Thursday, October 13, 2011

A Sweet Surprise

So I told you that for a year God's been giving me the ol' Never Assume Anything test and mostly I've been failing, but oh! Lately I think finally I'm getting it.

At least I got it today.

See, I needed to drive to our local Dollar Tree store for various and sundry items and I caught myself thinking, "Hmm... too bad the books they have there are no good, because I'm really in the mood to buy another (cheap) book. But let's face it, if a book is at Dollar Tree, most likely it's there because nobody wanted it at a real bookstore. Maybe it should never have been written in the first place."

Of course, God jumped all over that. "Oh Debra.... you're assuming again. Why not go to Dollar Tree and expect to find a delightful book this time?"

Why not, indeed?

So that's what I did and wow. My oh my oh my. I discovered the perfect book!

Some of you may recall that I adored the dreamy quality of the essays in Thoughts of Home. Well, this new book, A Matter of Choice, is stuffed with essays, too, though these reflect what happened after people made decisions to change their lives. Or had their lives change without really having a choice. Even the rhythm, the cadence of the essays is extremely similar to Thoughts of Home.

Wow.  Perhaps you've noticed that my whole life has recently changed and well, now I've got this book of kindred tales from other folks, stories with lessons learned. And oy! I've read only the first two essays, but at the end of each I became a bit frantic, "No! No!Don't end it there. Tell me what happened next!!"

Happy sigh.

I'd begun to resent the ol' Never Assume Anything test, but lately as I've begun to accept it, learn from it and do the things I've learned, well, I'm changing my mind. And changing, period. And isn't that what it's greatly all about? Obeying God, allowing Him to change what's all so very wrong, and reaping good, life and attitude-changing things, instead?




*******************


Again, this new book is called A Matter of Choice: 25 people who transformed their lives. The essays were compiled by Joan Chatfield-Taylor. Read about it here at amazon.com where it costs only 1 cent (!) or you may want to drop by your local Dollar Tree and take a chance it'll be waiting for you.


******************


"Be it unto you even as you have believed..."  ... Matthew 8:10


********************

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I LIKE books with stories of REAL life!! That book sounds interesting!! Will have to go see if ours has it. Thanks for the tip!! It sounds like it could be most helpful as we face a rapidly changing world too...adapting is so necessary now.
Elizabeth in NC

Anonymous said...

WELL...could not find that book, but I did find 2 others, plus we got 4 Sudoku books (which we both enjoy doing)...so glad we stopped.
Elizabeth in NC

Debra said...

Elizabeth--so glad you at least found other good books there! :) I'm skipping around and reading different chapters with titles which interest me of Matter of Choice and am enjoying them much. Perhaps your library inter-loan would have that one? Blessings, Debra