Category: Book Excerpts

AN ANGEL MESSENGER (chapter 12)

Posted on by Jill E. Smith
SEPTEMBER 25,2021
 
EXCERPT FROM  HOLY LOVE: A MEMOIR OF SORROW TO GLORY
 

from an account of receiving a speeding ticket during my single parenting days)

….Then it happened. He did something that had never been done before. It was as if I was nudged into an altered state beyond my well-practiced ritual of receiving my speeding ticket so I could be on my way. He leaned over and peered into my car, making eye contact with me. I was stunned. My heart became my eyes for the first time in my life.

I know this sounds bizarre. However, all I can say is that our mere mortal minds cannot comprehend the idea of seeing with the heart. This is the only way I can describe the moment. I heard him with my heart as well.

His voice enveloped me: his gentle concern substantive and consuming. It was as if It wrapped itself around me in a down quilt. It had the depth of an ocean, yet the whisper of dawn. The sound of his voice caught me like a starving fish on a hook, except it was painless and felt like I was aching to be pulled into his net. He leaned over. I saw his face. He looked to be in his thirties, a handsome man. His face was exquisite as his eyes met mine.

That was the moment that my heart became my eyes. To say that he had blue eyes does not begin to do them justice. They drew me in so that nothing else existed at that moment but the shade of blue. His eyes were a shade of blue-green that I’d never seen before.

It was as if his eyes spoke at that moment, and my heart heard the words and my soul listened as he said, “Please, don’t speed. Somebody is going to get hurt”. That’s all he said, yet it was one of those God-stopping moment of my life.

IT’S A “HURTIN’ THING” Chapter 4

Posted on by Jill E. Smith
EXCERPT FROM MY UPCOMING BOOK: HOLY LOVE: A MEMOIR OF SORROW TO GLORY
 

Walking to Wiley’s market like two big girls, on those warm, sultry summer days holds a sacred place in my memory. I recall balmy walks with my sister in Indian summers as we crunched through the colorful leaves on our mission to the corner store. We’d make acorn rings and play hopscotch for hours. The smells of fallen leaves on the sidewalk in autumn are savory imprints in my mind.

These memories belong to Lee as well. She was as present at the rising sun.

Lee’s imprint in my memory is indelible. My father had hired her to work two to three days a week. It could have been every day early on—I don’t recall exactly. I do recall that she was always home in the family room ironing with the television on when I’d return home from school. While I could never predict if my mother would be home when I returned, I always knew that I’d find Lee there.

She was my rock to stand on in the days of my youth.

BORN INTO DECEIT (Chapter 2)

Posted on by Jill E. Smith
 
 
Excerpt from my upcoming book: Holy Love: A Memoir of Sorrow to Glory.
 
 
 

Jesus’ love for us is like a hot ember planted within our hearts at conception. I tucked mine away for “safekeeping” for most of my life. Looking back, I wonder if my gnawing discontent was due to a yearning for something I couldn’t have.

Was it that innocent, childlike joy, and sweet contentment that is the seed of love for a family, or was it actually the love of Jesus that I tucked away and longed for?

Maybe God designed children’s innocence for the purpose of knowing Him in all His purity and holiness. His touch on our souls and inside His Holy DNA are the secrets to an eternal craving.

It’s a yearning that only He can satisfy.

MIRACLE AT MONTEBELLO (Chapter 8)

Posted on by Jill E. Smith

Excerpt from–Holy Love: A Memoir of Sorrow to Glory

(Account of an incident that occured over 30 years ago during my nursing career)

 

I entered the room and sat in a chair about ten feet from her. I didn’t even tell her I was there. She appeared to be asleep, if not unconscious. I only wanted to finish my work and intended to stay briefly. She was to be discharged the next morning, and I wanted to leave the guilt behind and let her be, so that when I returned on Monday, she’d be gone and I could pretend she never happened.

God had other plans.

