Island of Misfit Joys contains stories of inspiration, making mistakes, finding happiness as well as bringing to light anecdotes of deliberate and unexpected kindness. Many times these random encounters have elements of untapped joy, everyday life, vulnerability, and our reactions. Ravi Zacharias stated, "None of us escapes life without some ecstasy and heartache." When you see a baby jumping for joy, splashing water during a bath, or smiling from a hug you just gave them, we rarely question their excitement and enjoy the moment of their ebullient happiness. Not everything fits together perfectly. Sometimes a misfit experience turns into an unexpected joy! As adults, I find that we often feel guilty, (or are made to feel guilty) if we express our own joy. God has given each of us so many gifts, so that we can choose to build each other up, to keep these gifts latent, or to bring people to their knees with unkind words. I hope your day is a happy one. Brené Brown reminds us, "Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change." This book is also about what I observe, react to, and reflect on-often in complete awe. I also hope this helps you to see that there is much good in the world. We just have to look around us, and we have the power to make positive, impactful changes in our immediate surroundings and in bigger circles, too. What actions do you take when no one is looking? Alison McGhee said, "Every moment of every day you can bring people down or you can lift them up-you, one small person-by the energy you project. We choose what we want our lives to mean, and what we want to leave behind. We have the power to write our own stories. Remember that." It is in this spirit that these stories of inspiration are shared. I feel a bit overwhelmed by people who express that I am "positive." Someone asked me "What are you on?" I just realize that I have so much time left, people are generally good, some will not like you no matter what you do, and life is just one big sitcom, so laugh a little or laugh a lot. Also, I have faced my own mortality a few times, and I am continuing to see that many times you and I are, metaphorically speaking, given a bundle of Christmas lights to untangle. You unravel the lights, plug them into some good power source, and voila, you have some magic before your eyes. Or, you have a new source of power that you just plugged into, and the lights suddenly short out. Now, you have to find a new way to see the lights again. I also have witnessed enough horrible and miraculous life experiences that made me strongly consider focusing more on the miraculous, yet everyday experiences and how we can work toward achieving happiness, even if what you thought might happen did not fit. Often what we did not see fitting in our own lives often brings us unintended joy!

Embark on a profound journey through the depths of human emotion and spirituality in the updated anniversary edition of Refractions by renowned artist Makoto Fujimura. This timeless collection of reflective essays invites you to explore themes of grief, loss, tragedy, and disruption through the eyes of an artist's soul. Originally conceived in the shadow of the fallen twin towers of the World Trade Center, near where Fujimura's New York art studio stood, this anniversary edition includes new essays unpacking the author's further insights into his concepts of culture care and a theology of making. Refractions carries the weight of history and the urgency of the moment, illuminating beauty, healing, and hope. A gift for any artist or supporter of the arts, Refractions connects faith, art, and life, offering insight into healing with the wisdom and perspective of a leading contemporary artist and follower of Jesus, making beauty from ashes, and the gospel as a message as breathtaking and intricate as the lives it touches. In a world marred by violence and despair, Fujimura guides you toward a deep understanding of life's intricate tapestry, where beauty emerges from unexpected places, and healing finds its roots in the goodness of God and human resilience.

A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!

The elves at Chicken Soup for the Soul have done it again! You’ll love these stories all about the joy, wonder, and inspiration of the holiday season. The Joy of Christmas is a collection of 101 heartwarming and entertaining stories about how you spend your holidays—the reunions, holiday hijinks, community spirit, and your fun family and religious traditions. We laughed out loud at some stories; and others made us tear up a little. They’ll all leave you smiling and eager to share the holidays, filled with new ideas and enthusiasm for this special time of year. And Chicken Soup for the Soul didn’t forget the rest of the season either, with stories about Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and New Year’s. There’s something for everyone in these joy-filled pages.

Most of us watch with mild concern the fast disappearing wild spaces or the recurrence of pollution - related crises such as oil spills, toxic blooms in fertilizer-enriched rivers, and the increasing violence in our own country. Joy Williams does much more than watch. With guts and passion, she sounds the alarm over the general disconnection from the natural world that our consumer culture has created. The culling of elephants, electron-probed chimpanzees, and the vanishing wetlands are just some of her subjects. Razor-sharp, controversial, scathingly opinionated, and refreshingly unafraid of conflict, Williams refuses to compromise as she lashes out at the greed of Americans and decries our own turpitude. It is not enough to mourn the passing of the natural world, Ill Nature shouts. Get out of our homes and our cars and our cubicles and do something...now.

Charisse Tyson's got it all going on ... She's a savvy, successful real-estate agent with a quick wit, a low tolerance for BS, a gorgeous size-14 body, and a thirst for top shelf vodka. Despite her dream house, luxury car, and appetite for life's best--like fine dining and hot men--she seems to have her own special talent for attracting players. Why do all of her ex-lovers belong in the Losers Hall of Fame. Why does Rissey seem to have her own special talent as a bum magnet? ... But just as Rissey swears off sex and vows to dump her emotional baggage, she meets house-hunting client Dwayne Gibson. There's no way she can resist his seductive smile and rock-hard body ... Will Dwayne turn out to be the biggest bum of them all? Or will this time be different?"--Page 4 of cover.

