Digest Writers Contest

Judges Commentary: 

This author's work resonates with spiritual maturity and life experience and the wisdom that can't be learned without engaging in life and with people from many walks of life.  What she does best is to shake us out of our complacence about being good people and good Christians.  She clearly demonstrates how once we become Christians, particularly in this cesspool of values that our society has become, it is so easy us to become smug and feel like we have everything, particularly our faith, under control and a good handle on our lives and how insidious the un-Godly values of society can invade our world and how easy it becomes to rationalize small sins (exaggerating and truth-stretching becomes lying, etc.), particularly when society too often not only condones the wrong behavior but encourages and glorifies it (her segment about the woman who found the book in her son's drawer about how to tell convincing lies and how he is now living on the streets, on drugs, living a life of lies was particularly heartbreaking).   She also discusses how both society and difficulties and issues from childhood (things like poverty, scarcity, hunger) can revisit us later in life as excesses (food, material goods) and how undermining they become in our lives.  But she does this all with a compassionate heart, providing some of the underpinning reasons and baggage that may have gotten the reader to this point with the goal of redirecting focus back to God's word, back to the right path and away from bad habits or getting far too comfortable leaning on our own understanding.  Although the beauty of this is that it seems to speak loudest to those with more life experience, the life examples and stories she uses to illustrate the points she is making are certainly relevant to all, if nothing else as a cautionary tale to make preemptive strikes in avoiding some of the pitfalls our society so conveniently provides and reinforces, such as lying/exaggeration, excess, and relying on our own understanding, and not allowing difficulties from childhood to carry over and become damaging to us as adults.  I particularly liked that this story found a voice for people who see themselves and spiritually and chronologically mature but who may need a wake up call to shore up their strongholds to stay strong and on the God's path.

*Commentary may be quoted as: “Judge, Writer’s Digest 21^st Annual Self-Published Book Awards”