Finding Grace - Excerpt
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Note from Donna
"Finding Grace was years in the making. I fully blame my husband. He kept after me for years to write this story and I always found other work to keep me busy. As I began speaking more and more and telling this story it became obvious that countless people share a similar journey. My agent Jen then got on the bandwagon and would ask, "So, when do you want to talk about Grace?" After they tag teamed me and an episode of Oprah (you'll just have to read the book) I knew the time had come to write this book. You may recognize yourself in the pages or someone you love but when you finish the last page I hope you understand more about grace, the most powerful gift that can change your life. "
Donna
Epigraph:
Lord, I suffer much. I cannot tell You what goes on inside of me, I cannot hide from You these dark battles, the deep despair. When God breathes on man, He opens his inner being and sees deeply within it.
Victor Hugo, French poet and novelist
Chapter One
We moved to our home in Medina, Ohio in the spring of 1970, when I was three. My brother Brian was seven and got his own room, the green one with the short, shaggy dark green carpet. I shared a room with my sister, Mary Jo (we call her Josie…like Jocie, not Jozey) who is nearly ten years older than me. We got the baby aspirin orange room with the orange shag carpet and my parents got the all purple room. The family room was pink, the living room blue and the kitchen had bluish-green patterned indoor-outdoor carpeting and avocado appliances. The house screamed 1960’s!
There were a few homes on our road but it was mostly farmland. Our split-level house had a long, black top driveway, huge front lawn, brick front, a white barn in the back that would hold my dad’s tractors and gardening equipment and over an acre of land behind the barn for a garden that could feed most of Medina County (my parents never believed in small gardens). Our neighbor Mr. Lake also had a garden behind his barn. Bud Lake had a round chest that was slick as a watermelon. It actually glistened on hot summer days when he worked outside. When we met Mr. Lake for the first time I whispered to my mother, “That man doesn’t have any hair on his chest.” She tried to shush me but I was three and lacked whispering skills. Mr. Lake believed in using manure for fertilizer. He’d haul in a huge load from somewhere and let it percolate inside his barn before he used it. His garden always smelled crappy but it was lovely.
A dairy was just up the street and Mr. Lake walked to work there every morning with his lunch pail in hand. Sometimes (but not nearly enough) he’d bring home a package of ice cream bars and hand them to me. Life couldn’t get any better than on those free ice cream bar days. One morning as I played in the driveway I was talking to myself, weaving together an outlandish tale full of colorful characters, intrigue and drama. I froze when I saw Mr. Lake peering from behind one of his trees, listening to me. “Go on,” he said. “I can’t wait to hear what happens.” Stage fright hit me and I couldn’t utter another word. I ran toward our garage door and heard Mr. Lake laughing from his yard.
Across the road was a pasture full of cows for the dairy and right next to us was an old farmhouse where our other neighbors lived. For the sake of this story I’ll just call them the “Taylor’s.” Theirs was not a charming farmhouse in any way. The exterior hadn’t been painted in years and what was left of the old paint fell like curly, white pencil shavings around the house. A distinct odor of aged, rotting wood, cigarettes, and filth met you before stepping onto the porch. My mother was and is a no nonsense woman. She and my father both grew up in east Tennessee working on farms that fed fifteen children in my father’s family and five in my mother’s. My dad’s oldest sibling, my Aunt Stella was born the same year as my maternal grandmother, Mary Hurley. As Grandma Hurley grew, got married and began having children of her own, my Grandma Payne was still giving birth to her fifteen children. When she died in 1972 her death certificate claimed she was just worn out.
My mother was always very practical (as I write this sitting at a plastic folding table I know the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree) and called things as she saw them. On more than one occasion I remember her looking at our neighbor’s home and saying, “Move next to a dump and you live next to trash.” I didn’t know what she meant.
When we moved to Medina my mom worked at the latex factory, the flower container factory and then later, the box factory. (My sister eventually worked at the pickle factory.) My mother settled on cleaning homes as a business because she could set her own hours and be home when we got off the school bus in the afternoon. My dad worked second shift in one of the steel mills in Cleveland; the same one he’d worked in since he moved to Ohio in 1955 and ultimately retired from forty years later. At night I’d fall asleep in my mother’s bed and when my dad got home in the early morning hours he carried me to my orange room. I never remembered a thing.
