The Confessions of X by Suzanne M. Wolfe

This is a novel. It is based on Saint Augustine's Confessions where he shares about his romance with the only woman that he ever loved. I have not read those writings myself. Suzanne M. Wolfe launches into the first chapter right away. She does not include any introduction to this novel. This book contains 37 chapters. Then the author ends with with a note about how she used information from Saint Augustine's Confessions as the basis for this novel. She includes 12 discussion questions at the end of her novel. She wraps it all up with acknowledgents of those who made her book possible, and an author bio. Suzanne M. Wolfe herself grew up in England. She read English literature at Oxford UNiversity and has cofounded the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. She is Writer in Residence at Seattle Pacific University and has taught literature and creative writing there since 2000. This book is endorsed by other well-known authors.

This novel is quite interesting. I read through it quickly. I liked the subheadings as I did not have to write in the book. I plan to place this book as a "freebie" on my OneLadyFights4life.com book giveaway webpage. It is that good. The title indicates that this is a woman who had something of a "shady" past but who had a good heart and who deserved protection. This book meets my expectation in that regard, and more. At first, as I began reading, I had to warm up to the novel. That is because this story is set in a different time and in a different culture. It was when Augustine came into the picture that it began to make more sense to me and get more interesting. Because the book had portrayed "Lady X" as a concubine, I knew that a marriage was not going to happen. While I always sensed to concunbines were not wives, I knew they were not synomynous with prostitutes either. I know that concubines were common in Scripture and were ancient versions of our modern "common-law wives." In both cases, this is a monogamous live-in relationship where the couple cannot get married for some reason. In the case of Augustine and "Lady X" I could not understand why her low social status kept her from being marriage material for Augustine. What a snob system! I thought. Of course, the hearts of people have not changed, but in the days of Augustine and "Lady X" it was more institutionalized. I was saddened, awed,and angry at a system that resulted in the outcome of the relationship between Augustine and "Lady X." My concept of concubage was clarified when I read this book and saw that concubines were not shady women. However I remained unclear as to "Lady X's" relationship with Christ even at the end of this book.

I recommend this book for all those who like to read fiction. I recommend this book for all those who follow the history of Saint Augustine. And I recommend this book for all small groups who like to use novels as the basis for their groups. This is because of the discussion questions at the back of this book. I recommend this book for people of faith to read as a wholesome alternative to the torrid, steamy novels that are out there. I don't normally recommend Christian novels as a regular fare for Christians as we are to make the Bible our main source of nourishment. This book has lessons of love, commitment, loss, self-sacrifice and redemption.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Booklook Bloggers in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to give a favorable review of this book.

Two More Ways to Make A Difference

We all say that we want to make a difference.

You no doubt have seen images of destitute children on TV. Then you were asked to sponsor such a child.

You have probably heard about the evils of abortion. You have been urged to stop it.

You have likely seen Amber Alerts and have heard about high-profile missing persons cases. You have been asked to help find them.

You no doubt get annoyed by websites full of paid ads. So do I.

I have created a new website, not just another blog. This website does have a blog but it is more than a blog. It is my desire and aim that you will never see annoying, paid ads on it. THose are for business websites. This site contains resources to enable you to help end abortion and help pregnant women. It reaches out to pregnant women in crisis and to women who have had abortions. I make it clear there that I am 100% prolife. I am prolife not only about the unborn, but about those who are already born. That's why I feature missing persons on static pages. That's why I post about missing persons cases. I also have a feature where you can submit prayer requests if you want to. Others who like to pray, can pray for you. If you do not want to post on a prayer wall, you can send me your private prayer requests. This site is not just antiabortion, but prolife. I do not make any money off it. I never will. I plan to keep improving it and optimizing it. It is my goal to be a blessing through this website. God willing, I will keep it up and running for a long time.

Facebook pages are often used to stay in touch with website visitors. Though I already have Facebook pages, this one is to communicate with those who may or do visit my site. You can support me and the website by "liking" the page. I use the page to post directly from the site what I have there. On any Facebook page, you need to interact with a post or photo in some way, to keep seeing the posts. You engage by commenting, clicking the "share" button or simply "liking" the link. I hope that you will do this with my website-based Facebook page.

It's not about only making a difference. It's about becoming a community. I can't do it alone.

Lisa DeSherlia

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"Like" my website-based Facebook page

If you have done both these things, please share this post itself! Thank you!

Is This Holiday Season for Children Only?

Christmas is for children.

What matters is that the children get Christmas.

I can't afford to buy my children Christmas.

It doesn't matter if we get the adults anything; just buy the children Christmas.

I guess my children won't have a Christmas, without money.

These sentences betray how we see this season. This all can be explained by all the TV and Internet commercials aimed at drumming up business that play on our emotions and our loved for our children, our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren, or children in general. These sentiments can be explained by department stores which re-stock their shelves, even before Thanksgiving and pitch their ads toward would-be Christmas shoppers. To a lesser degree, such TV, Internet and store ads are similarly directed toward lovers. In other words, show your love for those you love by buying them nice maerial goods.

Why is the materialistic thrust and festivities of this holiday season focused on children?