As I sat there, I began to feel the weight of my own body. I attributed it at first to my second-trimester pregnancy and the fatigue of a long week. I’m not sure how much time had gone by, possibly fifteen minutes, when the hospital clergyman and his assistant walked in to do rounds. He nodded at me and walked over to the sleeping woman and prayed over her. I don’t recall the prayer, but it was a prayer that sounded familiar to me. He left with another nod to me, and there I sat. I felt increasingly restless to leave the room but became acutely aware of feeling a weight upon my shoulders, as if I were being held down. I literally felt unable to lift myself off the chair.

Time ticked by. It felt as if an hour passed, when suddenly out of the silence, the patient spoke. Without turning her head in my direction and with her eyes still closed she said, “Jill, I can’t go home tomorrow. I’m too sick.”

I didn’t think she was even aware that I was in the room! To say I was shocked is an understatement. I jumped out of my chair and ran over to her bedside and hugged her, promising her I’d take care of it. I was euphoric as I literally ran down the hall to the doctor’s office. I told him he had to cancel the discharge order because she requested to stay. My euphoria was on her behalf, but even more powerful was the experience of being involved in God’s work. I was not yet a believer. I considered myself to be spiritual, but I had no personal relationship or intimacy with God. He had used me nevertheless, and I knew it!

When I returned on Monday, she was gone. She had died that weekend in her clean hospital bed, with peace and with dignity. I’d often wonder if the vigil I had felt required to perform that Friday afternoon had actually provided the space for her to reconcile her life to God, and allow herself to die.

It was one of many miracles to come.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

0 Comments

 
 
 
 

BORN INTO DECEIT (Chapter 2)

Posted on by Jill E. Smith
EXCERPT FROM HOLY LOVE: A MEMOIR OF SORROW TO GLORY.
 

I remember gazing up at the television tower with its skinny antennae. I can recall the experience of one of those steel arms reaching down for me as I sat at the bedroom window. In my memory, the WBAL tower bent down, the arm of one prong reaching all the way to my window. I climbed out my window and held on as the single prong carried me back up to the top of the tower.

This was all in the imagination of a five-year-old little girl, but what I recall most poignantly is the overwhelming, tender love I felt surrounding me.

As long as we lived on Dupont Avenue in Baltimore City, the WBAL tower was a source of comfort. It was always watching over me. At night, the lights would blink, comforting me. During the day, my occasional reverie on my sister’s bed by the window would quicken my heart.

The love I felt from the tower was so reassuring and comforting, and while it wasn’t a secret, I never told a soul. This was the magical thinking of a little girl who hides the butterfly wing she found into the corner of her dresser drawer for safekeeping.

It took another fifty years for me to realize that was my first awareness of my Savior’s courtship of me. He was wooing me, calling to me; and He was prodding me to gaze up to Him. Gaze up toward Him I did.

HE WILL FIND YOU

Posted on by Jill E. Smith
Poetry excerpt from Holy Love: A Memoir of Sorrow to Glory
 
 

He will come near to you if you open your heart.

He will wrap himself around you if you seek Him.

He will light your way if you look for Him.

He will hear you if you ask for Him.

If you knock, He will answer.

Because it is a relationship He craves, He will wait for you to come to Him.

Hidden deep within the choosing impulse lies a fertile seed of redemption and glory.

That is why He planted a will within our souls.

So we would ultimately choose to dwell with Him, in His kingdom

MUSINGS ON MOTHERHOOD (Chapter 31)

Posted on by Jill E. Smith
Excerpt from my newly published book (on Amazon in hard and paperback).
HOLY LOVE: A MEMOIR OF SORROW TO GLORY
 

There is a point in our mothering where the path we are on with our children diverge. They will continue their journey separate from us. In actuality, their path is always separate from ours. As mothers, we know that piercing reality of separateness once they breathe air on their own in that chaotic delivery room. Amidst blood and water and tearing flesh, we rejoice at their cries and their new life.