After I learned to read I would crawl into bed with my mom and read her stories. Mother would come home from the factory and make dinner for my siblings and me, maybe do a load of laundry or scrub a spot on the indoor/outdoor kitchen carpet before turning in each night. I’d rifle through my books or the ones we’d picked up at the library and read one after the other out loud to my mother as she fell asleep. I’d look over at her and think, “Why are you so tired?” I’d read till I got sleepy and then turn out the light, thinking about new books to bring home.
George and Tess Taylor lived next door to us with their five children who were all much older than me except Tom, who was my age. Sometime after our move I walked across the field that divided our homes with my mother and met the Taylors. Tom was in the yard playing with the family’s shaggy, bounding yellow dog. “I’m Tom,” he said, pounding the dog’s side. “And this is Ziggy, the butt sniffing dog.” He smacked the dog’s muzzle back and forth and took off running. Ziggy chased after him and pushed his snoot into Tom’s rear end, hoisting him into the air. “That’s why we call him a butt sniffer,” Tom yelled, laughing.
“Stop doing that to that dog,” Tess said, taking a drag off her cigarette. “You’ll turn him mean.” Tess had a mess of reddish orange hair and the longest toenails I’d ever seen in my life. She was wearing sandals (no way those nails could fit inside a shoe) and an orange jump suit with a belt that tied in the front. Although it was the seventies I can proudly say that my mother never owned a polyester jumpsuit. Tess was down to earth and warm and called me Sugar Pop most of the time.
Tom had dark hair and eyes like his dad, his brother Kevin and his sister, Cindy who had enormous breasts. Of course the hugeness was accentuated by the lack of bra she often excluded. As Tom and I played in the back yard one day he stopped, doubled over and vomited right on his feet. I ran to the house to find Cindy. She was on the front porch, ironing. Her breasts swayed from side to side as she moved the iron back and forth over a shirt. “Tom just puked,” I said.
“He did what?”
I couldn’t remember the other word for puke. My mind raced: It was a grown-up word, what did it start with? Hurry. Hurry. Oh, I got nothing. “He just opened his mouth and all sorts of chunks flew out,” I said. She jumped off the porch and I couldn’t believe that whatever was under her t-shirt was actually attached to her body. She helped Tom to the porch and went back to her ironing. I watched in silence then finally asked, “Do you have water balloons under there?” She reared her head back and laughed. I didn’t know if that was a yes or no.
I don’t know where George worked and I don’t think Tess did anything more than smoke cigarettes and paint her toenails. I’d often catch her slathering on a new coat of candy apple red when I’d be playing at their house. I’d look down at those ugly, glistening nails when she was finished and wonder if she took the skin off George’s shins in bed each evening. These were the things that kept me up at night. That, and why Tarzan didn’t have a beard.
I never really got to know the oldest siblings, Marty and Tabitha. They weren’t interested in me and I don’t remember having a conversation with them. Kevin was in the middle: younger than Cindy and older than Tom who had long, greasy hair and a dour personality. “There’s just something about that kid that I don’t like,” my mother said time and again. I didn’t like him, either but I didn’t know why. He’d never done anything to me and like his older siblings; he never paid attention to me but I hated it when he called Tom a little shit or piss head and I wondered why George or Tess didn’t make him stop. Cindy was definitely my favorite of Tom’s siblings. She gave me a piece of candy any time I asked for it and that made her tops in my book. After a while I learned to ignore her great, heaving breasts and love her for the buxom candy dispenser that she was.
