I don’t remember what all was going on the day Sophie’s book arrived on my front porch, but I know it was humid and I was tired. The sort of bone tired where you’ve just been pushing so hard and moving so fast you can’t tackle the dishes in the sink without calculating the energy output required. There were school papers all over the table, crumbs on my floor, I could feel a migraine on the way, and there was my friend’s book in my hands.

I did something I’ve never done before. I sat down in the middle of the kids and the chaos and I started reading. They could have all seven of them run around with scissors and I would have been oblivious.

Fortunately, I’d already initiated the lunch drill but I genuinely have no idea if the kids ate anything. I gulped up the first and second chapter of Sophie’s book while I fed Finn his yogurt and the kids consumed… something, I imagine.

Once the babies were in bed for naps, I handed the big kids the iPads and said, “Do what you will.”

I made myself a nest under my duvet in my dark, cool bedroom and, lo and behold, I READ THE WHOLE BOOK IN ONE SITTING. I kept thinking, “Just one more chapter and then I’ll stop…”

But I didn’t. I just kept reading. I haven’t done that since I was 16 and stayed up all night reading the latest Lori Wick book.

And, y’all? I laughed. Even at the stories I’d heard before. That fish camp story? It’s been my favorite since the dawn of Sophie’s blog. Maybe it’s only hilarious to those of us with southern mamas and grandmamas, I don’t know. But it never fails to spawn a fit of giggles in me.

And I cried. Like a big old baby, I bawled.

When I finished, I texted Sophie and told her we had reached Ugly Cry proportions. I’m not sure if she knew to be sorry or proud. I told her she could be both. Because in her book, Sophie managed to balance so gracefully the good, the bad, the ugly, and the utterly beautiful bits about family. I could see so much of my people in the stories she told of her people.

And, as Sophie so gently laid out, Jesus was in those stories, too. Stories of people loving Jesus, being Jesus, and needing Jesus all wrapped up in the bodies of folks who share our physical or spiritual DNA.

Last week when we visited Indiana, my Grammy showed me pictures of my babyhood and it’s set me to rifling through old photo albums, snapping digital copies of images that are beginning to fade. (Who knew a Polaroid wasn’t forever?)

Old faces mingled with new and this line from Sophie kept spinning through my head (complete with her Mississippi accent) while I clicked and catalogued:

We see the hand of God writing a much bigger story – a story of rescue and redemption and hope and glory. Right here in the middle of the hilarious and the tragic and the sublime and the sad.

That’s just something else, isn’t it?

If you’d been watching my pile of covers on that humid day when I got to that sentence at the end of the book, you would have seen my fist emerge and pump exuberantly a few times. And then you would have heard more snuffling from underneath the duvet.

Because that’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it?

It’s why my Grammy faithfully keeps the geneaology, why Nana and Great-daddy keep up the Hanson homestead. It’s why cousin Luke memorized where all the Sanders family is buried and  it’s why I blog all these zillion little stories for my kids: so they see God’s hand at work. So I can remember all the ways He proved Himself faithful. And so we can all find comfort in the “salty and sweet” bits of life we experience this side of heaven.

I want so badly for everyone to read this book. Whether you’re from the South or not, the stories of family are universal and so beautifully woven here. I know you’ll enjoy it. I’ll be pressing a copy into many hands I love very soon. But Sophie has graciously offered to give three of you lucky readers a SIGNED copy.

Leave me a comment and tell me about your favorite family photo of your relatives. What’s the one you treasure most or tells the best story?
a Rafflecopter giveaway