Children are vulnerable and trusting, and this holiday season provides something of an outlet to show care for them in the only way many people know how to show love.THat form is that of giving material gifts. I know of these things by experience so I know of what I speak!

When I was growing up, my mom and later my stepdad, believed that giving material things was the way you show love to your children. They did not have much money but spent what they had, on Christmas gifts. The side-effect of this is that I, for one, had to unlearn and still am unlearning, materialism that is already embedded in our culture. With my family dynamics, this materialism is being passed down to my daughter. I know that my story is far from unique; so many other families conceive of love as the giving of material gifts.

Yes, giving gifts is one way of showing people that we love them. So it is not so much that giving gifts is wrong because it is not. It is the focus on giving gifts and making a holiday season about giving gifts. There is much lip service that "Christmas is about giving, not getting presents," and "As long as we have our loved ones, we have it all" and "Jesus is the reason for the season." With all these sayings, however, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, Cyber-Monday, (the Monday of the following week), and Super Saturday (Dec. 19), show that buying gifts is still an important part of this holiday season. So I can undersand why a growing number of people, usually for religious reasons, do not celebrate these holidays at all! It is not that they are Scrooges and lack "holiday spirit," but realize that so many of us have gotten our priorities messed up.

Christmas is for children and I do not want to take that away from anyone. The holiday season should be a happy time for children and they should grow up with good memories of how it was celebrated when they were growing up. But if they see that ther parents do not take care pf each other or themselves and end up having nothing left to give, is this of benefit to them? I don't think so.

I think many, maybe most, people are aware that the Christmas season officially set aside to commemorate the incarnation and birth of Jesus. The incarnation covers His time in Mary's womb, during his development as an unborn child. Think of it--God as an embryo and then a fetus! Christmas, of course, is meant to commemorate His birth. We do not know the exact time when He was conceived and nine months later, born. The most important point is why He became a man.

God became man in Jesus because He loves us and wanted to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. All of us have fallen far short of His holy standards in thought, word and deed, and cannot save ourselves. So God came to earth, in Jesus, lived the perfect human life that none of us can live. Then He died in our place, on a cross, the death that we all have deserved, and has risen again. Have you received His free gift of salvation, the forgiveness of your sins? It is not hard to understand how to make it happen. Repent (change your mind about your sins and turn from them) and believe (trust that Jesus has died to save you and give Him your life).

Click here to visit my new website and connect with me.

Blogging on Blogging

This week my topic is about blogging and doing sites.
This post is about my blogging reflections and future plans.

This Blogger blog is my most established blog, by far. It is several years old. My posts have evolved with my passions about various topics, and as I have 324 posts total, I know that I may have limited ability to write posts here. I have a less established, newer, niche Blogger blog for the Christian community and inquiring non-Christians who want to know more about Christ and Christianity. You may have noticed that I don't use this blog as a personal journal, as many bloggers do. Nor do I use to to collect donations or monetize it through setting up Google Ads, though I have gotten prompts to do this. I do not know how long I will keep open this blog, as I seem to have maxed out on my followers count and I have two Wordpress.com blogs that focus on sanctity of life issues like abortion, crisis pregnancies, prolife legislation, and to focus on news and opinion posts concerning each of the four prolife petitions I have set up. I may stillkeep these Blogger blogs open, but post less often, maybe twice a month.

It seems Blogger is limiting some features. Weeks ago, I wanted to set up a page devoted to a prolife fundraiser I have set up, but the page does not show here and I seem to be unable to add any more pages. The same holds true of my niche blog for the Christian community and inquiring non-Christians. As for Wordpress.com, while it is free and optimized for mobile users, as Blogger blogs also are, its features and functionalities are limited. I was able to customize the background of the themes of both Wordpress.com blogs, so as to spruce up both blogs. Blogging on Blogger had advantages that Wordpress.com does not, as you can add third-party widgets and plg-ins there via their "Add a Third-Party Element" widget that can go in your sidebar (the side of a blog) or footer (the bottom of the blog). Yet that gets tempting, as I may have added too many, and may have to delete some to get the page to load faster and which I do not deem as essential. You may have noticed that I write many book reviews here, which I do because I signed up with two book review sites that allow bloggers to obtain books for free in exchange for reading those books and writing honest reviews on my blog.

Currently, I'm setting up a self-hosted Wordpress site, OneLadyFights4Life. I picked this domain name on advice and because I wanted to let the domain name illustrate what I'm all about--being a voice for those whose lives are often seen as less worthy or who are vulnerable. These include the unborn, children and adults with special needs, missing children and adults, and poor, oppressed and persecuted persons worldwide. I plan to write about topics like this from a prolife, Christian worldview. I have been spending much time in adding plugins, deleting plugins, and researching services that I know I need to optimize the site's performance. THe main services I seek are Search Engine Optimizaton (SEO) services, which rarely are free. And I need these services as my website does not appear in these major search engines yet. SEO is defined as optimizing a blog or a website to rank high in the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. I already have all the pages I want (at least for now), and a post that I have not published. But I fear I will not have time to maintain all these blogs so I fear that I will have to close my Blogger blogs or post bi-monthly so I can post more often on the site. Stay tuned for further developments.

If you are interested in visting this site, go here.