Tom was either at my house in our giant sandbox making what he called “butt butt trails” or I was crossing through the field to play with him and Ziggy. My mother was at the grocery store one afternoon when Tom came over to play. We wandered into the barn, a place my mother had told me countless time I “had no business being in” and climbed on top of a huge oil barrel with a lid. I was pretending to be a bus driver when my weight collapsed the outer rim of the lid and my leg fell down into the barrel. I screamed as sharp metal broke the skin on my thigh, just above my knee and my leg was immersed in oil. To this day I don’t know why my dad had a huge barrel of oil inside the barn but he did and I took a bath in it. I tried to pull myself out but couldn’t get a good grip; my hands were too slippery. Tom yanked on my arms till I was able to hoist myself up and over the rim.
A dark mixture of oil and blood streamed down my leg and I grabbed one of my dad’s barn rags to wipe it off. Tom found a rag and began wiping as well. I was a bloody, oily mess and my mother wasn’t home. I sat on the barn floor and pressed the oily rag onto the cut, waiting for it to stop bleeding but it wouldn’t. Tom pushed the rag harder into my leg as we waited. With my vast medical knowledge of boo boos, I quickly surmised that I needed a Band Aid. I stood and bent over, holding the rag in place as I made my way to the house and down the mudroom stairs. I took short, quick steps through the family room, careful not to drip oil or bleed onto the pink, shag carpeting and climbed to the middle of the stairs that led to the kitchen. My teenage sister was sitting at the table, eating. “Donna needs a band aid,” Tom said, standing beside me.
“What for?”
“She scratched herself in the barn.” I felt the blood soaking through the rag and pressed harder before I bled on the blue stairs.
“Let me see it,” Josie said.
“I don’t want to come upstairs,” I said. “Just throw a Band Aid down to me.”
Josie got up and saw the rag I was holding to my oil streaked leg. She took me into the mudroom and cleaned me up, using a clean rag to stop the blood. “By the time you grow up that scar will be two inches long,” she said. It’s not, by the way. When my mother got home from the market she was told by the doctor that it was too late to put stitches in my leg because it had stopped bleeding. Later that night she said, “I told you you’ve got no business playing out in that barn. Guess you learned the hard way.” Parents always fall back on that.
After I fell out of the apple tree (the same one my mother told me not to climb) and broke my arm my mom said, “Guess you learned the hard way.” After I fell down the stairs (the ones my mother told me not to run on) and broke my other arm my mom said, “Guess you learned the hard way.” And after I broke my first arm again trying to jump over a lamp on the end table in the family room while watching The Carol Burnett Show (the lamp my mother told me to stop trying to jump over) my mom said, “Guess you learned the hard way.” I never got to finish that episode of The Carol Burnett Show.
My days were filled with as much play time as I could pack into them. There were plenty of trips to the emergency room but I had fun getting there. That was still the time when mothers told their children to go outside and play and called them inside at dark to take a bath. If there were problems in the world, I was unaware of them but that would change.
*****
When I was five or so Tom ran into his garage and I followed. I hated the Taylor’s garage. It had a dirt floor that had turned black from what I imagine was junk car oil leaks and of course it smelled. There was always that pervading smell anywhere in the Taylor’s house. Kevin was working on his dirt bike. Tom knew all the right buttons to push with his brother and in a flash Kevin was on top of him, smacking him in the head. The whole beating each other up thing was foreign to me. I’d never seen siblings all-out slug each other but the Taylor’s did it on a daily basis. Tom squirmed and screamed and Kevin let him go. “Get out of here you little shit,” he said, kicking Tom’s leg. Tom laughed and we turned to go. “Hey,” Kevin shouted. “Come here.” Tom stepped to him and Kevin pushed him away. “Show me your crotch,” he said, looking at me. I had no idea what he meant.
“What’s that?” Tom asked.
“Your vagina, you idiot,” Kevin said, looking at me. I still didn’t know what he was talking about. He lunged for me and pulled down my shorts. He held them at my ankles and I fell, yanking up my underwear. He laughed at me and I scrambled to my feet, running after Tom again.
In my mind I assumed that Kevin was just being a jerk. He was always a bully and a tormenter to Tom and I thought that’s what he was doing to me. I didn’t tell Tess what he did. I didn’t even tell Cindy and when I got home I didn’t tell my mother because she might not understand that Kevin was just being an idiot and because of him she might not let me play with Tom anymore. It made perfect sense to me at the time. We always replay scenes in our minds of what we should have done and in those instances we always say and do the right thing. It never happens that way in real life.
