hard times (during the Great Depression, her mother died of TB and her father left to find work) … and then, adopted, she was raised as an only child … I have had no relatives on my mother’s side.

Then, 18 months ago, after years of searching, I found my mother’s birth family — living within an hour’s drive of my husband and me! I found a cousin the same age as my mother who had been a toddler in the same home with Mother and always wondered what happened to little Imogene. At 83 she was the last of the generation that remembered my mother, Imogene. So I found her in the nick of time.

This new-found cousin, Mary Lou, was as thrilled to find me as I was to find her. We felt a bond immediately, and the mother-cavern in my heart didn’t feel so empty. And gradually I learned that she was a person of faith who loved the Lord and prayed for her family.

I treasure the times we spent together: visits in my home and in her apartment, sharing lunches together, looking through photo albums, finding so many ways our paths have intersected unbeknown to us, feeling her strong grasp of my hands, her kisses on my cheeks, hearing her heartfelt, “I love you!”

Then this winter she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Long vigils in the hospital brought my husband and me together with her children and grandchildren. And the heart-cavern of impending loss filled with cousins who enfolded me and I have found myself surrounded by family I never expected to have.

Last Friday night my husband and I stood with 16 of Mary Lou’s family members around her ICU bed as she lay at death’s door. We had each had opportunity to sit with her, express our love, and say good-bye. But the grief and sadness were creating a huge cavern of grief in the room, felt by everyone present.

Then this family, with tears, each at various stages of belief and doubt, gathered round the beloved mother and grandmother who had been their strong, caring, faithful hub and, instead of calling the hospital chaplain, asked one of her sons, who had been a steady church attender, to pray. I doubt the family had ever done that before. But as gentle, simple, real, heartfelt words poured from that brother (one of my new-found cousins, who has had much suffering in his life) grace like rain poured sweetness into the gaping cavern of sadness. Surely every heart, no matter how unaccustomed to praying, was touched. … How can sadness be so sweet?!

Soon after that I read my friend Jasona’s blog in which she writes, “I see loss, difficulty, and uncertainty as cavernous places, and I have hope that when we open them to Jesus he fills them with grace so they can become … like settings for diamonds.” (You can read her entire blog post here.) Jasona’s post came to me as another gracious gift that helped me fill my imagination with Jesus, helped me deal with the grief in a way that was in touch with reality — the realities of Life in the midst of death, Light in the midst of darkness, Heaven in the midst of our earthy lives, and the Wonders of God’s ways.

~ Catherine Lawton

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Generations of Blessing

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in generational patterns, God as our parent, Gratitude, importance of prayer, Influence of Grandparents, leaving a legacy, the healing journey

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a heart filled with love and hope, authentic relationship, Christian spirituality, Family, future hope, God the Father, life stages, Modeling the faith, Praying for our children

Grandchild-1A few years ago, when my daughter-in-law was pregnant with our first grandchild, I sat in church as she and our son participated in the worship team—David playing guitar and Hannah singing. I thought of the baby Hannah was carrying—just past her first trimester. I watched the parents-to-be standing before the Lord and the congregation pouring forth the praise, proclaiming their faith with all their energies, their hearts, their voices.

It dawned on me that the baby—who by now had formed arms and legs—would be sensing this devotion and somehow experiencing the glory and presence of God.

Gratitude and joy rose within me, and the Lord assured my heart that His hand was already on that child as it has been on past generations; that the devotion and faithfulness of the parents would bear fruit in the children, again.

When my mother carried me, she and Daddy—just 20 and 25 years old—were preaching and praying and singing and piano playing. Honestly, I think the “language” of music and prayer were the first languages with which I became familiar.

Twenty-four years later I carried David and, during those nine months, often sat at the piano playing classical music, church music, choir music, and quartet music. My husband was singing; we were often in the midst of praying. And though we had struggles within and without, our faith was bedrock, rooted in “the ground of our being,” deeper even than the dark, moist bed of new life, the womb.