It happened in an instant: a car crash, thrown from the vehicle, pronounced clinically dead while lying on the road, rotors turned off the Life Flight helicopter—and then swept into eternity . . . only to return, after being pronounced dead three times, to a far different life. Welcome to The Fragrance of Angels, Martha Brookhart Halda’s memoir about time on the other side—and how and why she reshaped and developed a new purpose in life after it became more fraught with challenge after visiting heaven. The Fragrance of Angels distinguishes itself as a mother’s empowerment story, taking us from a parent’s greatest horror—dying while the kids are young—to a profound change in her approach to parenting and life. The former collegiate track, volleyball, and basketball player and mother discusses how she dealt with extensive rehabilitation, a difficult marriage, re-learning to walk and talk, returning to full-time motherhood, running the Dublin Marathon three years after her accident, striking out on her own, meeting new love, and finding new meaning in a world that never looked or felt the same to her again. Within her story is that of so many other women in the middle of their lives, yet infused with a sense of purpose and discovery borne by her time on the other side. The Fragrance of Angels is filled with a deep sense of love and challenge, physical beauty and emotional upheaval, frustration and triumph. Ultimately, it contains quite a surprise—the one Martha realized when she was in eternity.

I’ve watched men change from confident, decisive, and action-oriented lions to second-guessing, scared-of-their-shadows, don’t-rock-the-boat mice. They don’t feel confident in relationships, work environments—or anywhere. Men are either looking for something or running from something; maybe it’s a bit of both. Well, it’s time to stop running. It’s time to MAN UP to face the real issues. Being a real man is about being true to yourself first. It means finding strength from living authentically and then sharing that strength with others. Being a real man means understanding who you are and how to influence the world for the better. A real man is an asset to those around him. He doesn’t have to “take charge” but he leads the charge, and people want to join in. A real man draws people in. In fact, he is completely irresistible. Men may feel like they have lost the permission they once had to be men, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t need permission. You don’t need anyone authorizing you to be who you were meant to be. It’s time to stop trying to please everyone else. It’s time to stop apologizing for thinking like a man, acting like a man, and being a man. It’s time to MAN UP!

A satire of traditional Christmas stories and noir. A hardboiled elf is framed for murder in a North Pole world that plays reindeer games for keeps, and where favorite holiday characters live complex lives beyond December. Fired from his longtime job as captain of the Coal Patrol, two-foot-three inch 1,300-year-old elf Gumdrop Coal is angry. He's one of Santa's original elves, inspired by the fat man's vision to bring joy to children on that one special day each year. But somewhere along the way things went sour for Gumdrop. Maybe it was delivering one too many lumps of coal for the Naughty List. Maybe it's the conspiracy against Christmas that he's starting to sense down every chimney. Either way, North Pole disillusionment is nothing new: Some elves brood with a bottle of nog, trying to forget their own wish list. Some get better. Some get bitter. Gumdrop Coal wants revenge. Justice is the only thing he knows, and so he decides to give a serious wakeup call to parents who can't keep their vile offspring from landing on the Naughty List. But when one parent winds up dead, his eye shot out with a Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model BB gun, Gumdrop Coal must learn who framed him and why. Along the way he'll escape the life-sucking plants of the Mistletoe Forrest, battle the infamous Tannenbomb Giant, and survive a close encounter with twelve very angry drummers and their violent friends. The horrible truth lurking behind the gingerbread doors of Kringle Town could spell the end of Christmas-and of the fat man himself. Holly Jolly!

Have you ever stared at the ceiling, tired eyes held open by a mind overflowing with thoughts, questions and feelings? This is the background framing the whole conception of the poetic musings depicted in this book: a global pandemic, a life in a new country, and a moment of both professional and personal disruption. For any chronic overthinker the scenario of imposed, unannounced change, and the sudden awareness of Time is the "perfect” igniting spark to action. And that is how every bad mood, every unsolicited advice, every article, every news, every fear, every disappointment became a vessel for the words start to flow. The series of poetic musings depicted in Little Things, complex matters is an attempt to understand the Whys? behind all the sudden disruption, by answering (or trying to answer) the many burning questions about people, science, nature, love, past, future and how all those things put together form the Big Picture of Life. In the pages inside, the "rant" moments are organized in form of poetry to describe a big picture that is bigger and colorful than ever. And strangely, so is the perception of the details. In this wordly journey to self-awareness every dot connected is a new question to ask, a new theory to analyze, and an opportunity to immerse ourselves in a new gray zone in between that is anything but gray. If you are a overthinker, a curious mind or if you just have the tendency of staring at the ceiling at night with the mind boiling with the most provocative questions, I invite you to do a deep dive in this book. The path to discover the answers that most comfort one's mind is not easy, make no mistake. But to all future readers, donating their precious time to appreciate the nonnative rants inside, I hope these musings can help you answer some of your own burning questions. One thing is for sure, though. I honestly feel (and hope) that you will leave these pages with tons of additional questions of your own so you can rant away out there as most please your souls.