Our journeys intertwine like ivy wrapping itself around the trunk of a tree. Our paths parallel so intimately that we as mothers forget that they are indeed separate from us. As Christian mothers, we know in our hearts they don’t belong to us. They belong to Him first. But as women of the world, we forget and deceive ourselves into thinking we are still attached by that lifeline cord.

There comes a point where we can deceive ourselves no longer.

THE GARDEN OF MY LIFE (Chapter 38)

Posted on by Jill E. Smith
EXCERPT FROM MY NEWLY PUBLISHED BOOK
HOLY LOVE: A MEMOIR OF SORROW TO GLORY
 
 

My front yard is now love in shades of green. There are sunny patches where I’ve planted plants that can flower and bear fruit. There are patches of wild edibles like dandelions and chickweed that I selectively allow to flourish because of their nutritional value. I’ve learned the value of weeds, just as I’ve learned the value of a painful journey whose lessons have, by the grace of God, not been wasted on me.

My yard boasts enchantment in organized chaos. It’s so charming that it attracts the children on my street who clamor to help me garden and water plants. From the blueberry bushes that have not yet flourished but are learning to grow, to volunteer thorny wild raspberry briar patches that I’ve granted residence, the yard is like a testament to my journey thus far.

It has too much shade because of a tree I planted ten years ago a decision made prior to my coming of age as an edible gardener. So, I work with what I have and God’s miracle of nature does the rest. I tweak and He breathes life

THE MANTLE OF REGRET (Chapter 23)

Posted on by Jill E. Smith
Excerpt from my newly published book.
HOLY LOVE: A MEMOIR OF SORROW TO GLORY.
My chronic dissatisfaction with aspects of my life kept me searching. The rubbing angst and tightening sorrows kept me on the path that would lead me into His arms and His pasture.
I sit here now, on the precipice of a new understanding of and freedom from my sorrows. God used the combination of my persevering and overly self-disciplined temperament and seasoned it with my aching envy and jealousies—and even my regrets–to create in me a dogged determination to find an answer. I wasn’t aware that I was really seeking freedom from this suffering, but that was the ultimate outcome.
It’s a lot like a grain of sand in an oyster. It’s continued presence inside the body of the oyster over time gives way to a pearl. The day I began to round the bend in this journey of regrets, I saw in the distance the pasture that He was leading me toward. I began to have enough clarity so I could see a purpose in the suffering. Finding a purpose in the suffering over regret is more than finding a reason for it.
A reason for the suffering explains why it haunts throughout one’s life, while finding a purpose in the suffering gives it meaning and reveals a direction in life’s journey. Most importantly, it offers healing in the process. The suffering begins to take its rightful position beneath your feet. This is not an immediate process, but the process begins once you accept Christ into your life.

A MOTHER REBORN (Chapter 30)

Posted on by Jill E. Smith

EXCERPT FROM MY NEWLY PUBLISHED BOOK

HOLY LOVE: A MEMOIR OF SORROW TO GLORY

In the journey toward Holy Love, Jesus will reveal to us our own sin first. The defenses and walls that our own pride erected and which impede our loving as He designed, are what we need to see. The weightiness of my pride is palpable. I can’t seem to distance myself from it sometimes. It feels so much like it’s a part of me.

Maybe that’s part of my conundrum. Holy Love is how God loves us. Only He can love that way. We are mere imprints of that love, the verb of that love. But we can strive to become its manifestation and live and love in the glow of His Holy Love….His warmth…the eternity that He created and that He dwells within.

In faith, I will wait for that promise.

In the journey toward Holy Love, Jesus will reveal to us our own sin first. The defenses and walls that our own pride erected and which impede our loving as He designed, are what we need to see. The weightiness of my pride is palpable. I can’t seem to distance myself from it sometimes. It feels so much like it’s a part of me.

Maybe that’s part of my conundrum. Holy Love is how God loves us. Only He can love that way. We are mere imprints of that love, the verb of that love. But we can strive to become its manifestation and live and love in the glow of His Holy Love….His warmth…the eternity that He created and that He dwells within.

In faith, I will wait for that promise.