Hey friends, chatting about Snatching Joy Wherever I can here today.

Lilacs blooming in my yard, so intoxicating!

It’s been a long week for me personally and also in our city of Manchester, NH. Thursday night – a lock-down on the west end – two of our city police officers shot during the night.

The officers are young, 27 and 28 respectively. Thank God they’ll both fully recover.

The schools on the west end were closed during the man-hunt yesterday. Thankfully the suspect, accused of robbing a convenience store earlier in the week, is now in custody. Exhale.

If you read here regularly you know I strive to stay positive and upbeat. But even more, for authenticity. Which is why I’m telling you the truth, what’s really going on here behind the scenes.

And my crab apple tree….stunning!

So how about for you?  How was your week? It’s a crazy world out there isn’t it? And none of us knows quite what’s coming down the pike next. That’s why we need to snatch the joy moments whenever/wherever we can.

Crazy life. And a busy one too.

Oops, did I say that? A few years back Jon and I made a pact that we weren’t going to waste our time or breath talking about our state of “busy-ness” anymore.

Well I think the topic came up initially because we caught ourselves responding to those who asked how we were doing, telling them about how busy we were. So boring and monotonous to the listener, for sure. (Folks were so polite, didn’t mention it.)

Because the truth is, whose life isn’t busy? So we’re choosing to call it “full”. Ha. Yes, we’re leading a very “full” life.

We find ourselves betwixt and between in a number of ways, but mostly with our kids right now. We’ve got an eighteen year old headed to college in the fall and our littlest guy Hudson with Down syndrome, just turned six.

Still in diapers, still waiting on words. Plus we’ve got a few boys in between.

The other day Jon and I spent the evening with our big guy working on college scholarship applications. Finally, finally….about midnight we all head to bed, thoroughly exhausted.

We’re met in the upstairs hallway by a tell-tale odor. Oh no. Hudson. A diaper. Upon further investigation, the pajamas also need changing. Also sheets. And mattress pad.

Jon bags up the offending diaper, hands it to me while he tucks the still-sleeping Hudson snug into his clean bed.

And I sigh in a whisper,” I am NOT taking this outside now,” and head to drop it in the hallway. And Jon, he quietly motions, takes the bag.

Raises the window sash, ceremoniously drops the bag out the window onto the front walkway. Shuts the window.

These crazy days, we just gotta think outside the box friends. And I’m thankful to be married to a man who does. Even at midnight.

So when life gets full, super saturated, how do we snatch joy? It can be elusive for sure.

I’ve been intentionally thinking about it this week, thought I’d share a few tiny ways I intentionally grab a little joy. Simple things.

• A fun paper straw in my water glass.
• A stroll through the yard, discovering the latest blooms.
• Writing a quick note to a friend on letterpress stationery.
• Texting a friend.
• A quick walk around the block.
• Savoring a hot drink from a hand thrown pottery mug
• Surrounding myself with beauty whenever I can.

• Shoes – fun ones.
• Dreaming of the future.
• Catching a glimpse of the sunset.
• A glass of wine with my love after a long day.
• A quiet few minutes at Barnes & Noble, flipping through my favorite magazine.
• Browsing at Paper Source or a specialty yarn shop.

So many more, but I’ll stop there.

I know people like this. And I want to be one of those souls – who find the joy everywhere – and leave it behind when they go.

So tell me friends, how do you snatch moments of joy in this crazy busy (oops…FULL) life?

Hope you’ll share, I’m all ears. Have a beautiful weekend, and grab the joy wherever you can!

You may also like: Buried or Planted

The post Snatching Joy Wherever I Can appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place.” Tell me friends: do you not love this quote? Oh my. You better believe my kids know it by heart. Ha.

Happy weekend to everyone today! Hope you have some relaxation and down time figured into your weekend plans. We were originally slated (by forecasters, that is) for a Nor’easter today and then it fizzled here in NH. So the shovelers are all doing the happy dance. And others like me, who clutch to every remote excuse for hibernation, feel cheated. So there you have it.

Especially hope you’ll hang with me to the end today: I’ve got a question for you.

So back to communication. The ability to communicate is actually quite a gift. Easily taken for granted, especially if you can’t remember a time when you couldn’t communicate.