And now it comes to me like a revelation that God is continuing His faithfulness, His friendship with us—to the next generation, to our grandchildren! What a reward, what a hope, what a comfort, what a joy!

Alone at home the next day, Monday, I thought on this again, and the Holy Spirit moved my heart to rejoice and weep and pray for this new life. A sort of sing-song prayer came to me, and I wrote the words out in poem form:

God Bless the Baby
~
Oh, sweet baby,
Little baby Lawton,
Baby, do you hear it?
Hear your mama singing?
Hear your daddy praying?
Baby, do you hear them?
Blessed little baby.
~
God bless Hannah;
Bless her little baby.
Let it hear the singing,
Hear her heart’s devotion;
Make the Maker real,
Present every moment.
~
God bless David;
Bless his little baby.
Let it hear the praying,
Hear the strong assurance,
Feel the Father’s nearness,
There for His baby.
~
Oh, sweet baby,
Little baby Lawton,
Baby, do you hear it?
Hear your daddy singing?
Hear your mama praying?
Baby, do you hear them?
God bless the baby.
~
Amen.

~

–Catherine Lawton

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A Season for Everything

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in challenges of motherhood, leaving a legacy, the healing journey

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a heart filled with love and hope, Christmas, Family traditions, future hope, Holidays

Christmas tree still standing on Jan. 4

The presents are gone but the tree still stands

This is the Saturday after New Years—the weather has turned cold, an Arctic blast has hit, and snow is falling outside. Inside I’m puttering, trying to catch up from the holidays, tending to various tasks. But I still haven’t taken down the Christmas tree and put away all the decorations. I guess there’s no rush. Instead, as I sort through old desk calendars, I come upon an diary that I kept when my children were very young. Reading through it consumes part of my day.

What a gift I gave to myself, and hopefully to my children someday, when I took time in those busy years—constantly on the run as a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, church worker—to record many of our family activities and some my thoughts.

On this same day 30 years ago—Saturday after New Years—this entry appears in my little diary:

“I took down the Christmas tree and all the decorations—organized them in boxes. Cleaned the house.

“Christmas is over for another year. I love the bright things in the house. But there is a season for everything. Now is the season to internalize the brightness, letting it motivate me to action. For the same Jesus whose coming we have celebrated, will come again! Then we’ll have a celebration that will make our Christmas festivities seem very dim in comparison.”

Regaining perspective, letting my soul be renewed, that is what this kind of day is all about.

And like the toy train chugging around the Christmas tree, the cycles and seasons of life continue.

~Catherine Lawton

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Growth Rings in the New Year

02 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, the healing journey

≈ 3 Comments

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Christian spirituality, Courage to be honest, Family traditions, Fish, life's upward path, New Year

Fishing with my parents as a girl

Showing off the little trout I caught, about age nine, with my parents at Big Sur, California, circa 1959

It’s January 2 and why am I thinking about fish?

Well, taking a walk down memory lane and looking through old photos, I find plenty of snapshots of my family fishing. My mother and sister and I followed Daddy down trout streams in the California coastal hills and in the high Sierras many times. Those are some of my happiest memories: jumping from rock to rock along crystal-clear creeks, collecting colorful pebbles, learning to hold my little pink fishing pole, savoring fresh-caught trout fried over a fire.

Now that my husband and I live in Colorado, we often see fisher men and women along city ponds, thigh-deep in cascading mountain rivers, and casting flies into high-meadow streams and beaver ponds. This winter, as lakes are freezing over, we’ll soon see ice-fishing huts.

Fish

Many times in my life I’ve considered the secretive, flashing beauty of fish, heard them slap the water when they jump, watched my dad snag and reel in silvery beauties, gut and clean the keepers, scrape off scales. Not until this year, though, have I looked closely enough to consider the intricacy of a single fish scale and what it has to teach us.

