Friday, May 3, 2013

My two cents about the novel "Do you love me"



I was overjoyed and impressed with all of the reviews this week.  Liz, Robert, Karitsa and Sorines were able to capture all of my intentions and even went far beyond my expectations.   Everyone of them in their own way reveled something different but equally relevant.  As you could see from reading the reviews and from your own revelations while reading the novel, there are many perspectives.  This was intentional on my part, I wanted to reach as many people as possible by making the meaning broad enough that everyone could relate to at least one thing.  Again thanks for reading and sharing :)

My Perspective...

Lourdes life depicts a woman that seems to have it all: career, good kids, success, and she is even a ministers wife.  Yet as you look carefully into her life you notice that she is missing something.  She desperately seeks for Abigail (joy).   She lives a "busy" life but has no joy.  In the end you find that she died with the hope of someday finding joy in her life  she did but too late.   The lesson of her life is to fill us with the urgency of living life intentionally.  To inspire us to find joy in everything we do, because life is too short and we may realize it too late. 
Abigail was abandoned at birth and left for dead.  Although she had the complete love and devotion of her adoptive father, within her she carried the rejection of her birth parents. As a result she felt a need to earn the love and acceptance of others. This demonstrated itself in her earnestly trying to earn the love of her adoptive mother as a child; and of Jacob as an adult. I wanted the reader to make the connections of the cycle produced by her brokenness. 

As a child  Abigail would try to do everything right to win her adoptive mother over: cleaning the house, getting good grades and even wanting to physically look like her.  As an adult she followed the same cycle with Jacob: doing everything for him, taking his clothes to the laundry, buying his groceries, trying to look and act a certain way in order to win his love and acceptance.  A broken soul's issues are the same the only thing that changes are the actions. The cycle continues until it is broken by truth, confrontation and healing. 

 Along life's path there are certain things that we simply overcome by maturity but there are others that need to be reveled, confronted and healed.  Those are the issues that require time, determination and perseverance in order to heal.  There will always be people and things in our lives that will remind us of our past.  There will be abusers that will take advantage of us if we allow it. Its only after we acknowledge and see clearly the source of our pain and pursue the road to healing at all cost that we are able to receive the love that we truly deserve.  Alfred is the symbol of that still soft voice inside of us that believes in us and reminds us of our true value.  


Certain subtleties:

* Sal  paid a high price to destroy Abby's past so that she didn't allow it to dictate her future- Jesus paid the price on the cross for our sins so that we could be free.

* a box filled with headlines of your past. When you least expect it you are confronted with difficult situations that can destroy you or make you stronger.

* the secret drawer where Abby kept her true self hidden and undiscovered.  She had never felt safe enough to share that side of her life with anyone.

* When Alfred told Abby he had never left, that he had always been there- the role of God in our lives.  We are the ones that walk away from him, He is always there.

* When Abby said that there must've been something terrible about her that not even her parents could love her . But in the end she changed it to, " their must've been something special about her for her dad to have loved her enough to adopt her" that's when Abby realized there was more value in her adoption than in her natural birth.

I can go on and on about this short novel, loved writing it and am glad that you enjoyed reading it.  I hope to write many more.  Thanks for your support and encouragement.   Have a great weekend :)

5 comments:

  1. Very nice overview for your 2 cents. lol... Overall the scent of the novel was excellent and make you think on at lot of things.. :) Have a nice weekend...:):)

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  2. Thanks Irma.... I'm very happy you enjoyed it. GBU :)

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  3. Nice review. Have a great time and hurry back so we can have our review in Orlando. Dalmatia

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  4. Home run!!! Right out of the park!!

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