Most of you know about my little Hudson. (He’s five, has Down syndrome.) So when Hudson’s hungry, he goes over to my stash of cutting boards, gets one. Next he heads to the pantry, snags the peanut butter jar. Puts it on the cutting board. Then moves on to the fridge for the grape jelly hunt. So even though there aren’t so many words, there’s lots of communication taking place. I get the message loud and clear he’s hungry when he collects all the PB & J supplies. Communication is quite a gift, and I’m grateful Hudson has his own way of telling me he’s hungry.

I was contemplating communication last week, chatted with a few friends about it. When I was little, maybe four or five, I remember my mother taking me along to a nursing home to visit a friend of hers who was in a coma. Unresponsive. We’ll call her Cindy. I don’t remember all the details that put Cindy in that state, but she was a relatively young woman in her twenties who had a stroke. Cindy had blank, unseeing eyes, and was covered with tubes and wires. No one seemed to know if she could hear and understand, and the doctors and nurses treated her as if she couldn’t. I remember my mother being convinced we just couldn’t know whether Cindy could hear or understand. So on our visits, we gave her the benefit of the doubt, acted as if she could see, hear and understand everything we said. We’d talk about the weather, her family, what was going on in our family. Chat about whatever we could think of that might interest her, including reading verses and singing hymns. It’s not as easy as you might think having a completely one way conversation for an hour at a time.

And I can only imagine it would be quite a horrible imprisonment to be trapped in an unresponsive body if your mind is fully present and engaged. To be unable to communicate in any way. A travesty and perhaps one of the worst hells on earth.

But I’m hearing more and more stories of people who were once in a coma or an unresponsive state that miraculously come back around. What a story they have to tell on the other side. One such fascinating and poignant story is about a twelve year old South African boy named Martin.

“In January of 1988, Martin Pistorius came home from school complaining of a sore throat. He never went back. Within a year, Martin had degenerated into a mute and quadriplegic. By his fourteenth birthday he was a hollow shell, unseeing and unknowing; he spent his days at a care center, sitting blankly in front of the television while his family waited for him to die.

And then his mind came up for air.

For an unimaginable ten years, Martin would be completely conscious while trapped inside his unresponsive body, secretly aware of everything happening around him and utterly powerless to communicate it.

Ghost Boy is Martin’s story, as written – shockingly and triumphantly – by Martin himself. With unflinching candor, Martin describes the chilling details of his life as a Secretly Lucid Vegetable – from the perversion of some who believed him to be brain dead, to the grace of those who sought recognition in his eyes.

For an age when prolonged illness and misdiagnoses are too common, Ghost Boy is the hopeful story of a discarded life awakening from passivity to action, despair to hope, captivity to freedom.”  (from the back cover of Ghost Boy)

Martin’s is a shocking and amazing story, nothing short of a miracle. And here’s my question for you. I’ve not yet read the book Ghost Boy. But I’m about to start. And I wonder if you might like to read it too. And then in a few months we could come back and talk about it here. An on-line virtual book discussion of sorts. (Not live.) So let’s pick a Saturday in March. Does the 19th work? That gives you a week or so to get the book at the library and hopefully enough time to read.

Here’s an Amazon link with more info. on the book. And then I’ll post about Ghost Boy on Saturday, March 19th and you can share your thoughts and impressions too. (If you want.) Just think about it.

So let me finish telling you about Cindy now. Despite the medical staff’s opinion, my mom was convinced Cindy was lucid. One day she brings in a white board and marker, places the marker in Cindy’s clenched fingers. Cindy’s fingers clutch the pen, and laboriously and painstakingly she draws letters onto the white board. A word forms. A word and some numbers. A scripture reference. You can imagine the shock of the medical staff. But I don’t think it surprised my mother.

Eventually, over months, Cindy comes out of her unresponsive state. Her life as a Secretly Lucid Vegetable. Tells us how much she enjoyed our visits. That she remembers our conversations, each detail. Also the verses and singing.

And that’s one of the reasons I believe in miracles. That and the first glimpse of each of my newborns’ precious faces. Miracles. To me, miracles are just divine glimpses. Glimpses reminding me to look Up.

