To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Thank you.

Thank you for all of the sharing and liking and subscribing that you have done over the past week. I’ve gained quite a few subscribers, and am grateful.

Let me tell you more about why I wrote this book.

As I wrote in last week’s post, my book is the story of how my sister-in-law, Kristina, battled breast cancer and lost, and how God met our entire family in the middle of it all. 

People learn best through story. Suffering is common to all who live on this earth, and I want to weave a beautiful story that unravels and reveals meaning.

I wrote a story that is honest and vulnerable about the ugly things in this life so that people can see themselves and can, through Kristina’s story, learn about who God is and what He does in the middle of our collective story.

Too often, people in our churches are afraid to be honest about how hard suffering and death can be, perhaps out of fear that they will be thought not faithful enough, perhaps out of fear that God may not come through after all.

If we are to be healed and comforted, however, we must be vulnerable with each other and with God about how dark this life can be.

This is why I wrote The Color of Hard. To tell a story that will help people heal. Not only people who have suffered from breast cancer, not only people who have watched a spouse suffer and die, but all who are on a journey through pain, whether that involves their own physical pain or the pain of watching a loved one suffer.

Will you help me to tell this story? The more you share this post, the more subscribers I get, the better my chance of being able to publish this story and help people heal.

The prize this week is a beautiful print with beautiful words created by a shop called Salt Stains. Go visit their website at https://www.etsy.com/shop/SaltStains and decide which print you would love to have adorning your home.

If you already subscribe to my blog and have followed me on Facebook and Twitter, you can still enter to win this prize! Just scroll down to the contest form and click on the entry tabs to let me know that you already subscribe.

And again, thank you.

Second Giveaway

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

I wrote a book.

That is surprisingly difficult to say in so public a forum. I haven’t told very many people, yet here I am telling the world.

It’s a frightening and vulnerable thing to offer up your words to a critical world. Yet I feel I must at least try.

I wrote a book that was hard to write and is hard to read, but it contains a message that is desperately needed in this world of ours.

This book of mine is the story of how my brother’s wife, Kristina, battled breast cancer and lost, and how God met our entire family in the middle of it all.  It is the story of pain and loss, of how to reconcile the heart of God to the reality of how dark this world can sometimes be.

I named it The Color of Hard.

I wrote a book and I need your help.

The thing about books and publishers these days is that publishers want you to have lots of people who love you and will therefore most likely purchase your book before they will even think about agreeing to publish said book.

Translation? Subscribers. Lots of subscribers.

Which is where I need your help.

If you haven’t already, will you subscribe to my emails? Will you follow me on Facebook and Twitter?

Will you share this with all of your friends and help me get the message out? I would be most grateful.

And I will give gifts!  To sweeten the deal (although I know you would help a girl out anyway), I am going to give something away each week for the next four weeks. You can enter via the contest form below.

In the coming weeks, I will tell you more about my book so that you can know what I’ve been working on for so long.

Last of all, thank you.

First Giveaway