In her book, Unwrapping Wonder: Finding Hope in the Gift of Nature, Carol O’Casey explains:

“What intrigues me about fish scales is … the rings of a fish scale represent years of growth. Similarly, our lives are inscribed with growth rings. God desires to enlarge our lives, our territory, and our character. However, unlike fish, our greatest growth occurs during the darkest times. Can we depend on ourselves during this time? Forget about it. It is precisely in rough waters, and when our resources are exhausted, that we cannot depend on ourselves. Growth occurs on the rim of risk. You risk failure, disappointment, loss. You gain growth. Occasionally, God has to nudge (okay, shove is more like it) us out of our comfort zones to enlarge our rings.”

As this new year begins, I’m asking myself: How has the Lord been nudging me out of my comfort zone in the past year? What growth rings will I, as a result, carry with me into the coming year and beyond? Will I continue to cooperate with Him in developing my “scales” as both a protective covering and a display of beauty created by His presence and grace in my life?

~ Catherine Lawton

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Sorrow and Hope at Christmas

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Christian spirituality, Christmas, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, future hope, God's promises, Holidays, life and death, life stages, Mother, relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Ah, Christmas! Bright lights, hustle and bustle, joyous music and celebrations….

Yet, hidden behind all the glitter, many people feel the pangs of sadness and loneliness more acutely during the Christmas season. If you have ever experienced a great loss at Christmastime, the holiday season awakens that grief again each year.

I know. My mother died on December 19, 1977. My father was the pastor of a loving church at the time, and the people were sweet to us, though they also grieved the death of their beloved pastor’s wife. Our family found comfort in togetherness—my husband and I with our two toddlers, my sister, and our dad. After the funeral, we stayed and spent Christmas in our parents’ home, with everything around us to remind us of Mother. … But no mother. She was not there and would never be again.

At a time when we celebrated the birth…

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Mothers Weeping for their Children

16 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in the healing journey

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Journeys To Mother Love

English: child Jesus with the virgin Mary, wit...

Update: Dec. 2013 — Another school shooting — this time in my home state of Colorado — and it’s Christmastime again —and another mother’s child is dead. Reminds me of just a year ago when I wrote this as a response to the awful Sandy Hook school shooting…

How can a mother be consoled when her little child is taken from her? Perhaps a mother in Sandy Hook, Connecticut hurried her son or daughter to school that morning a year ago, with a little scolding and a few reminders and a quick kiss on the cheek … only to be informed a few hours later that her child has fallen dead with her first-grade class, victims in a senseless, bloody massacre.

How can any of us wrap our minds around this? Since it is Christmas, we listen for words of comfort. We usually only hear the beautiful music, the softness…

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“Thank You” ~ The Magic Word

28 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in the healing journey

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Journeys To Mother Love

candy dish

When my daughter, Christina, was small I took her weekly to Suzuki violin lessons. After an intensive hour of tuning, fingering, bowing, ear training, phrasing and  performing the musical pieces, the bow was loosened and the half-size violin securely closed into its case. Then the teacher, Mrs. Sloat, would pick up a cut-glass, covered candy dish in which she kept treats for her students. She held the dish in the air with one hand grasping the knob of the crystal lid. She bent close to the little pig-tailed girl, and her elderly face was a picture of captivating anticipation.

“What is the magic word?” she’d ask.

“Please,” said my daughter shyly but eagerly.

Then the lid was lifted off the candy dish and Christina was allowed to choose and take two pieces. But that wasn’t the end of the session yet. Mrs. Sloat held the lid in the air above…

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God Had a Plan!

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in challenges of motherhood, encouraging each other, God's healing love, leaving a legacy, reach out and touch, the healing journey, Uncategorized, when tragedy hits

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Christian author, Christmas, Christmas stories, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, life stages, life's upward path, mentors, personal and spiritual growth

Alice-72-rgbThe Lord took Alice’s artistic ability, love of the Bible and interest in people, and her life experiences, and He turned it all into a ministry of encouragement through her creative writing.

A.R. (Alice) Cecil, one of our Journeys contributors, always enjoyed the arts. As a child, she put on plays in the basement. As a university student, she earned a masters degree in Fine Art doing studio painting. But God had another plan! Alice says that, as a young adult, the visual arts gave her a way to express ideas and emotions. She adds, “I did not have enough life experience and maturity to be a writer. My journey from painter to Christian writer could have only been orchestrated by God.”

