The Spade

This is a collection of stories about life, about people and God, about recovery and relapse, about heartache and brokenness and the reality that life is hard coupled with the fact that there is hope and healing, even if it comes without answers; healing in ways that can’t be prescribed or used as blanket formulas for every heartache, as each cause for heartache is as different as the heart that is aching.

This is a collection of stories from a girl who almost disappeared in her efforts to be seen, a girl who grew up in a culture that called spades hearts and smiled while bluffing. This is a collection of stories from a girl that drops J-bombs and F-bombs, sometimes within the same breath because she fully believes the truth that life is hard and the occasional F-bomb is necessary, just as much as she fully believes that Jesus heals, recovers, revives and restores.

This is a collection of stories about calling a spade a spade because the truth will indeed set you free if in no other way than just allowing you to breathe again without the strain of trying to hide all of the ugly and hold the pain in.

It’s called a spade. It’s not as pretty as the diamond, as lovely as the heart, or as eclectic as the club, but it is what it is, a spade, vulgar and unattractive as it may be, it’s a spade, and merely calling it what it is makes me feel a little less crazy, a little less like I am living a lie. It points up, the spade, because when you start telling the truth, the outcome may be hard at first, even unbearable, but things do start looking up.

For most of my life I have called spades hearts, and I’m tired of bluffing.

My hope in sharing these stories is for all venom to be removed from my heart as I take a stab at telling the truth more consistently; truth in the form of love and grace upon grace upon grace, for myself and for you.

“it’s called a spade” can now be purchased at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. Thank you in advance for your support!!