(If you’re new here, I post recipes during the week and muse on the weekends. Thank you for visiting today.)

If you’re a book worm like me, here’s a list (and short reviews) of other books I love that you might like too: Reading List 2015

The post Life As a Secretly Lucid Vegetable appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.

Wasn’t sure what to name this post, so I wrote it, then came back and titled it. Permission. I think it fits, but we’ll see what you think. So here’s what’s on my mind today. Lots of people out there are still working through their resolution lists for 2016. Others are choosing a “word theme” for the year. Like Dream. Or Simplify. Or Believe. I’ve done both those things in the past: written resolutions or chosen a word/theme for the year. So I’m not dissing resolutions and word themes. They play an important role. Something to shoot for.

But this year I’m going down a different path. Now that I’m in my forties I can do that, right? Come July, I’ll turn 44. Ouch. A fellow-forties-friend (that’s what I’ll call her) and I were recently chatting about how much we used to care about what people thought when we were in our twenties. And then we cared just a little less in our thirties. And now that we’re in our full-blown forties, we could really care less. Ha. Well, that’s not exactly true, but pretty darn close.

This year, I’m not only giving myself Permission to not do certain things, I’m also giving myself Permission to not feel guilty about not doing them. Let me explain.

In case you didn’t know, women are funny. At least this one is. And if you’re a man, you might not get this. But women are funny in that they often feel pressured to do things. Even to do them in a particular way. Especially if we’ve done them that way in the past. Ritual. We cling tightly to tradition and memories. That “we’ve always done it this way” mentality.

So the following is silly but true. When I was in my twenties and newly married, I had a little cardboard box in my microscopic, organized pantry labeled “grocery bags.” After shopping trips I’d neatly fold the bags lengthwise into strips, then flip-flop fold them into neat little self-contained triangles. Put them in the labeled box. Yup, I did that. Whenever I needed a plastic bag I’d grab a triangle and it was great, so convenient. Saved space. So nice and neat for picnics, etc.

Well one day a fairly blunt visiting friend spied my triangle bags in the pantry and gravely announced: “You, (dramatic pause) have way too much time on your hands.”

Humph.Trust me, it didn’t sit well with me at the time. But in hindsight, she was right. Truth is, we’re all in different seasons of life, and she was obviously in a season devoid of time to fold grocery bags into little triangles. And twenty years later, so am I. Ha. Those seemingly important little things we once poured our precious time and energy into change over time.

Life changes. Seasons change. And this year I’m giving myself Permission to change along with those seasons. Realizing there are things I once did I no longer can in this particular season. And I’m not going to feel guilty about it.

As many of you know, our family’s life significantly changed when our sweet little Hudson was born with the unexpected diagnosis of Down syndrome nearly six years ago. The world of constant care-giving has been life changing and even draining at times. But there’ve been many other changes along the way since those triangle-bag-folding days. Part-time seminary for Jon with a two hour, one-way commute to Charlotte twice a week. (Lasted eight long years while he worked full-time. One baby born during Greek, one during Hebrew. LOL.) Eventually four kids, all boys. Moving back north from the south. Me transitioning from working full-time, to being a SAHM, back to working full-time again. Honestly, in twenty-three years of marriage, one thing has remained constant: change. And I’m still learning how to roll with it. To transition.

I’m learning to release the past, even things and traditions I treasure. Some I really want to do, but physically don’t have the time or energy anymore. And then others, I question why I did them in the first place. (Triangle bags.)

Learning as I uncurl my white-knuckled, fingers clutching the past, that open hands can more easily receive beautiful new gifts and blessings. Different ones.

“It would seem that… our desires are not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”   -C.S.Lewis

In various seasons of life, I have:

• Made homemade bread weekly for my family.
• Milled the wheat for that homemade bread. (Yeah, I did that.)
• Entertained people in my home. Often. (Very often.)
• Made fancy desserts and gourmet meals for events.
• Served homemade dinners every night, no matter what.
• Sent out Christmas cards.
• Taught Kindermusik.
• Participated in service projects.
• Sewed curtains for my home. Also clothes and costumes for the kids.
• Knit socks for each of my boys.
• Ran 3 miles, six days a week.
• Made all handmade Christmas gifts.
• Washed the kitchen floor weekly.
• Folded grocery bags into neat, self-contained little triangles. (Sigh.)

