I started reading this book this morning...  Straight Up by Lisa Samson and could not stop until I turned the last page.  This book left me wide-eyed with ponderings that are still spinning around my head like leaves blowing down the street on a stormy afternoon. 

Today was a drizzly, dreary...  typical Northwest day; the perfect kind of day for curling up with a cup of hot tea, my favorite fleecy, purple blanket and a brand new book! 

To start off, the cover of this book with its autumal hues of red, orange and green called to me from my desk as soon as my feet hit the floor this morning.  The book arrived in the mail several days ago, but I was waiting for Saturday!  Ahh...  and I have never been happier for a drizzly, grey-skied Saturday! 

I heated up my hot pack for my cold toes and settled in for a good, long read!  Everytime I stopped reading I couldn't get Georgia and Fairly out of my mind.  What about Sean, Georgia's estranged husband?  I wonder what will become of Clarissa?  (That was my favorite part of the story...  the mystery within the mystery!)

The best way to sum up this book's central theme is that self-pity will lead you to a life of deep pain, confusion and even self-destructive behavior while the only way to deal with the pain and trials of real life is head-on with a selfless abandon to life with Christ.  Then and only then can we be who  God made us to be and bring hope and life to others around us.  The Bible says it best in Mark 8:35 : 

"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it.    

This book paints two women who are seemingly, hopelessly shallow.  But as Fairly quips at one point...  though people see her as a birdbath, she is a well. 

This book made me think a lot about my childhood dreams, who I am in Christ and making peace with the troubles that I encounter in this life.  It also brought me to pondering about what lives I may be touching in ways that I will never know this side of Heaven.

I don't have many opportunities to read fiction (though I do love to!) and I really enjoyed a long, cozy, introspective, rainy, reading, reflecting day!  This is the first Lisa Samson book I have read, but I assure you, it won't be my last! 

(Many, many thanks to my sweet husband and children who happily fended for themselves while I indulged this entire novel in half a day!)

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