When Alice and her husband, Joe (a well-known physician at Baptist East Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky), started a family, Alice read to her young children often. And she came to appreciate children’s literature so much that she was soon writing her own children’s books and illustrating them. Gradually, though, the bits of text that ran across the pages of those picture books grew and grew until she was writing full-length stories.

Then, 26 years ago, after their fourth child was born with cancer, Alice and Joe came to personal faith in Christ. The Lord brought a new focus to their lives.

After her conversion, as Alice grew as a Christian and as a writer, she wanted to incorporate the truths of the Bible into her writing. She hungered to better understand both theology and human nature. Alice lists several Christian writers who greatly influenced her during this time: Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Watchman Nee, Oswald Chambers, and C.S. Lewis. She also sought out mentors: a Christian psychologist and a seminary student earning his doctorate.

A strong desire grew within her to minister within the body of Christ through her writing. For a while she wrote a newspaper column. Then in 2012 her short memoir, “Run, Run, as Fast as You Can,” was published in the anthology, Journeys to Mother Love: Nine Women Tell their Stories of Forgiveness & Healing. This story tells Alice’s testimony of the relational challenges in her childhood as well as the sorrows that led a young mother to turn to Christ.

Alice has raised her four children and now has four grandchildren as well. Through all my communications with her she exudes joy and peace and patience (the fruit of the Spirit). And her writing demonstrates these fruits. This fall, her book of Christmas stories was released by Cladach Publishing, entitled That Was the Best Christmas!: 25 Short Stories from the Generations. Asked where she gets the ideas for her fascinating variety of characters, plots, and settings, Alice states that they develop from her desire to address certain aspects of the human condition with God as the answer. An endorsement from Judy Russell states it well: “A.R. (Alice) Cecil has a real gift to inspire and tug at heartstrings. Young and old will be inspired and enjoy.”

Christmas-Cover-Web-Lrg

Each of the Christmas stories is set amidst historic events that take place during the years progressing from 1906 to 2013. The main character of each story is a boy or girl, man or woman whose heart opens to give or receive love, bringing personal transformation as they find opportunities to exchange the true gifts of Christmas, such as kindness, encouragement, forgiveness, peace, hope, and belonging. Alice (A.R. Cecil is her pen name) writes with a touch of humor and a warm understanding of both human relationships and the transforming power of God and His Word. That Was the Best Christmas! by A.R. Cecil is available in The Living Word bookstore in Louisville as well as through select stores across the country and online retailers. The paperback can be purchased at Amazon.com and BN.com. You can also read it in Kindle version.

To read Alice’s (A.R. Cecil’s) writing is to feel her heart and to be refreshed in faith and the joy of the journey.

~ Catherine

p.s. I based much of this post on Alice’s answers to interview questions I sent her. You’ll hear from Alice herself here soon, as she is preparing to post her personal testimony.

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Unleash Power and Potential

23 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in challenges of motherhood, encouraging each other, frustration to freedom, the healing journey

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Christian spirituality, Germination, Parenting, Seed

Seed capsules of Strelitzia nicolai

Seed capsules of Strelitzia nicolai (Photo credit: Tatters)

“Life with a biologist for a mother is never dull,” declares Carol O’Casey, author. “Consider the day I helped my then ten-year-old son Michael connect the dots between an orange and its seed. As he painstakingly struggled to remove each seed from the orange he was about to consume, he innocently wondered out loud where seeds come from and why oranges had to have seeds. Warning—don’t ever ask a biologist ‘why’ without expecting an in-depth explanation. I shared with Michael the literal definition of a fruit—the ripened ovary of a seed plant. Bad idea. The word ovary shuttered snack time and ended conversation. Michael’s taste for fruit soured for a solid week before his love of food triumphed and he was able to move beyond Webster’s definition. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

