Review of All the Wrong Places by Sandra Sanchez

http://pagereadersbtr.blogspot.com/2011/06/all-wrong-places-review-by-sandra.html

The "D" Word: Reading Recommendations

Here are a couple of books I've read on the topic of Divorce and The Step-Family.  They've helped me immensely, though I'm a huge advocate of taking what you like and leaving the rest.  I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but all of it helped change my perspective on many things.  I will add links to Amazon so that you can read a bit of each with more thorough descriptions and reviews.

The first is titled The Smart Step-Family, by Ron L. Deal.


Deal, a family life minister and licensed MFT, looks at every aspect of step-families in the context of a relationship with a forgiving God.  It's practical in that he covers many issues faced by step-families everywhere, including the "sea of opposition" facing them, roles in the family, ex-spouses, co-parenting and letters from step-families who "are making it".  It was encouraging and convicting.









The other book, Divorce Poison, by Dr. Richard A. Warshak, gives advice on how to recognize and respond to alienation in its many forms, from bad-mouthing to brain-washing, in order to salvage the parent-child relationship.  This book offers tools on how to stop reacting and start making a positive change in the relentless cycle of poisoning.  Again, this book was very encouraging as well as convicting.

The "D" word...

Divorce
I know why God hates it.

It hurts just to write it.

It's so much more than custody and property and minor's counsel. Though I have to admit, it was quite cathartic to write those courtroom scenes and that miniature minor's counsel into my novel, All the Wrong Places. The truth is that at the end of the day, none of it matters. The war wages on no matter who is made to pay attorney's fees, no matter who gets the better schedule, because horribly torn and broken people are grasping at anything that might promise an ease to the pain. Children are used as leverage, reality becomes relative and insanity ensues. Casey is fleeing from her dark and destructive marriage, but she can't escape it entirely. I know too well. Sin has its price.

Have you ever seen that paper and glue demonstration? You glue two pieces of paper together and give them an hour or so to set. Did you cringe when they were pulled apart, piece by piece, never to be whole or recognizable again? I did. But I had already been torn to pieces by divorce by the time I saw that demonstration in a marriage conference. Yes, a marriage conference. I had already taken a vow once before, repeating blah, blah, blah, blah, you may now kiss the...figuring I'd give it a go. I mean, it seemed like the logical choice. I must have blacked out during every mention of God or worse or poorer or sickness, and definitely the "till death do us" part. I had bigger worries on my mind. Like the baby I would be bringing into the world in short order and the life I might assemble in desperation to offer it. It seemed like the right thing to do. "And the two will become one..."

For a while anyway. Two years tops. That life I had assembled was falling apart. The lies I had glued it together with were too glaring to ignore anymore. Things got lonely, ugly, scary...things got downright life-threatening. The foundation of sand upon which I had built that marriage was sinking. Lies, infidelity, drugs, alcohol, violence. It seemed every evil found its way into the cracks of the empty promises I had made that day at the altar. It was over before it began. Doomed. My paper was torn into shreds. That baby would be torn too, again and again.

There I sat, years later, in a marriage conference, engaged to the most amazing man I know, feeling like the biggest liar and the biggest failure. When they said God hates divorce, I heard, God hates you.
But I told that lie to shut up, yes out loud, because I knew from experience that wasn't true. When I had finally handed that failed marriage over to God, desperate and dying, He had taken my pieces and had begun putting me together again. As I grew more comfortable on my knees and began giving him more and more of my devastated life, He would fill void after void with peace and love. Sounds happy, happy, joy, joyish doesn't it? Well, that process took years and it wasn't a pleasant thing to behold. I grieved over every sinful and selfish choice I had made. I grieved over the carelessness with which I had approached marriage. I grieved over the damage it continued to wreak on my daughter. I would have to make amends for that damage with patience and love even when I wanted to point the finger and attack with wild rage. In time, a long time, I began to feel His healing, and to my amazement He blessed me with another chance.

I was terrified.


With patience and skill you can glue together those pieces of shredded paper. It's exhausting. But if you hold that reassembled paper up to the light you can still see its scars. The light shines through because in the places it was torn, the paper is thin and weak. Those scars still glow and ache today. The fear of failure throbs when life happens and I lose my faith.