*****
Tom picked all the best places to hide. His house was full of tiny doors that led to a small attic or crawl space but I never went into them. They were dark and smelly and in my mind I always imagined that there’d be rats or snakes in those tight, damp spots. Tom would creep inside one of those small doors and wait for me. He could wait for what felt like hours as I traipsed from room to room looking for him.
I was five or six-years-old and hadn’t entered kindergarten yet when we played hide-n-seek one stifling day. I don’t know why we chose to play inside on such a warm day but I heard Tom running through the hallway above me as I counted then I heard Kevin yelling. “Get out of here piss head!” The door closed and I heard Tom scramble further down the hall. I tiptoed upstairs and pulled open the small attic door at the top of the landing. The attic spaces in the house had long lost any sort of insulation and a blast of heat hit me in the face. Slivers of light streamed into the space and I shut the door. Tom wasn’t in there. I looked behind the door of the girls’ room and crept to their closet, swinging open the door. Kevin’s door was open and as I walked past I noticed the room was empty. I went into the bathroom at the end of the hall and snatched back the shower curtain. Tom wasn’t in the room at the end of the hall, either so I knew he had to be in Kevin’s room or that creepy little attic entrance inside his room.
I crept into the room and waded through the clothes and debris on the floor toward the attic door. I reached for the handle when I heard the bedroom door close and lock behind me. I turned to see Kevin; his pants were open. In an instant he grabbed my arms and pushed me to the floor, holding me down. He laughed at me and pulled my face toward his naked body. He laughed louder and I tried to get up to run home but he held me down, pushing my head hard into the floor. I lost all feeling. No one burst through the door to save me. The walls didn’t crumble on, the floor didn’t swallow up, or a bolt of lightning strike down what was happening.
I never discovered where Tom was hiding that day. I think he was probably crouched down inside that attic and stayed there long after I left. I don’t know how long I was in that room or remember any details of how I got out the door. I have no memory of walking home or what I did once I got there but I do remember knowing that what had happened was wrong and that I should never talk about it. So I didn’t.
Ever.
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Book Description
Author Donna VanLiere has inspired millions with her holiday stories. Now, she delves into the deepest places of her heart to give us the story of her own life.
This is the powerful and often humorous story of one woman’s journey of broken dreams. It is the story of how a painful legacy of the past can be confronted and met with peace. Finding Grace is a book for anyone who has struggled to understand why our desires—even the simplest ones—are sometimes denied. It is a book for anyone who has questioned where God is when we need him most. This is the candid telling of one woman’s unlikely road to motherhood, and the undeserved gift which is life itself. Simply put, it is the story of finding grace.
Donna VanLiere has written an inspirational memoir about coming face to face with your deepest heartbreak…only to discover your deepest joys.
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REVIEWS
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A Novel Menagerie reviews Finding Grace
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 The Story...
This is Donna’s story about finding God’s grace in her life. It’s Donna’s story from childhood to motherhood. This memoir is a beautiful story that I have found is best told in this moving short film below. There are no words that I can write that can more accurately or beautifully describe this book. I highly encourage you to take a few minutes for yourself and watch it… (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSblSxj1CGM)
The Review...
One of my life-long best friends is adopted. I recall us searching for and eventually finding her birth-mother only to discover that the genetics that she shared with them could never measure up to the love that she shared with her true family… the one that she was adopted into.
I also know several mothers who have adopted their children. They have always known and truly believe that their children were destined to be theirs. I couldn’t agree more and these are some of the best mothers I know.
