LOVE'S JOURNEY HOME

About the Book

In whose arms do we fall when our lives seem to be falling into a bottomless pit? Where do we turn when life is handing us sour grapes? Most of us fall back on our family, or those around us that we call family. In this book we see two families in the center of a storm.

How each family responds is the crux of these stories. How would we respond if we were in the same situation? Would we respond in anger and wrath, or would we respond with an attitude of love?

Each of us must decide whether we will respond or react when we step into the storms which inevitably come. A family that genuinely cares for one another can weather the storms which come into all our lives because it takes more than one shoulder to bear the burdens sometimes. If there isn’t family around, we have other forms of family; friends or Pastors are a good source of shoulder-sharing, too. Of course, Jesus is always near also. As we look into the circumstances surrounding our first family the most obvious fact that hits us is that they live in a worn down neighborhood. Violence is an everyday occurrence, and expectations concerning the children around the neighborhood are low.

This is the story of a family which is a light in this place, and love is the center of their being. Can their love calm the impending storm? Will this love continue through the storm? When life becomes so overwhelming where can we find the strength to carry on?

Learn from this family. See how they triumph over their biggest test, life.

Our second family also is in the crucible of life, having circumstances come with tragic results. However, before that we see the transformation of a young man. He changes from a position of privilege and spoil to that of a person who truly loves someone else first. He becomes someone who was a child, thought like a child, and acted the part of a child, into a man, who thinks like a man, and acts like a man. Everyone who loves his wife and family, treats her well, gives wisdom and honor to each person within the family, and speaks in the language of love to each person within that home. That means there is no wife-beating, child beating, demeaning words, or name-calling. This is the story of this family as they continue their journey through life, even when storms come.

Each step in the life of this family is saturated in a perfume called love. Can we say the same about our relationship with our family? Learn from this family as their story comes to life. While we all read these stories we can enjoy them to the max, and then read them again and again.

Love’s Journey Home is a story in the form of poetry. Although the poems are an entity unto themselves, together they form an amazing story that will make us think, laugh, cry, and in the end, enjoy, even more than I enjoyed writing it. Love’s Journey Home brings storytelling in poetry form back to our generation. As an art form, it has been used by such writers as Homer, who wrote The Illiad, Chaucer, and his Canterbury Tales, the many poems of Edger Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost. Poetry is the art of storytelling in short form. It is my pleasure to bring these two stories to my readers.

Life may get you down, but never fear, there’s always a good book near.

About the Author

Nothing brings back memories of love and family more than simply remembering growing up in a small town, with family and relatives all around. There was no distinction as to whether a person was 5 or 50, that person was part of the whole family structure, and no one felt left out. Perhaps that is why love saturates the poems within this book. Growing up in and around Norway, Kansas gave me the opportunity to go to school with friends and relatives. All the way through high school in Scandia, Kansas, we laughed and cried together. In 1968, when I went off to college at Dana College in Blair Nebraska, it was the first break from home, and it was one of those decisive moments in my life. Those were the moments when I learned the value of having a family who loved me and supported me as I continued my journey through life.

Now with a family of my own, I still value those early years back home.

I graduated from college in 1973 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Religion. I continued my education at Luther/Northwestern Seminary for one year.

Times of support from family are times when success comes easy, but when those times of support and love come to an end we strive with all our might but success is fleeting. Through those years I struggled with little success, and finally ended up living and working in the Union Gospel Mission, having lost everything that meant anything to me. My family was gone, through divorce, and my name and reputation were battered.

However, that period in my life was also my salvation, because I was placed in an atmosphere of love and support again. I was able to regain my relationship with God, and even my family. Fourteen months passed in 1987, 1988, and 1989, before I was able to move on with my life. In 1988 I met my wife, Maggie, who has given me the love and support I had with my family back home. Together we have been able to grow and flourish in our relationship with each other and our families. Together with our five children and six grandchildren, we have enjoyed every day. We live in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, and enjoy our home and our garden. We each work outside the home, Maggie works at the University of Minnesota. I write books and poetry, and work with a friend in a pallet business. It is a change from working for someone else in a warehouse, as I did for ten years, and being the ones making the decisions about how we make our business operate successfully.

I have written two nonfiction books entitled, The Church At The Edge Of Time, and A Life Of Communion, published through Tate Publishing, and now a book of poetry telling two stories of love amid the struggles, which inevitably come as our families grow and change. When God became an integral part of our family, we were able to bring our times of trouble to Him, knowing that the answer would come. That possibility of going to God with struggles and pain has been our practice in my family. We have been able to face many difficult times because God has promised us that He would never leave us nor forsake us, and when He promises something, He keeps His word.