It’s not that I did all those things in the same season of life. I mention them not to toot my own horn, but to make a point. And while some might call me an over-achiever (thanks Dave), these are things I took great pleasure and joy in doing for my friends, family or myself. Gifts from my hands, my heart. But you know what? I’m not doing any of those things anymore. (That’s the point.)

I hope you’ll hear me, especially if you’re a younger woman. (Younger than me, ha.)

Do the things that YOU have been called to do in the season of life you’re in. Nothing more and nothing less.

Don’t cave to the pressure of  friends, family, culture, society or even yourself to live differently. Yes, for goodness sake, stop pressuring yourself. Because life seasons change. And you’ll change too. Don’t let yourself die on the inside. That slow, miserable death, trying to conform to everyone else’s expectations. Everyone else’s but your own. Trying to make everyone happy isn’t humanly possible. I’m not talking about selfishness, self-focus or even narcissism here. I’m talking about striving to live up to another person’s expectations of what you should be doing, rather than who you were called and gifted to be.

I remember being a kid. Hearing my dad say often, “You can please some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time.”

Truth.

“Hi, my name is Allie. And I’m a people-pleaser.”

If you’re a recovering people-pleaser like me, and your circles of friends and family continue to grow as they inevitably will, it becomes increasingly impossible to please (let alone stay in touch) with everyone in life.

I’m still learning to be true to who I’m called to be, knowing it won’t please everyone. I’m not sure why women in particular struggle so much with this people pleasing. I think it’s our innately nurturing nature. But the truth is that one day you might wake up in your forties (like me), not even know who you are anymore. Because you’ve been so busy nurturing, caregiving and trying to please others. And in that process, you’ve somehow forgotten the very essence of who you were created to be. You might pass a mirror and wonder who stares back at you with the blank, hollow eyes.

I’ve heard it said this way. A healthy body of water needs both an inlet and an outlet. Just an inlet, and you’ve got an unhealthy, stagnant pond. Just an outlet, and you’ve got a dry, withered riverbed.  Same with people.

Thing is, I’m greedy. I want to be more than just a healthy body of water. I want to be an oasis. With multiple inlets. Multiple outlets. I know I shouldn’t be so greedy. (Gotta add that to my non-existent New Year’s resolution list.)

Some of you know I worked countless hours behind the scenes on this blog last year, trying to get it up and running. It takes more time than you’d think, and I’m usually up at 5:30 a.m. sharing links in social media groups. This past Tuesday morning I gave myself grace (permission) to sleep in ’til 7. And just before 7, I was pleasantly awakened by Hudson, who had quietly crawled into my bed for a quick snuggle. Hudson has no trouble giving himself grace, trust me. He then beat me down the stairs, found the brownie pan and helped himself to a most generous square. More grace. (Or opportunistic thievery.) Yes, Hudson and most children have no trouble giving themselves grace. But somewhere along the way we grow into adults. Adults who often times have grace for everyone else, but none for ourselves.

So instead of resolutions and inspirational theme words, I’m following Hudson’s lead and gifting myself with grace this coming year. No, I didn’t host a Christmas party last month. Epiphany came and went, and my Christmas tree still stands. The wreaths are up. The stockings are still hung by the chimney with care. The Christmas cards that were never ordered were never sent. The thank you notes aren’t even written. (Yet!)

In this particular season of life, I’m thankful to breathe in and out. Inhale Exhale. To release those things I’m either no longer called to do or unable to do with joy in my heart. With a calmer spirit and fewer expectations for myself, I’m better equipped to carry out the tasks that I truly am called to do in this season.

Meanwhile, my haphazard pantry is stuffed to the gills with crumpled plastic grocery bags. Not a triangle in sight.

And I’m ok with that.

Thoughts?

You may also like: Key Women

The post Permission appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.

Who likes rats? Not me, not me! And I don’t exactly see your hand raised either. The only interaction I’ve had with rats is that Templeton from Charlotte’s Web. Templeton the Rat, Wilbur’s selfish barnyard buddy.

