“Finding Everyday Fruit” is HERE!
And how it all started with a voice memo
THE BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE! (Forgive me for shouting but I’m not only so excited but also so grateful that the Lord has brought me through this season and allowed me to type that sentence. You’ve been with me through brain injury and PCS and all the things so it feels like jubilee for so many reasons. Thank you for celebrating with me! ((Now go buy a book! ◡̈)) You can get it HERE on my website - signed and embossed - or on Amazon. (If you’ve already purchased and even if you’re just a few pages in, please leave me a quick review on Amazon - it’s easy, takes 2 minutes, and helps get the word out/shows the book to more people. You don’t have to write about it if you don’t want to, you can just click the stars! For a writer, reviews are so important, THANK YOU!)
For those of you not following along on instagram (come follow along HERE for all the fun!) I shared a small piece of this origin story there this week. I’m elaborating here since Instagram only allows so many words (and you know I have many.) It’s important to me that you know how ”The Fruit” (as I lovingly call my book) came to life and all the stories between. I’ll be sharing these periodically over the next few weeks.
For now, please meet Aunty Haunani.
In late 2023, I begin studying the fruit of the Spirit while on vacation in Hawaii. I was in the early days of brainstorming lots of ideas for book #2 and came across the familiar passage on the fruit of the Spirit. As I read it over and over, I began to hear the Lord speak to me about areas in my own life that needed a “fruit makeover.” (We’re all a work in progress.) Since I’m a “wonder-er”, I wondered, what does it really look like to have a fruit-filled life in our, as Romans-12:1 in The Message says, “everyday, ordinary, walking-around life?” As I studied more, I also wanted to find where I could see this fruit lived out in scripture. There were obvious places to find it, like the passage on love (1 Cor. 13), but I wanted to uncover the fruit in other places like familiar stories in scripture where that fruit of the Spirit might not be specifically talked about, yet clearly on display. And so I started digging.
After attending a local Hawaiian church service where most of the liturgy is read in Hawaiian, I had an idea. I wanted to hear what Galatians 5:22-23 sounded like in native Hawaiian. I asked the Kahu (Pastor), who is a friend at the church that I like to attend while on the island, who in that church community would be willing to read and record that passage for me. He said there was a native Hawaiian woman in the church that he thought would be happy to do it and so, he said he would ask on my behalf. Two days later, he sent me the voice memo of Aunty Haunani reading the passage and I burst into tears. I knew that the Lord was not only orchestrating a plan, but setting me on a path to book #2.
As I listed to the short recording with birds chirping in the background, my mind was flooded with imagery. I immediately saw the entire book unfold in my imagination. I began to dream:
Yes. A book on the fruit of the Spirit but not one piece of actual fruit…everyone does that. This one will be different. I can instead use the Hawaiian flowers that I love and the colors of the islands to represent each fruit of the Spirit! Then, just like a tropical garden, as those fruit grow and develop in our lives (and as we proceed through the book) it will be as if that flower is blooming all the more beautifully in the bouquet of our lives and will grow on the pages. Yes, each chapter must get it’s own flower and color and bouquet. T…you can’t draw what you’re envisioning… you will have to find an artist to reflect that in each chapter. Then, each chapter needs to have two parts: one to describe how that fruit is displayed in familiar bible stories and retell them in a way to show that and two, some practical applications of that fruit in our everyday lives. Ah - I can see it now! Discover and develop a life formed by the fruit of the Spirit. Full color book inside and out. A beautiful book to represent a beautiful life.
And thus, “The Fruit” was born.
That little voice memo from Aunty Hunani became the inspiration for the entire book. (There is a QR code in the back of the book that links to that audio recording! Be sure to give it a listen.)
God used that little moment to set me on a path that has led to this day. And if you’ve been around here for long, it’s why you’ll always hear me say that it’s important to keep your eyes and ears open to what the Lord is doing. He certainly can speak in the wind, quake and fire, but typically and most often, it’s in a still small voice. (1 Kings 19:12).
He is always speaking, we just have to make sure we’re listening.
Just a few days ago, I got to take a copy of the book to Aunty Haunani after church to thank her for helping make it all come to life.
Later that afternoon, she wrote me the most precious email saying that the book not only was beautiful, but “an answer to her prayers” for her Bible study group to have that kind of content to study. ♡ And here, all the while, I thought she had done me a favor, and in the kindness of the Lord, seems that now I had done one for her. (Tears.)
I will be forever grateful to the Lord for the inspiration and using this beautiful Aunty to help bring “Finding Everyday Fruit” to life.
-TLB