Positive Grace by Deb Haggerty

Deb’s Dozen: Stay Radiant After 70 by Following the Law of Love – Matthew 22:37-40

Adding Sparkle and Spirit to Life is the subtitle of Shirley’s book. And Radiant After 70 does just that—show you how to add sparkle and spirit to your live as you live through your 70s. Although targeted to women in their 70s, the principles apply to all ages. But if you want one more tailored to you, Shirley has also written Fabulous After 50 and Sensational After 60!

Shirley quotes Theodore Roosevelt, who once said, “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Shirley does anything but live the gray twilight and encourages all of us to look forward to these, our later years, and seize the opportunities we have to enjoy them to the fullest.

Shirley encourages us to be DIVAs—divine, inspired, vivacious, and anointed! The keys to being such a woman are:

#1: Follow the law of love, God’s prime commandment—“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind … you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
#2: Squeal with zeal!
#3: Have a vision for your future.
#4: Embrace true women friends.
#5: Look smashing while dashing!”
#6: Stay fit, fun, and forever young!
#7. Bring out the reflection of Jesus in your life.

Shirley’s motto verse is Psalm 90:17, and having met her, I can tell you she lives it, “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea the work of our hands establish thou it” (KJV).

As we enter the decade of our 70s, we can truly celebrate life, according to Shirley. We can be independent, true to ourselves, dare more, live more. We have fewer responsibilities and, if we’ve kept ourselves fit and the Lord gives us good health, we can do more than we could when we were constrained by the duties of homes and children. We can spend more time with God—get to know Him even more intimately. Most of all we can live with confidence—confidence that God has brought us this far and He will bring us the rest of the way Home.

I’ll leave you with this thought from Radiant After 70. Shirley quotes the apostle John speaking to his friend Gaius in 3 John 2, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”

To purchase Radiant After 70, click here: Radiant After 70: Adding Sparkle and Spirit to Life

I was privileged to spend a bit of time with Shirley and her agent at the International Christian Retail Show in Orlando this past June. She told me a bit about her growing-up years. She was raided on a sixty-acre cotton farm that was her grandparent’s and parents. She says she had lots of good food, Christian love, and family. She attended Montevallo College in Alabama in 1956 and met the heir to Mitchell Grocery in Albertville. They married and traveled extensively so Shirley was exposed to various countries and people and the “finer things in life.”

Shirley writes for the Baby Boomer market—to feed the market with Christian love, values, and spirit. She is a very determined woman—her first book, Fabulous After 50, was rejected twenty-five times before her manuscript was finally published. She told me, “Every time it was rejected, I changed it and made it better. I learned from every rejection.”

An accidental meeting at the International Society of Poets led to her meeting Cruiser Small from Maine. They had lunch and after getting to know him over time, Shirley asked him to be her agent. Thirteen years later they’re still going strong.

Shirley says she is having the time of her life, following her biggest passions: writing, speaking, traveling, and being a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, but her greatest passion is being fabulous at any age. Her final advice? “Stay in the Word and you will find joy, peace, and anticipation of tomorrow.”

To learn more about this very busy, dynamic woman, go to Aging Outside the Box

Whitaker House gave me a copy of Radiant After 70 in exchange for my candid review.

Deb’s Dozen: Five brides, one wedding dress. Five stories, five romances, five wonderful weddings.

Chicago, early 1950s. Joan Hunt, recently returned to the country of her childhood from England, embarks on a journey she could not have invented—no job, staying at the Y, but determined to make her way and be independent. When she secures a job at Hertz, she also meets Betty Estes, soon to become one of her best friends. Betty invites Joan to room with her and her two other roomies. Joan agrees after finding there will also be room for her longtime pen pal, Evelyn, who will be joining her soon. So begins the story of Joan and Betty and Evelyn and the sisters from Minnesota, Magda and Inga.

On a day when they all unexpectedly find themselves at home, the young women decide to make a day of it. Off they go to see Singing in the Rain starring Gene Kelly. After the movie, as they’re walking down the street, they see the most gorgeous wedding dress in the window of Carson Pirie Scott. On a whim, led by the irrepressible Betty, they go into the store, all try on the dress, then impulsively decide to buy it together.

As the years passed by, they got married one by one and then passed the dress on to the next bride. Though they were not all close friends, the dress continued to connect them after their early days in Chicago in the little basement apartment were long past.

You’ll love these five women, you’ll agonize with them over their jobs and their romances, and you’ll beam with them as they each wear that very special wedding gown. This is a story you’ll not soon forget. Five stars plus!

To get Five Brides and enjoy learning their stories, click the link: Five Brides

Eva Marie Everson told me at our recent interview that a friend brought her the story with a “You have to hear this!” Eva agreed the story was very special and determined to write it. However, three years passed before she was able to get an interview with the last surviving bride, eighty-three-year-old Joan Hunt Zimmerman. Eva wrote the story, turned it in to her publisher who loved it, but came back to her saying Joan’s story was great. However, they wanted a book with all five stories in it and they hoped to have it within two months. Out went the eighty-five thousand word book (which I was a beta reader for and which was wonderful) and in two months, in went the over one hundred twenty thousand word new manuscript.

I asked Eva what she had learned about herself while working on the book(s). She said she was often reminded that no matter how crooked the path we walk upon, God straightens it and points us down His path. She learned that she could rise to the challenge of creating and writing within a very short time frame when she loved and believed in the subject.

Eva’s first published book, One True Love, published in 2000, was a compilation of stories about the engagements of people she interviewed. Once she interviewed them, she wrote their stories. This book was so successful that it was quickly followed by One True Vow about their weddings. Shadow of Dreams, a novel, followed next—the first in a series of three books—also published in 2000-2001.

Eva Marie Everson is a Carol Award Winner, has finaled for the Christy Awards, has two Maggie Awards, and two AWSA Golden Scroll Awards for Fiction. The Pot Luck Club books she wrote with Linda Evans Shepherd have sold over two hundred thousand copies. Her book adaptation of the movie, Unconditional, was a Christian Booksellers Association best seller.

Eva says she writes because she believes in the importance of fiction in faith. After all, Jesus taught in stories. She uses her fiction to tell of Jesus’ love to people in a gentle fashion.

One thing her readers don’t know about her is that while she was on a telephone interview with Christian Retailing Magazine, she was struck by lightning. Lightning struck her house, came through the phone, and literally blew her across the room. She picked herself up, apologized to the interviewer, and continued. When the interviewer, Sean Fowlds, asked what had happened and she explained, his comment was, “Shocking!”

I guarantee that no matter which Eva Marie Everson book you purchase, and there are many, you will never be disappointed. Eva Marie’s Books