Twenty Years And Forty Days

Unbecome everything you were never meant to be.

If you cry and laugh within one of the essays in this collection, don’t be surprised. Real stories, observations, rants should evoke emotion. Ideally, they should also warrant deposit into the inner “Hmm . . . box” we all have inside our heads. The messages herein span everything from the author’s first encounter with God through a decision to bequeath his body to science after two unforgettable Irish wakes. In between are encounters with a pedophile priest, a remarkable homeless man who found a life of purpose in homelessness, and a man the author sent to prison. There is also an encounter with God on a golf course; time in a church cult; the inevitable mountaintops and painful tumbles from them with family; love lost and love found; death on the “installment plan” and much more. Forty Days is pointing us toward the light. The essays are points on the author’s life path, but yours as well. Discover, as you look into your own heart through the author’s, faith, faithlessness, hope, loss, restoration, blessing, you.

Two years ago John Gunter met Mai Nguyen while he was serving in Vietnam, and the pair instantly hit it off. Now with the winds of war swirling around him, John returns to Vietnam to find Mai-the only woman he could ever consider marrying. After he finds Mai on her father's farm, he is faced with the challenge of communicating with her family and the hostility of a local man who wants to kill him. To add to this stressful situation is the relentless advance of the North Vietnamese Army. When the Communist Army approaches Mai's hometown, John and Mai make a daring escape under the cover of darkness. Will these young lovers make it to the coast before they're trapped in Vietnam? Will they ever reach America, where John's family is waiting, and have the wedding of their dreams? Forty Days to Eternity is a romantic tale wrapped in the historic events of the last days of the Vietnam War. It communicates the love and faith of a young couple and the drama and tension that characterized that time.

We've all had situations in our lives that seem beyond our control or that have no clear remedy. In this concise, inspirational guide, bestselling self-help guru Melody Beattie shows us that we have the ability to make a miracle for almost any circumstance we're facing. She offers a distillation of what she knows about gratitude, surrender, and connecting with our essential power. She challenges us to be more present each day and details a six-week action plan, the Miracle Exercise, to jump-start transformation in our lives.--From publisher description.