Atlas Girl Giveaway by Emily Wierenga

Emily's photoToday I’m excited to introduce my friend, Emily Wierenga. She is guest posting today about her just released personal memoir Atlas Girl.

It’s a beautiful and bold journey on finding home in the least expected place.

Be sure to leave a comment on today’s post for a chance to win one of 3 giveaway books.

Now meet my friend Emily.

Why We Never Have to Really Worry about Our Children

By Emily T. Wierenga

Karen Ehman

I pull out Mum’s recipe for chicken and rice, faded on a tattered piece of paper, and I don’t see the rips or the stains.

I see our wooden kitchen table, the oval one which fit six of us around, and Dad at the head with his leather Bible and the basket full of Christmas cards, praying over a different family every night.

Mum baked granola for breakfast each morning and bread for every lunch, and she dished up our plates every night—meatloaf and mashed potatoes, chili and rice, and always dessert—and at nine years old I stopped eating.

I stopped eating for four years and yet we never quit meeting around the table.

The Bible was read around that oval structure, even when I was thirteen and sixty pounds and dying.

And when I gave birth to my eldest son at 28, a miracle child the pastor had prayed over us to conceive; when I held him to me and fed him, his hand orchestrating the sky and his soft cheeks filling and emptying, I cried.

I held him and I cried for those years when I wouldn’t let Mum hug me. For all those meals, those plates filled with love, trying to save a child who kept getting skinnier.

But more than those meals, my Mum prayed.

[box] A mother’s prayers are like knitting needles; they knit God’s Spirit around her children, like the warmest of sweaters.[/box]

My mum prayed deep into night, and it was her prayers that fed her four kids, that kept us alive, that kept us walking with Jesus, and we won’t always get it right.

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Parenting is the most difficult and rewarding of journeys and maybe you have a son or daughter who is refusing to eat right now? Maybe you’re weeping into the night wondering what you did wrong, but friend? We serve a God whose Spirit wove your child into being. We serve a God whose Spirit is the placenta that cushions all of our children’s falls, no matter how old they get.

Our kids never outgrow the womb. Because the womb is simply this: God’s Holy Spirit wrapped tight around them, and even as they stretch and develop and move, the Spirit moves and expands with them. God’s voice nourishing and nurturing them.

There may be years when we cannot reach our kids. When they refuse to talk to us. When we feel helpless and scared, because even though we’re doing all of the right things—it feels like it’s not enough.

You don’t have to be enough. You don’t have to do enough. You just have to pray.

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My memoir, ATLAS GIRL, is releasing this month, and I am excited to give away THREE copies today. Just leave a comment below to win!

From the back cover:

“Disillusioned and yearning for freedom, Emily Wierenga left home at age eighteen with no intention of ever returning. Broken down by organized religion, a childhood battle with anorexia, and her parents’ rigidity, she set out to find God somewhere else–anywhere else. Her travels took her across Canada, Central America, the United States, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. She had no idea that her faith was waiting for her the whole time–in the place she least expected it.

“Poignant and passionate, Atlas Girl is a very personal story of a universal yearning for home and the assurance that we are known, forgiven, and beloved. Readers will find in this memoir a true description of living faith as a two-way pursuit in a world fraught with distraction. Anyone who wrestles with the brokenness we find in the world will love this emotional journey into the arms of the God who heals all wounds.”

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Click HERE for a free excerpt. I’m also giving away a FREE e-book to anyone who orders Atlas Girl. Just order HERE, and send a receipt to: [email protected], and you’ll receive A House That God Built: 7 Essentials to Writing Inspirational Memoir an absolutely FREE e-book co-authored by myself and editor/memoir teacher Mick Silva.

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ALL proceeds from Atlas Girl will go towards my non-profit, The Lulu Tree. The Lulu Tree is dedicated to preventing tomorrow’s orphans by equipping today’s mothers. It is a grassroots organization bringing healing and hope to women and children in the slums of Uganda through the arts, community, and the gospel.
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Emily T. Wierenga is an award-winning journalist, blogger, commissioned artist and columnist, as well as the author of five books including the memoir, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look (Baker Books). She lives in Alberta, Canada with her husband and two sons. For more info, please visit www.emilywierenga.com. Find her on Twitter or Facebook.

106 Comments

  1. Weeping … our eldest son just can’t seem to get motivated and he’s made some bad choices. He’s an AMAZING talented, smart boy but he’s put up this huge walls between him and I and I don’t know how to scale them! I feel like my prayers just don’t matter most days. Thank you for this gentle, kind reminder. (Hoping to win a copy even if it’s not here, I tracked this post off your personal blog).

  2. Thank you for this. I pray, I yearn, I beg God, for my children every day. Every night. Every morning I wake praying for them. Thanks for putting your heart thoughts into words, and for this opportunity to win your book.

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