Bent But Not Broken

Bent But Not Broken is a heartfelt journey of a girl and her family as they navigate the healthcare system from diagnosis to surgery and beyond. Follow them as they use their own words in blog posts and through an emotional and gripping narrative that puts you right by their side. All the ups, downs, challenges, and successes of the experience changed their lives and taught them that compassion and love build strong communities, even stronger families, and that true strength comes from the most unlikely sources. For the Butters family, the punch that knocked the wind out of them was a diagnosis of severe idiopathic scoliosis for their eleven-year-old daughter Avery. The only viable treatment option was spinal fusion surgery. It was a terrifying prospect to stare down. Frustrated with the lack of information on what the family would actually experience, Avery's mother, Jodi, started a family blog. It was there that Avery, Jodi, and Andrew would share their thoughts and experiences about the journey in real time. Jodi was determined that if there were other families searching for this information her family would be able to provide it. When it was all said and done and the blog came to its rightful conclusion, the writer in Andrew felt that since the blog was so successful at spreading the message then surely there were other ways to help spread the word and share lessons that even applied beyond Avery's scoliosis.

Book 3 of the One-2-One series. Meet Madeline and Justin. Before Madeline's bike accident left her with a traumatic brain injury, she and her twin sister were inseparable. So were her parents. But now, Madeline's parents are divorced and Becky has become rebellious, angry, and sneaky. Even worse, she doesn't seem to want Madeline around anymore. At least Madeline knows she can always rely on the miniature therapy horses she visits every week. Justin is a senior and the president of his school's Best Buddies club. Before his sister died, he used to take her to the barn to visit her beloved therapy horses. Now, with Madeline, he goes there to escape the gloom of his mother's grief at home and the pressures of his final year in high school. Together, Justin and Madeline help each other to reconnect with the important people in their lives -- and with the lives that they thought they'd lost.

So, you've been through the storm, swept over the coals, and you're wondering how to get through this hell. "Bent But Not Broken" is a book about how God has help me through trials, and helps you see how to make it too. Only through Christ Jesus can you succeed. Some people watch soap operas because the lives of the characters are worse than the viewer's own life. Life isn't a soap opera, and seeing some of the trials that another person encounters on TV won't help get you through your situation.You can bend in the wind and God's grace will carry you. You can climb over any mountain and God's grace will sustain you. Through the storms of life, God's grace will carry you. Grace is that favor that none of us deserve, yet it is our bridge over troubled waters and the calm through any storm. Our feet can be anchored so strongly in Him that we will bend a little, yet nothing can break our faith in God our Father.

Lauren had a turbulent childhood and adolescence. In some ways it is a horrific story: her parents' marriage break-up, sexual abuse as a child in Australia, her mother's drug addiction and eventual suicide, a rebellious adolescence in Wellington, running away, stowing away, being raped by three men, and on to prostitution, depression, suicide attempts and drug use on her own account. After a number of dead end jobs, Lauren worked as a striper and then became a prostitute. She returned to high school as an adult student and eventually undertook medical studies and qualified as a general practitioner. Medical training is renowned as being rigourous and difficult. Lauren made it with not only her difficult past to reconcile, but also the problems of a single mother with a child with learning difficulties.

Life's pressures will come, yet we will not be broken. Without a doubt there are so many things we wrestle with in the flesh and in the Spirit. There is a constant war going on within us and around us. Will we please ourselves and our flesh or will we overcome the struggles we face by living in the Spirit of God and trusting Him to get us through? We all have so many responsibilities that tug at us and pull at us, bending us this way or that way, how do we balance it all and become the person Jesus has called us to be? That is the reason for the writing of this book, to encourage all to not trust in themselves but to trust God, even when you don't know all the reasons why. It is the desire to never give up, never to throw in the towel, never surrender to the adversary of our soul. We must persevere through everything we face, we must look past the outside appearance of what we see and see the truth about what we are wrestling with. The moment is now to stand up in the face of every obstacle that is against you and declare that nothing will stop you from being who God has chosen you to be. You can be who you have always dreamed you could be, God has made a way for you and me. To overcome there will be a fight, to overcome there will be a struggle, but we can do it with only our Lord's help. We might be bent and things may not be perfect in our lives yet, but one thing is for sure we will NEVER be broken.

“Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back even from the most difficult times. . . . Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. Take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly.” —Ping Fu’s “Shanghai Papa” Ping Fu knows what it’s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student. Ping Fu also knows what it’s like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year. To be a friend and mentor to some of the best-known names in tech­nology. To build some of the coolest new products in the world. To give speeches that inspire huge crowds. To meet and advise the president of the United States. It sounds too unbelievable for fiction, but this is the true story of a life in two worlds. Born on the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution, Ping was separated from her family at the age of eight. She grew up fighting hunger and humiliation and shielding her younger sister from the teenagers in Mao’s Red Guard. At twenty-five, she found her way to the United States; her only resources were $80 in traveler’s checks and three phrases of English: thank you, hello, and help. Yet Ping persevered, and the hard-won lessons of her childhood guided her to success in her new home­land. Aided by her well-honed survival instincts, a few good friends, and the kindness of strangers, she grew into someone she never thought she’d be—a strong, independent, entrepreneurial leader. A love of problem solving led her to computer science, and Ping became part of the team that created NCSA Mosaic, which became Netscape, the Web browser that forever changed how we access information. She then started a company, Geomagic, that has literally reshaped the world, from personalizing prosthetic limbs to repair­ing NASA spaceships. Bend, Not Break depicts a journey from imprisonment to freedom, and from the dogmatic anticapitalism of Mao’s China to the high-stakes, take-no-prisoners world of technology start-ups in the United States. It is a tribute to one woman’s courage in the face of cruelty and a valuable lesson on the enduring power of resilience.

Defense attorney Madden Polunin is good at his job. He works alongside the Kings of Men MC and is known, and hated, by the New Gothenburg PD for getting his clients cleared of charges that should have sent them to jail. Straitlaced Officer Evan Slater loathes everything about Madden, from his charismatic personality that helps free criminals, to how hard it is to pronounce his ridiculous last name. Polunin makes Evan's job more difficult than it needs to be, and Polunin's smug smile fuels Evan's anger. In a night of celebration, Madden ends up drugged and runs into Evan, which begins a turmoiled relationship between a self-declared "straight" police officer and a lawyer only interested in one-night stands. Between criminal arrests, a serial killer father locked behind bars, and a negligent work partner, Madden's and Evan's lives collide in ways they never expected. Includes the novella, Curved.

Pain is a lasting feeling, emotion, and can consume a person without any discrimination. Amy Holland knew all too well what pain did to someone. She has been living with it for far too long, and it is all because of her father. Reese "Joker" Whitman has put his old life behind him. He is now just Joker, part of The Soldiers of Wrath, an outlaw MC that rules his town. Despite the hard edge he carries around, the violence and destruction he's been known to deliver, Joker wants Amy, the daughter of the woman his father married. Amy might be considered family, but she isn't blood, and he wants her more than he's ever wanted anyone in his life. However, he has to tread lightly, because she's been hurt, and she may never be able to give herself fully to him. When she finally sees Joker for who he is, it isn't fear or pain that consumes her; it is hope and desire. But can she give herself to the biker when she sees herself as too damaged be loved?