Donna VanLiere had every hope and every dream of a certain life and becoming a mother. After a childhood that included sexual abuse, she meets the man of her dreams and is fortunate enough to marry him. Her story takes the reader from the childhood dreams to her adult dreams of having children with her husband, Troy (who, by the way… sounds absolutely wonderful). However, after a tragic miscarriage, the couple is inexplicably faced with infertility. She questions God and tries to find his grace in her life as she craves from the depths of her soul to be blessed with children. Eventually, she does find that grace in the form of three beautiful children, two adopted from China and one from Guatemala. But, more than God’s wonderful grace in these three children, she finds peace and grace in the entirety of her life. How she discovers it, she shares with the readers of this heartfelt book. I couldn’t be more grateful for her moving words.
Here are some of the great quotes from the book to give you an idea of just how good this book is:
- “… The author of Ecclesiastes says God has set eternity in our hearts. Our lineage is both human and divine, making us not the presumed earthlings on a spiritual jaunt but rather spiritual beings on a human journey.”
- “… Augustine said God gives where he finds empty hands. My hands were full of plans and dreams that I had determined to make happen. I had no need for God or his help so I had no need for grace. I was still too young to comprehend that someday my strength would be inadequate and if I wasn’t careful I’d miss the great understanding of that.”
- “… The Boyfriend’s parents didn’t realize that it’s our human plight to be imperfect and that it’s right there in that imperfection that we receive grace, and that’s how we come to know God better.”
- “Every moment we walk this earth, I believe our soul is guiding us toward something greater, something beyond ourselves, while our reasoning pulls us back into something less, building upon the sands of that Leo Tolstoy called the unstable house of brief, illusive life. The conflict always remains but the choice is ours.”
- “I realize now that the eloquent, yet sometimes brutally honest language of the arts has a way of penetrating the deepest places of our soul.”
- “The person who emerges from the pain is either stronger for it or strangled by it.”
- “The problem with unfulfilled dreams is that they give us tunnel vision; we focus on ourselves, and that can be a depressing and discouraging place to look. Self-absorption is abusive, unforgiving, critical, intolerable, disappointed, angry, shameful, and always impatient.”
- “She wasn’t born through my body but in my heart - where grace is always birthed.”
On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale”...
I needed this book at this stage in my life! Donna’s story is one that brought me inspiration and reminded me that I have to be open to God’s grace in my life in whatever form it is given to me. It may not be the way that I envisioned it and planned it, but His plan for me is greater than I can ever dream up myself. I pray for patience so much and it’s still one of the biggest hurdles I face. I know that God is working on me and is preparing me for the greatness that will be the legacy of my life. This book helped remind me of that. For the genre Non-Fiction:Memoir/Spiritual, I am going to rate this book a 9 OUT OF 10.
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 mis(h)takes Reviews Finding Grace
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I'm not a very religious or spiritual person so I was a little hesitant to accept this book to review. I don't mind reading inspirational stories in reference to God, however I do find myself wary of them. So I'm not really sure what my expectations were before reading it. I must admit the blurb made me think I'd at least be able to get through it. I'm happy to report I really enjoyed Finding Grace.
Donna VanLiere's life has definitely been filled with hardships and as she retells her story I couldn't help but feel her pain as she searched for a reason to have faith. There always seemed to be something going wrong and I totally agree: It seemed downright unfair. I too have felt this way before at times. But I didn't really feel a complaining/whining vibe from Donna's words. She was able to write about the difficulties in all the aspects of her life and still keep it light and not too centered on herself. She also included many quotes from different people throughout history that mentions God but didn't stop me from finding them inspirational.
There are a couple of passages that really touched me that I'd like to share:
"In our innermost self we forgive them because we understand that unforgiveness ultimately destroys us, not them. We realize that those who have wronged us are as broken as we are and if our journey's been rough we can only imagine what it's been like for them." (148)
I have a big problem with forgiving others once they wrong me. I really have to push myself to let things go and to forgive them. This passage has further helped me realize that I'm only hurting myself more if I let it dwell inside me and let it bother me instead of just taking a big, deep breath and forgiving the other person.
"Half the battle in life is knowing what not to forget and forgetting what doesn't need to be remembered. We remember the bad stuff and forget the good. We let toxic memories seep into our souls and hearts to poison our day, while the good and holy memories are cast aside to be glanced at only on occasion." (161-162)
Another one that touched me deeply... The bad things always seem to stick with people, especially me. I find it so hard to remember happy times and yet so easy to remember the heartbreaking moments in my life.
