Serena Jasper is hurt, ashamed and angry.
In the first chapter of Speak To My Heart, her mother tells her that the man whose name is listed on her birth certificate is not her biological father. She gets the nerve to call her real father and is put off by his response:
The one thing I do remember doing that night after dinner with Mama was calling information from my cell phone as I drove without really seeing the road. The operator gave me Melvin Gates’s home number, and I dialed it immediately, unsure of what I would say if anyone answered....
With as much composure as I could muster, I asked for Deacon Gates.
When he said hello, I pulled my Toyota to the side of the road. I was beginning to shake, but I had to do this.
“This is Serena,” I said slowly, between clenched teeth. “I know the truth.”
He didn’t respond. His wife must be standing nearby, I fumed. I heard a young girl in the background.
“Daddy, come on, I need you to read my bedtime story. Please?”
Daddy. To Kami, the little girl he doted on and called his special gift from God to anyone who’d listen. When his sons had gone to college, he and Mrs. Gates had begun serving as foster parents. They took custody of Kami when she was six months old and eventually adopted her. I heard her kiss his cheek while I held the phone. Was God twisting this knife in my heart?....
I decided I needed a break.... From everyone and everything, including my Mama. And God.
What would you do?
Join me in a "What if?" dialogue about the characters in my novels, SPEAK TO MY HEART and NOTHING BUT THE RIGHT THING. Tell me what you loved about the characters and their actions - or what you hated! Tell me what YOU would have done differently if you were Serena, Erika, Micah, Elliott, Ms. Jasper, Tawana or Ms. Carter. This should be lots of fun! Plus, it will jog your memory as we near the October release of the final novel in the series, WATERCOLORED PEARLS.
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About Me
- Stacy Hawkins Adams
- Virginia, United States
- I'm a nationally published author who has loved to read and write since childhood. My books feature characters who struggle with the everyday issues that people around them also face. They're often unique in that they try to let God direct their decisions and responses to life's challenges. Notice that I said try! Don't we all stumble and fall at one time or another? That's what makes these books - and life - interesting. That's what makes my faith, and the faith of characters who have become my friends, so valuable.
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Novel excerpts are used by permission of Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright 2004. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. www.BakerPublishingGroup.com
6 comments:
I think Serena is overreacting. Then again, I'd be angry too if I found out years later about a big family secret. I don't know if I'd have the nerve to get mad at God, though! Mama is one thing. God? That's bold.
I thought Serena held a grudge against her mother for entirely too long. I understood her shock and hurt after learning of her parentage after so many years, but she carried it to the extreme. I wanted to yell, "Get Over It!!!"
I think it's easy for people to beleive that Serena overreated to this situation, particulary if we haven't walked in her shoes.
I think the pain and anger was less about the secret, and the betrayl and more about the disillusionment behind the lie and what the lie represented. We all have an idea of what and who are parents are, but if we found out something totally the opposite, think about how shocking and damaging it would be. Also, now if my parents are no good people, what does that really make me? This is the deeper issue. There's shame here for Serena. She's no longer the child of two respectable married people, but the product of an illicit affair. I think I'd be devastated and forgiving Mom, though I love her, would be low on my list of things to do.
When people cut us deep, the challenge is to allow God to speak to our hearts so we can get to the place of forgiveness. I don't think we have the capacity to do it without him when it's this type of betrayal.
Thanks.
I think everyone who has commented so far is right - it IS hard to believe that someone could cut themselves off from a parent, and yet it's also realistic that a person could be so wounded by the truths that he or she would react by fleeing in whatever way possible.
For Serena, it meant trying to forget about God and holding onto a grudge for way too long.
I purposely wrote her character this way because I wanted readers to think about people they know or are aware of who have ended friendships or relationships for reason that, months and years later, have been forgotten or seem trivial. Unfortunately, it happens everyday.
The challenge is to learn how to put ourselves in the other person's position, or at the least, figure out how to be angry and still find a way to love that person.
Do you think that's realistic, or does it just sound good - like something you'd hear in a sermon?
I think the way Serena reacted is perfectly normal. Especially beacause of her upbringing (religious) Often times we put people of GOD above reproach. (Remember Jesse Jackson?) I don't know if I would have had the courage to ever forgive but GOD moves us to act at the right time, even if we may see it as too long of a passing.
We all have people and or things that we treasure or hold to the highest regard and when something goes wrong and throws us into a different mode of thinking, there are multiple ways that we may respond and react. Serena chose the route that many of us from the outside looking in would call extreme and unnecessary, but the revealing of the secret was probably her achilles hill, something that she thought she would never face in her life.
Most of us have something in our lives that would create such a stir if the mold we have shaped suddenly turns out not to be as perfect as we had perceived it to be.
Serena's struggle and rebound at the end taught me not to judge other people's pain but to rejoice with them when they decide to allow God's love to help them get through and come out of the storm.
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