These are the Kelleys. I’m about to share their story.
I read this book. It’s called Wednesday’s Were Pretty Normal and LifeWay sent it over because they thought it would resonate with me. I started reading it and then I put it down. For two weeks.
If you know me, you know this is not normal. I don’t read books. I devour them. I can not start a book and then stop it. I must read through until it is finished. It’s compulsive and I’ve been that way since I was little, straining my already poor eyesight to read by the light of the street lamp outside the window far past my bedtime.
It’s because it resonated that I walked away. It was so familiar, sometimes too familiar as I navigate these parenting waters with the knowledge that many moments existed for me where my daughter was on the cusp of here and heaven.
And of course it is that way for all of us, the way of life is that one minute you’re breathing and the next you might not be. But that isn’t the undercurrent of our every single thought until we’re sitting in a hospital gripping too tightly to the hands of our children.
This book is incredibly written. I turned a page and breathed “YES, I felt that way too” and “Yes, I yelled that at God” and “Yes, that is where I found Him.”
I identified so much with the author, with the thought that you spend your whole life wanting to grow up to be a writer and then you’re suddenly sitting in a Children’s Hospital and someone is giving you statistics that say your child, your child may not live and you scream “NOT THIS STORY GOD.” I don’t want this story. I want to be anything else. I’ll trade my life for this child, just take this story from us and give us something else, preferably something with a happy ending. Maybe one with puppies. Everyone likes puppies.
And then he says he feels drawn to be a good steward of the story he was given. It’s what you come out of it with, the story, and you leave it behind or you toss it out as a lifeline of hope to others and say to them that you love them. That you are praying for them in a new way that is no longer empty words because you know now. You know that community and compassion have great worth in this new life that you lead.
I dogeared pages and circled text that said “I remember thinking how amazing it was that our life changed so much and yet the world kept right on spinning around us” and thought about how I’d walk through the grocery store, looking at people buying breakfast cereal and thinking “Don’t you know my daughter is dying? Don’t you know the whole world has changed?”
I highlighted passages that asked where God was when a little boy was linked forever with the word “leukemia” and then searched not for answers but for Him. This is written well, this story of a boy, cancer and God. Hope is found there.
I think, Michael Kelley, that you have been an amazing steward of your story.
LifeWay originally sent me five copies to give away but I only have four to give away here.
The other day a friend emailed me about a little boy she knows. One who plays baseball. And has leukemia. And so I packaged up one of the books for that little boy’s mother, because she is who it is meant for. Because I don’t believe the fact that I was sent a book about a baseball playing boy with leukemia and that email aren’t connected. Or that Wednesdays were pretty normal for us too, until that one Wednesday where I went into labor at 24 weeks and started living in that unique place of suffering that, as he says “is the common denominator of human existence.”
So I have four copies of Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal to give away, either for you or for you to pass on to a friend who might just need to read it. To enter simply leave a comment and then click I DID THIS in the rafflecopter box. If you’d like a second entry, I’d love it if you shared a tweet to promote the author’s book. No one asked me to do that, I just would love for this story to reach every person it was meant for. xoxo
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Here is a preview of the book trailer:
