Books

Christmas is a time when stockings are hung, trees are decorated, and presents are given. But what was it like before Christmas began? Why do we celebrate Christmas at all?

This picture book takes children back to a simpler time, when the world did not yet know that it was about to receive the most wonderful gift ever given. It is a quiet break from the hustle of the season and a way to take in the beauty of the first Christmas gift.

Imagine how insecure an adopted or fostered child must feel at times, unsure why their biological parents did not keep them and wondering whether their forever family might one day let them go too. Every child needs to hear from their parents that they are loved and wanted, and children from broken homes need to hear it most of all.

My husband and I adopted our three children, and this book grew out of the questions they asked us. I wrote it to lead them to the answer we kept coming back to: there never really was a choice. We knew right away that they were ours.

When I went looking for adoption storybooks to read at bedtime, I found very few written for young children. I wanted parents to have one they could hold in their laps and read to their adopted or fostered kids at the end of the day. A companion devotional is in the works.

From the moment you cradled your first baby doll, you imagined yourself a mom. Now you are a member of the club no one wants to join: the ten percent of women who struggle to become mothers because of infertility.

Meghann Bowman knows that club. With best-selling author Crystal Bowman, she gathered thirty hope-filled stories from women who heard the same diagnosis and lived through the same heartache, with journeys that run from infertility and miscarriage to adoption and miracle births. Your story may not look the same or end the same way, but you do not have to carry it alone.

Jon Sturtsman had it all: a successful career as a nurse anesthetist, a wife and two children, a beautiful house, and fancy cars. But he would sit in a room full of his closest friends and feel alone and empty. After watching one patient grow euphoric on a dose of Fentanyl before surgery, Jon slipped into the bathroom and took his first shot. It led to addiction, prison, and the loss of everything he held dear. Losing it all turned out to be what he needed to find his soul.

Along the way Jon began writing down the quotes and verses that came to mind and handing them out to encourage others. What started as a way to stay busy became more than six hundred sayings. I helped Jon put his story on the page.