Carol O’Casey—mother, author, scientist, pastor’s wife—goes on to unwrap the wonder of seeds—using biology, literature, personal experience, and scripture—and applying this to the believer’s life of faith. She concludes, “Often times, in order for us to blossom into the abundant life God has in store for us [just like the potential in the seed], we must accept our own spiritual brokenness—just as germination requires the seed coat to be broken. …

Carol-author-color-webCarol O’Casey

“Have you settled into dormancy? Are you lacking the life-giving water necessary to initiate the germination process? Do you long for an abundant, seed-coat-busting life? Abandon your dry and routine life to him. Risk heat. Risk exposure. Risk growth. And take heart. Jesus tells us, ‘Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds (John 12:24).’…

Mothers, whatever your age or that of your children, take Carol’s words to heart:

“Allow God to unleash his power in your life. Dream big. Grow great. Sprout where you are planted. And live. Abundantly.”*

~Catherine Lawton

*The quotations above are taken from the book, Unwrapping Wonder: Finding Hope in the Gift of Nature by Carol O’Casey. Copyright 2013. Used by permission.

Wonder-cover-smThis book can be purchased at http://amzn.com/0981892981

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To Our Followers: THANKS and a TIP (Free Book Drawing)

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Gratitude, the healing journey

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Tags

Christian novel, Gadly Plain, Gratitude, life's upward path, mother love

I and all the contributors to this blog appreciate everyone who has chosen to “follow” our posts by clicking the link on the right of this page. We want to say,

 Thank You!

Here’s a tip for all our faithful followers:

The publisher of our book, Journeys to Mother Love, is holding a drawing for free copies of their new releases during their 2013 “Fall Book Fling.” This week the drawing is for the Christian novel, Gadly Plain. I wrote a post about this book a while back. The next drawing will be for Unwrapping Wonder: Finding Hope in the Gift of Nature. After that, copies of three audio books will be offered. Last but not least in the Fall Book Fling will be That Was the Best Christmas! by one of our Journeys to Mother Love authors and bloggers, A.R. (Alice) Cecil.

Click here to enter your name in the current free-book drawing. Check back regularly and enter each drawing during Oct – Dec.

We hope you’ll continue to journey with us. Together we’ll share experiences of healing and forgiveness in our relationships; encourage each other, as we share heartaches, challenges and joys; and learn and grow in our capacity to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love others as ourselves.

~Catherine Lawton

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  • arcecil
    • The Imperfect Job of Mothering
    • Storing Away Christmas ~ THE GOD BOX
    • Who Am I?
    • THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT
    • STAIRCASE TO A BETTER PLACE AND TIME
    • What? You Can’t Stop Crying
  • ardisanelson
    • A Mother’s Day Gift to my Sons
    • Sharing our Stories in Community
    • A Grateful Lesson in Letting go of our Children
    • The Blessing of ‘Imperfect’ Children
    • “You’re Just Like Your Mother”
    • A Journey to Brother Love, Part 2
  • Catherine Lawton
    • We Come Trembling
    • New Beginnings
    • Living Wounds
    • Loneliness
    • What? You Can’t Stop Crying
    • Faith in the Birthing Room
  • finishingwell2
    • Mom’s Cooking
    • Always a Mother
    • Postscript to “Finishing Well”
    • Perfect Parenting
  • good2bfree
    • A Mother’s Legacy
    • Grace to Broken Mamas on Mother’s Day
  • guestmom
    • Forgiving Yourself — and Your Children
    • If Your Child is a Prodigal
    • Helicopter Mom, You’re Creating a Draft
  • Kerry Luksic
    • The Gift of Faith
  • kyleen228
    • Dreading Mother’s Day
    • “Mom-ness”
    • The Power of Sharing Your Deepest Secrets 
    • Adopted Siblings ~ A Special Closeness
    • Walking In Faith Through Adoption
    • Honesty about Our Struggles is the Best Way to Help Each Other
  • lorittaslayton
  • Christina
    • Grandma’s Apron
    • Much Ado about Nothing but Love
    • Mother Love
  • vernahsimms
    • A Letter to Mom
    • A Gift of Flowers
    • A Game of Love
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