God gave me another chance and quite a challenge. But he gave me a partner who knows my pain, who shows compassion and picks me up every time I stumble. We have what is called a "blended family". Sounds p.c. doesn't it? Pretty Cool? Well imagine a bunch of scared and broken people having to trust each other after the hell they've lived through, blaming each other for the life they can't have anymore and the life they do. Imagine all of the years of hard work they put into building that trust with a solid foundation of God, walls of tolerance and love, a roof of reliability and security. It's fragile. Now imagine all of that being undermined by people who don't want it to stand. People whose wounds are torn open again and again every time they see it grow stronger. People who don't know any better than to start fires and throw bombs. People who don't know God. That's the reality of many blended families. That's the reality of ours.

It sucks! Sometimes.

But I remember the rock on which I stand and it helps me to hold on tighter instead of letting go and running as far away as possible.

I didn't give God a chance to heal my first marriage, but He's promised to bless this one because I've given it to Him. Give Him yours.


God hates divorce, not the divorced.

I've missed you...

It's been a while.  And by a while I mean five months.  Literally, my blog tells me that my last post was in August.  But much has happened since we last spoke.

If you haven't heard lately, I wrote a book.  And if you haven't heard lately, then you don't log on to Facebook much or you nixed me as a friend because I've been haunting you all with announcements of its debut on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Google Books.  Don't worry, I'll send more :)

It all started about six years ago in an English class at CSUN.  Oh the days of English class...in an actual classroom.  These days I'm relegated to the online "classroom" where you miss out on all of the face to face debate and pounding of chests, oh and the nodding off of your classmates.  I just loved watching others struggle to stay awake, head dropping an inch or two before they awakened quite startled, looked around and slowly but surely closed their eyes again.  But don't feel too badly for me.  One of my students was actually snoring in class this morning.  But I digress...

So the assignment was to write a short story in which you develop a character and some other fancy and insightful direction, but I don't remember the rest of the details.  I just know that a scene had been replaying again and again in my mind.  A woman is driving in the night and it's raining, the kind of rain you only experience outside of L.A.  She has a young daughter of course, but her daughter is asleep in the backseat.  This woman is crying because her marriage is over.  She's crying because she has nowhere to go.  Crying because she doesn't know who she is anymore.  She's reached that moment of crisis when you realize just how small and powerless you really are.  I wasn't sure how her story would unfold, but I knew one thing.  I knew where it would begin.  I too had met with that moment of crisis.  I too was once lost.  I too had felt the significance of my insignificance.  I knew that my character would have to fall to her knees and look in the only direction we can in that moment.  She would experience the freedom of powerlessness, the unfathomable peace of spiritual awakening, the fulfillment of agape and the hope of new life.  She would trudge that promising road, filled with fear and uncertainty, but I would give her what I was given, a new kind of family to carry me through it all.

It's still fun to watch the reaction of people when they come to terms with the fact that really, I'm not kidding, yes, I really did live in a mortuary.  And if you know me at all, you know that I love irony.  I speak its language.  I tease that it's God's way of reminding me I'm not in control.  So to have my character find new life while surrounded by death just seemed natural.  And I get to share a few of the fascinating and gruesome details of my experiences along the way.      

Visit my website for a peek at the first chapter.  rebeccafisherbooks.com

Do I Look Like My Dog?

Research by UCSD suggests that I do.  Resemblance appears to be greatest between owners and purebred dogs.  Maybe if I was squinting...or 1/4 my size or...

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/6241

Below is a link to some pretty funny pet/owner look-alikeness.

Please share your pictures!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=642qxehEcGg

Self-Circumcision

Is not the topic of this, my latest blog. I simply wanted to see how many men I could get to my blog using this word. Why do men grab themselves and cross their legs trembling in fear when they hear this word? Maybe they’ve heard the story of Abraham, who was commanded by God, at the age of 99, to circumcise himself…in public. He did try to negotiate his way out of this one by the way, unsuccessfully. Who could blame him for trying?


But again, this is not the topic of this blog. Stick around fellas. There’s an article I’d like you to read before you continue.

http://twilightsingapore.com/2010/07/10/twilight-news-real-estate-tycoon-tom-barrack-colony-capital-llc-deconstructs-twilight/

So we woke up around 7am, an unspeakable hour when on vacation; ate the egg whites, sourdough toast, bacon and o.j. provided by room service and headed over to Budget rent-a-car (I don’t know if this is their official name). We got quite a deal through our concierge and after a few calls to Amex and Travelers confirming insurance coverage, we were ready to cruise…in the PT Cruiser.

