The Thing Beneath The Thing

We all have a surface self we present to the world, but our smiling faces often hide our pain that comes from unsuccessful attempts to find relief through harmful choices. How can we keep past wounds from damaging us? Learn to allow God to heal triggers, insecurities, and more so you can experience spiritual health and wholeness. Every driver knows the importance of avoiding potholes when navigating a route. Besides the uncomfortable bump, they can create permanent damage to vehicles and endanger entire roadway systems. The same is true of our lives. We all have potholes that have been formed by pain, trauma, or choices that we’ve made. Usually we find a quick fix, filling the hole with activities and even addictions disguised as culturally acceptable life choices. But before long, the hole is back—and often wider and deeper—waiting to catch us off-guard, which in the end creates even more permanent damage. In The Thing Beneath the Thing, pastor Steve Carter asks the simple question, “How is life working for you?” He knows that potholes exist and that the longer we live disconnected from answering this question, the more we will fill those holes with harmful choices. The solution? Allow God to fill them with His grace and love so that we can discover the beauty of peace and wholeness He has for us. The process lies in discovering our: Triggers: the setup that sets us off Hideouts: where we go to escape the pain of our story Insecurities: the false stories we create about ourselves Narratives: the false stories we create about others Grace: the place where we discover how to become whole, holy, and spiritually healthy Journey with a seasoned fellow traveler who has learned how to ask key questions that help us unlock the places where we’ve buried things. Then we can dig deep, invite healing, and learn new ways to operate so we can begin experiencing the life of freedom Jesus promised.

Originally published: Burton, MI: Subterranean Books, 2010.

Betsy Haynes delivers hair-raising chills and revolting humour in this tale of horror.

"A well-intentioned birthday gift for Lida Stearl leads to the discovery that Clarence Lusk, on death row for the murder of Lida's sister and preparing for his final appeal, is seeking pen-pals. Lida does not think he is entitled to any such consolations, and decides to teach him a lesson: she begins to write him, pretending to be someone else. As she accumulates details of Clarence's life in prison and his connections outside it, her preoccupation with the crime and its echoes intensifies, unsettling those around her and jeopardizing her relationships"--

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

A house with a history. An old evil.A decision that will change a family's life forever.The only thing Barbara Jones wants is to give her sons a normal life, a life she thinks is hers when she moves her family into the pretty Victorian house on the outskirts of town. But after being laid off from her job, Barb sees any chance at normalcy slipping away. She's behind on rent, her seventeen-year-old son is working at a convenience store to help pay the bills instead of studying, and her landlord is threatening to evict her. Barb's life has never been more out of control. Then the unimaginable happens.Barb didn't know the house she moved her boys into has a history of violence and ritual murder. She didn't know the entity at the center of that violence never left. At first, Barb can't bring herself to believe the entity is real, but nightly occurrences convince her there is something malevolent in the house. And before long, she finds out what it wants from her. Would you make a deal with the devil to save your family?This is a SHORT STORY.

One of Real Simple’s Best Books of the Year “I loved this book. . . . Funny, heartbreaking and clever with a mystery at its heart.” —Jojo Moyes “With an eye as keen for human idiosyncrasies as Miranda July’s, and a sense of humor as bright and surprising as Maria Semple’s, this is a novel of pure velocity.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Twenty years ago, Abigail Sorenson’s brother Robert went missing one day before her sixteenth birthday, never to be seen again. That same year, she began receiving scattered chapters in the mail of a self-help manual, the Guidebook, whose anonymous author promised to make her life soar to heights beyond her wildest dreams. The Guidebook’s missives have remained a constant in Abi’s life—a befuddling yet oddly comforting voice through her family’s grief over her brother’s disappearance, a move across continents, the devastating dissolution of her marriage, and the new beginning as a single mother and café owner in Sydney. Now, two decades after receiving those first pages, Abi is invited to an all-expenses paid weekend retreat to learn “the truth” about the Guidebook. It’s an opportunity too intriguing to refuse. If Everything is Connected, then surely the twin mysteries of the Guidebook and a missing brother must be linked? What follows is completely the opposite of what Abi expected––but it will lead her on a journey of discovery that will change her life––and enchant readers. Gravity Is the Thing is a smart, unusual, wickedly funny novel about the search for happiness that will break your heart into a million pieces and put it back together, bigger and better than before.

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "The Minimalists show you how to disconnect from our conditioned material state and reconnect to our true essence: love people and use things. This is not a book about how to live with less, but about how to live more deeply and more fully." —Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Like a Monk AS SEEN ON THE NETFLIX DOCUMENTARIES MINIMALISM & LESS IS NOW How might your life be better with less? Imagine a life with less: less stuff, less clutter, less stress and debt and discontent—a life with fewer distractions. Now, imagine a life with more: more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth and contribution and contentment—a life of passion, unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. What you’re imagining is an intentional life. And to get there, you’ll have to let go of some clutter that’s in the way. In Love People, Use Things, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus move past simple decluttering to show how minimalism makes room to reevaluate and heal the seven essential relationships in our lives: stuff, truth, self, money, values, creativity, and people. They use their own experiences—and those of the people they have met along the minimalist journey—to provide a template for how to live a fuller, more meaningful life. Because once you have less, you can make room for the right kind of more.

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

Tells the unlikely story of Silicon Valley through the life of one of its great achievers--Jim Clark, who founded Silicon Graphics and Netscape and may be on the verge of another trillion-dollar company.