What My Book Says About You

Most readers are familiar with the idea that a book says a lot about the author. Unless you’re a reading machine who devours books the way some devour gummi bears and never bother to think about them as you go, I suspect at some point you’ve read a passage and wondered what the author had to go through to come up with that idea. At least, I hope you have. It’s OK to think about a book as more than a story.

I maintain the first book an author writes is a therapy book: meaning, intentionally or unintentionally, we write it as part of our own therapy. I may think this because I trained as a marriage and family therapist and tend to view the world through that lens (relax. It’s a strengths-based lens and I’m looking for what’s right with you, not what’s wrong).  I will concede – grudgingly – that the first book written may not be the first book published, but I suspect it is more often than not.

Staring At God

It should surprise none of my readers that I am a verbal person. My college years were spent learning therapeutic communication. My learning style is primarily auditory (which means I rocked at lecture classes). I think in words, not pictures, and certainly not emotions.

I have, at times in my life, been at a loss for words. Generally bad times. The most vivid was the year I spent so angry at God all I could say to Him was The Lord’s Prayer. I said it sullenly, but I said it. I was like those disciples who remained after Jesus’ hard teaching turned the crowds away. “Where else can we go?” they asked. “Only You have the truth.” I don’t like you very much, but You’re all I’ve got, so I better stick close, you big meanie. OK, that part wasn’t in the Bible story, but I’m sure some of them were feeling it.

I’ve Got My Towel, Not That It Will Help

It is officially July. That means in a very short time I will be having a birthday. No, I’m not telling you the exact day. (And Diane, if you blab, I will hurt you.) I dread that day. It has nothing to do with me getting older, though. Truly. I’ll tell you right now I’m turning 42. See, not painful at all–and actually kinda cool that my age will be the answer to life, the universe, and everything .

So why do I dread my birthday?

Remember Arthur Dent’s stroke of bad luck in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?  Yeah, my birthdays pretty much go like that.