Finding Grace is a book everyone should read. I'd like to give away my copy of the book so the receiver may have something to inspire them that things do get better and you just have to keep living each day without letting the world keep you down.
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 About.com Reviews Finding Grace
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Few women make their way into adult life without at least one heartbreak. Many of us know all too well what it means to suffer painful losses of unanswered prayers and broken dreams. If you've ever questioned where God was or what he was doing in the most difficult moments of your life, you will relate to this true and inspiring story. If you haven't yet found peace, this book will help you encounter the grace needed to live, laugh and love beyond the heartache. VanLiere wrote the bestselling Christmas Hope series, a collection of Christmas gift books. Finding Grace makes a great Mother's Day gift; however, if you decide to wrap it up for Mom, I'd recommend accompanying it with a supply of tissues.
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Many adoption books on the market have several things in common. They provide information on different types of adoptions, home studies, paperwork, and follow up reports. Rarely do you find a book that shares the thoughts, feelings, and realities of confronting infertility and embracing adoption.
Finding Grace is a touching memoir written by Donna VanLiere. It’s about faith and life, and what happens when things don’t go according to your schedule or timeline. VanLiere really opens up about her search for grace throughout her life. Readers will be able to relate to VanLiere on many levels, such as being stuck in a job that you hate, to moving out of state for a job opportunity, all while trying to create family.
VanLiere talks about her struggles, her joys, and how her faith was always there, even when she still had many unanswered questions. She writes eloquently about many aspects of her life, and gives her honest thoughts at the time as well as her reflections looking back...
One part of her life that VanLiere wrote so candidly about was her struggle through infertility treatments. As with the rest of the book, she offers a truthful and candid view at what it was like, along with the less than helpful comments from people. Anyone who has been on the same journey will relate to struggling between infertility treatments and pursing adoption.
The more she copes with this struggle, the more you can see her contemplating adoption. You can almost see her faith growing by each turn of the page. Her words are so powerful, that you feel her excitement and joy when she writes, “From that instance on I never viewed adoption as our Plan B or a last ditch effort to have children. I never saw it as second rate or that I was somehow less of a woman because I couldn’t carry children. I saw it then as I see it today…as my destiny of grace.”
Donna VanLiere has done an extraordinary job of taking us on her personal journey to find grace. Her reflections on infertility and adoption are much needed, as not many books will cover both of these subjects so powerfully and passionately.
My only request is to see a follow up book on her experiences as a Mom, written with the same honesty, humor, and grace.
Brandii Lacey
BellaOnline Editor
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BOOKLIST MAGAZINE GIVES FINDING GRACE RAVE REVIEW
 The gold standard among review journals for more than 100 years, Booklist Magazine's April issue featured the following review of Finding Grace:
Although many books are called “inspirational memoirs,” too few live up to their label. VanLiere’s is one of the finest. Her life journey got off to a rocky start. Molested twice at a very early age, VanLiere was to face other soul-ripping experiences, including miscarriage and multiple failures with fertility efforts. Somehow, through the steadfast observation of small, everyday things, VanLiere experienced life-altering epiphanies, and she shares these in an open, honest fashion. Her folksy, familiar style makes readers feel as though they’re communing with a close friend. At turns poignant and humorous, her memoir is impossible to put down. Laced with thought-provoking quotations from philosophers and other great minds as well as from the Bible, Finding Grace is never preachy or didactic. It has the same appeal as Rabbi Harold S. Kushner’s excellent book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1983). Author of the best-selling Christmas Hope series, VanLiere expresses wonder as she finds joy in the mundane and jubilation in life’s little extras.
—Shelley Mosley, Booklist Magazine
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Reviewed by Andrea Sisco
Donna VanLiere is best known as the inspirational author of The Christmas Shoes, The Christmas Blessing, The Christmas Hope and The Christmas Promise. In Finding Grace, Van Liere’s fans come to know the author’s personal story.