Here’s what author E.B. White says regarding Templeton, that rude, mean, selfish little rodent at the trough: “The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything.”

Rats In A Cellar by allie taylor 

Yup, no “milk of rodent kindness.” Rats are not universally loved. (Except by snakes for obvious reasons.)

Have you read the Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls? If not, it’s quite a read. And if you grew up in a poor dysfunctional family, just fyi it might be a very difficult read, bring back painful memories. Today Jeannette is an accomplished writer and journalist, a former MSNBC news correspondent. But she had the most unusual upbringing in a highly dysfunctional family. Her mother: a distracted starving artist. Her father Rex: a brilliant man, but an alcoholic out of touch with reality. He doesn’t hold a job, moves the family from state to state to avoid bill collectors. Draws blueprints for a glass castle he’ll build as the family estate when his latest invention takes off. But it never does.

Back to rats. Jeannette remembers regularly seeing rats eating out of the sugar bowl on the kitchen counter growing up in West Virginia. That among other things.

Yeah, RATS.

Don’t know if you’re acquainted with C.S. Lewis, but his writings have meant a great deal to me through the years. I remember stumbling across this C.S. Lewis quote shortly after Hudson’s birth nearly five years ago, following his unexpected Down syndrome diagnosis.

“We’re not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we’re wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

I pondered that quote for weeks and weeks.

Then I was reading this week, came across the following excerpt from one of C.S. Lewis’ books where he talks about Rats In A Cellar. This meant a lot to me, thought it might to you too.

“When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed.

And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth?”

(And here’s where the rats come in…)

“If there are Rats In A Cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily, they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.

Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul. Now that cellar is out of reach of my conscious will. I can to some extent control my acts: I have not direct control over my temperament. And if (as I said before) what we are matters even more than what we do–if, indeed, what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are–then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about.

And this applies to my good actions too. How many of them were done for the right motive? How many for fear of public opinion, or a desire to show off? How many from a sort of obstinacy or sense of superiority which, in different circumstances, might equally have led to some very bad act?

But I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realize that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.”

-C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity

Related post: Key Women

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We all have life defining moments. We don’t know when or where they’ll happen, we just know they do. And usually when we least expect it.

If you don’t know, one of my little boys has an extra chromosome. It’s mind boggling that something so microscopic and invisible to the naked eye contributes to such endearing and frustrating behavior.

Shut Up and Listen  by Allie Taylor

One frigid morning last winter, I learned two families we dearly love had the flu. No big plans were in place for the day yet, and I clearly felt the “call” to make them healing Arroz Caldo (Philippine Chicken Soup.) We all have our role to play, and I knew mine.

The cupboard was bare, and a grocery run was in order. I bundled up little man for the trip. He was three, and not yet walking. The thermometer read -3 degrees that day. I clearly remember, because it was also during that cold snap that he refused to wear shoes anymore. Or socks. (Timing is everything.)

We pulled into the parking space and I opened his door. Out flew two little sheepskin boots. One landed in a dirty snowdrift, the other on the asphalt. He giggled. I wrestled the boots back on. They must’ve been chillier the second time around, because I know my hands were frozen.

Into the store we went. He gleefully kicked the boots off again. I retrieved them, tucking them into my bag. We approached a shopper on aisle one, and my little passenger yelled loudly: a shrill, startling sound, ending in an unfriendly growl.

(He’d been practicing his lion roar.)

“I’m sorry, we’re still working on our manners,” I apologized. (I’ve been repeating that for a number of years now.)

Into the cart went the chicken. Another shriek further down the aisle, directed at a pleasant, unsuspecting elderly shopper. She stopped smiling.

(Can I go through the floor now, or later?)

Now to find the rice. My gentle shushing had no effect. Our shopping trip continued in like manner. On aisle eight, I had an epiphany.

In desperation, and plumb out of apologies, I hummed “Twinkle, twinkle little star”. Little man adores music. He leaned in with rapt attention, cheerfully filling in the last word of each line with great anticipation and excitement. The art of distraction. I sang fifty verses of “Twinkle, twinkle” that morning. (Or a hundred?) But it got us through the produce section, the chicken broth aisle, and the bread aisle without incident. I felt nothing like a twinkly diamond in the sky. Mostly, I wanted to be up above the world so high. Like in outer space. I just wanted to disappear.