We had all the maps we needed to get halfway around Washington state and a date with a Ferry in an hour. I’ve never before driven a car onto a boat, but let me just say, it was rad (as my generation would say) or stupid (as I’ve heard this generation say). Either way, it was friggin cool. I felt like singing “A Whole New World” from Aladin as I looked out into the Puget Sound, but figured I’d save that for the Olympic National Park…or Forks. The Ferry food, again, not to be confused with Fairy food (which is briefly described in Fool Moon by Jim Butcher) was surprisingly palatable. If you’ve read my previous blog about our Ferry to Victoria, you remember that I assumed all Ferry food to be created equal, and I was very, very sadly mistaken.

We drove off of the Ferry in Bainbridge Island and began our two hour drive to Port Angeles. It took this long because in that there neck of the woods, the highway lines are maintained. And boy were they maintained. We waited with everyone else for that line to be re-painted.

Why were we driving to Port Angeles, a small and less-than-impressive port town? Well, because Bella bought a book, was harassed by drunk, crazy men and saved by a stunning, young vampire there, that’s why! And boy does Port Angeles do all they can to profit from their debut in Twilight. If you've done any research on the topic, you know that NONE of the movies were filmed in the real Port Angeles, nor was any of it filmed in the real Forks. Various locations in Oregon and Vancouver served as replicas of these towns.

As you walk the handful of streets in Port Angeles, you follow a map, provided by the town, to all the different locations Bella stumbled upon.  There’s actually a store (Dazzled by Twilight) dedicated to the book, selling everything you could possibly put Edward and Jacob’s face on.  Don't leave your children unattended.

I ran into Carlisle and Jacob there and the rest just stood in the windows looking pale and concerned. The department store where the girls went for dresses, actually went out of business before the book could save them. There were some really creepy alleyways and a couple of bookstores, but more importantly, there was the Italian restaurant (Bella Italia) where Bella and Edward had their first date. Also, just down the road is the movie theater frequented by the teens of Forks. We had a seriously delicious mocha from The Veela Café, unfortunately not mentioned in any of the Twilight series. Well, after taking a handful of photos and feeling a little disappointed by the blahness of the town, we got back in the cruiser and started on our way to Forks.  

 

Having made the drive from Port Angeles to Forks, I couldn’t imagine wanting to see a movie badly enough, or needing a dress I couldn’t knit myself or craving Italian food desperately enough to make that kind of a drive more than once. But then…we drove into Forks. There is really nothing there. I used to think Bella’s mom was a real piece of work, leaving Charlie and all, and then I walked around that town for an hour and thought, I feel ya, sister! Sorry Charlie. I’m outta here! The people and businesses of Forks have undoubtedly benefitted from the whirlwind of traffic created by the books, but I have to say, the people living and working there seem a bit indignant about the presence of Twi-Hards (or as my neighbor calls us, Twi-Tards). Sure they make $40 a head on disappointing tours (which we opted NOT to do) and sell who knows how many burgers a day at Sully’s drive-in, but really, they seem somewhat insulted. And to be honest, it is quite a disappointing little town. Good thing vampires and shape-shifters are around to spice things up. Oh wait, that’s not real. Well, they always have Port Angeles. The good news is, the profit brought in by us loony outsiders has allowed for the remodeling of the school!

On our way home, we stopped in Sequim, a sweet, small town between Port Angeles and Bainbridge Island. They have lavender farms all over. I wanted to run through them with my arms stretched out like Julie Andrews. I settled for some pictures. We also drove up to Port Townsend to stroll around. I would highly recommend this port town over Port Angeles. It reminds me of Carmel with it’s quaint little shops and the sounds of cranky seagulls overhead.

I must say that the best part of that day trip were the views of the Olympic mountains and the unbelievably blue waters at their base. I could drive for days with those views outside of my windows.

For the fellas, I hope you enjoyed the article provided earlier. I know some of you have secretly enjoyed the Twilight Saga. For the rest of you more-than-macho men, though you might imagine it to be, I doubt it’s worse than self-circumcision. Give it a try…the books I mean.

Utter Contentment

Kitty Meow Bartholomew Fisher saves his hunt and catch craft for the wee hours, saving his days for sun-bathing on every available surface.  I love this cat.