I often think of authors as the new rock stars and readers are interested in knowing who they are, where they came from and what their personal and writing lives are like. Van Liere rocketed into the forefront when her inspirational novel, The Christmas Shoes was published and subsequently made into a television film.
Van Liere shares an intimate look at her life, the good times and the bad times. She endured childhood sexual abuse, infertility and an unrelenting battle with inferiority. She questioned God and the purpose of life on her journey to finding grace.
Van Liere’s story is an inspiration to those who are wandering through life questioning why they’ve had to suffer, what good are they to others and where is God in everything. It will bring a tear to your eyes and a smile to your face. You’ll find out that it is often true that one must reach bottom in order to soar. And throughout all of life, God is there.
Armchair Interviews says: A personal journey to finding grace. A good read.
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Journey to a State of Grace
March 10, 2009 by gbibtguests
Donna VanLiere has touched the hearts of millions with her bestselling Christmas Hope novels, and the two television movies based on them. In her new inspiring autobiography Finding Grace, VanLiere shares her personal journey and reminds us that even when life doesn’t turn out the way we planned, there are still unimaginable dreams and joys within our reach.
For anyone who has struggled to understand why life can be difficult, why bad things happen to even the most innocent child, why our dreams - even the simplest ones - are often denied, Finding Grace is a source of comfort and contemplation. Beginning with her childhood in small-town Ohio and continuing through her school years, career, and marriage, VanLiere reveals her pain, and her eventual journey to a state of grace -something deeper and more substantial than happiness. She confronts the sexual abuse she endured as a child, as well as the despair she felt when she could not conceive.
As everything seems to be falling apart, VanLiere learns to face her past, and make peace with it. She reveals the serendipitous way her writing career evolved, and she discovers the joy of motherhood when she and her husband travel to China and Guatemala to adopt their children.
Smart, candid, and deeply moving, Finding Grace is a book that will inspire readers with a message of hope.
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Posted one day prior to review...
"Tomorrow I am going to post my review of Finding Grace by Donna VanLiere. I read many books and this is one of the best, if not the best that I have read in a long time. Today I would like for you to watch this video about her book and then tomorrow read my review. This is a book you will want to purchase for yourself and extra copies for your friends."
Review...
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell
F.M.Lehman
Have you ever wondered about the love of God? Have you ever questioned where he was when you needed him the most?
Finding Grace—A True Story About Losing Your Life... And Finding It Again by Donna VanLiere is a book for anyone who has struggled to understand why our desires—even the simplest ones—are sometimes denied. It is a book for anyone who has questioned where God is when we need him most. This is the powerful, sometimes humorous, always moving story of one woman’s journey of broken dreams. It is the story of how a painful legacy of the past can be confronted and met with peace.
New York Times bestselling author Donna VaLiere has inspired millions with her holiday stories. Now I am predicting she has done it again with Finding Grace, which is a memoir. In my opinion this splendid book will also be a best seller. It has won high praise from other bestselling authors. Chris Gardiner said, “Donna VanLiere reminds us that even when life doesn’t turn out the way we’d planned, there are still dreams—unimaginable dreams—that are within reach. Her story is a powerful gift that can change our lives.” Popular bestselling author Debbie Macomber, wrote: “This is an absolutely lovely book, so heartfelt and, well, just plain wonderful. It leads directly down the path of grace to God’s open door.”
During my forty-seven years as a Pastor I read many books and preached many sermons about grace. I love to think about and talk about grace. VanLiere’s words communicate what grace is all about in a way that I was never able to do. Finding Grace is the story of a woman who has lived a life rife with pain and intensity yet rich with laughter and love. I agree with Anita Renfroe, comedian and Special Correspondent to Good Morning America, who said, “If you are needing a fresh infusion of hope, I suggest that you find a place where you can laugh out loud without being thought inappropriate and can access a box of tissues. Encountering grace always moves us like that.”
I recommend you stop reading this review, turn off your computer, and run to the nearest book store.
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BellaOnline: The Voice of Women Reviews Finding Grace
Armchair Interviews Reviews Finding Grace