The day continued as poorly as it began. I sliced my finger mincing the fresh ginger and onion. (I know you’re worried. But no, I didn’t contaminate the soup.) It took me hours to cook up a quadruple scratch batch of my Arroz Caldo , enough for the two sick families and my own.

My little man was of no help that day. Early afternoon he crawled into the pantry, tipping the nearly full gallon of vinegar. But first he popped the top. (The pantry smelled vinegary for months.)

Mid-afternoon, I packed my adorable, stinky, vinegary “helper” plus the soup pots into the car. We were off on delivery. In the rearview mirror, I spied boots hurtling through the air. No surprise there. He was weary of the day, the car and boots. (Me too.) His all too familiar grocery store salutations drifted up from the back seat, now directed at an audience of one. Me. The forty-five minute drive felt interminable.

I’d texted to tell her I was coming, but she never saw it. A weary mom answered the door and burst into tears. I joined in. She’d been sick on the sofa. They’d been seriously sick intermittently all winter. Just that morning, her little girl specifically asked for chicken soup, but mom was too sick to go out. Instead, she prayed a chicken soup prayer from the sofa. And several hours later, I showed up on the doorstep.

I don’t pretend to know exactly how it all works. But I do know she was supposed to pray for that soup. And I was supposed to make and deliver it. She was supposed to receive the soup as an answer to prayer that day. We were both supposed to weep together, cementing new friendship over a steaming pot of chicken soup. Providentially, we were doing exactly what we were supposed to that day.

It’s taken me four decades plus, but I’m just learning to listen. These are life’s defining moments. Worth “Twinkle, Twinkle” ad nauseum, flying socks and boots, stinky pantries, stinky kids. It’s costly in time, effort and tears. But the overwhelming joy of love and service outweighs the sacrifice. I’m reminded to slow down, keep my mouth shut and just listen. Because I want to hear that still small voice, and I don’t want to miss my next assignment. (Sure hope it doesn’t include vinegar.)

Maybe you have a life defining moment to share about today?

“Prayer doesn’t change God – it changes me.”  C.S. Lewis

The post Shut up and Listen appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.

Have you seen the movie Unbroken yet? Jon and I had a last minute opportunity to sneak out for a flick Friday night. We’d been wanting to see Unbroken since opening day on Christmas. (Actually, we’d been wanting to see it for months.)

We read articles about the filming of the movie and saw a few reviews, but I still hadn’t read Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. I really like to read the book before the movie, but it didn’t happen that way. (It was published around Hudson’s birth and surprise diagnosis. I knew I couldn’t handle it then. I bought it anyway and my big guys have all read it now. But here it is four years later and I still haven’t.)

(Spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen Unbroken and don’t want to know more, stop reading now.)

I was struck by a few themes in Unbroken:

• The horrific brutality of the Japanese prison camp guards, and particularly the “Bird”. (I found myself crouched, “hiding”. Hard to watch)
• Louie’s resilience: he met suffering with hope, resolve and humor.

• Louie’s perseverance as a competitor in the Berlin Olympics, a bombadier in World War II, a survivor on a life raft in the ocean, and his subsequent capture and torture in a Japanese prison work camp.

• The encouraging mentor role that older brother Pete played in Louie’s life.
• The forgiveness that Louie later offered his brutal captors.
• That those who experience the deepest pain often have the greatest influence and impact in life. (We speak from our pain. And others listen.)

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  – C. S. Lewis

A lot was said in the movie. And a lot was unsaid. I’m thankful Angelina Jolie produced Unbroken because it puts the spotlight on an amazing story of triumph, forgiveness and redemption that needs to be told. Louie Zamperini’s unforgettable story reminds us that truth and forgiveness will eventually triumph over hatred and brutality.

The movie Unbroken may just inspire a new generation towards forgiveness, perseverance, hope and resilience. And there’ll likely be others like me, who will finally pick up the book and read the rest of the story.

Check out the official Unbroken movie trailer here:

Did you see Unbroken or read the book? Are you planning to? Did Louie Zamperini’s story inspire or affect you? Would love to hear your thoughts today.

The post Unbroken appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.