Out of a Dream is O in my A-Z Challenge. It is about a woman called Michelle, who starts to have some weird dreams, so looks into dream interpretation. As she does so, she delves into yoga, meditation and then into tarot and other "New Age" things. Meanwhile, her life starts to go belly-up: she has problems in her marriage, and her dad is on the verge of suicide.
The blurb says:
Michelle Baron should be reveling in her new life in Sandy Cove, Oregon. From the outside, it all looks idyllic. A newlywed settling into a quaint coastal town, her husband establishing himself as a junior partner in a law firm—what more could she want?
But a series of disturbing nightmares haunts Michelle. Her quest to understand these dreams leads her to the New World bookstore, where she begins a spiritual journey that will challenge her Christian heritage as well as her marriage.
I have to say, I was not keen on how this book was written. Even though I'm a Christian, it felt very much like a non-subtle "if you don't become a Christian, your life will be crap" message, which I can imagine will irritate a lot of non-Christians - it annoyed me enough! I did persevere with the book, and though there was tragedy in the story, it had a good ending.
***Spoiler Warning***
However, the book really comes into its own, when you read the Note From The Author at the end and realise this book is semi-autobiographical: though the characters and events are fiction, the author did become interested in New Age ideologies before the suicide of her father, at which point she turned to Christianity. Though it would give away the plot somewhat, I do wish this note was at the beginning of the book, so the story could be read through that lens.
***End of Spoiler***
There are two more books in the Sandy Cove Series, however I will not be adding them to my wishlist.
As the net slowly tightens, something ancient and vengeful begins to stir in the arid death zone called the Kiln. A dashing daeva named Darius is pursuing Nazafareen, but so are a multitude of enemies. War is brewing again. Can she stay alive long enough to stop it?
Nocturne, a wilderness of eternal night. Solis, a wasteland of endless day.
Nazafareen is a Breaker, a mortal who has the rare ability to shatter spell magic—although her power carries a high price. With the memories of her former self erased and nowhere else to turn, she comes to Nocturne hoping to start a new life under the triple moons of the darklands.
But when an assassin forces Nazafareen to flee to the sunlit mortal city of Delphi, she finds herself embroiled in a deeper mystery whose origins lie far in the past. Why was the continent sundered into light and dark a thousand years before? And what really happened to the elegant but ruthless creatures who nearly reduced the world to ashes? The new Oracle might know, but she’s outlawed magic and executes anyone caught practicing it. Nazafareen must hide her powers and find a way out of the city—before it’s too late.
The book starts with Nazafareen being held in Nocturne after she has lost all her memories. She has been advised not to travel without being accompanied, but she is aware there is more going on than meets the eye, convinced that if she could regain her memories everything would fall into place. After stowing away aboard an air-ship, Nazafareen discovers the other lands are not all they seem.
As with the previous series by Kat Ross, I couldn't put these books down, and ended up buying the rest of the series: Solis, Monstrum, Nemesis, and Inferno. I don't want to give away too much of the plot of these books, but it is another epic adventure mixing magic, religion, revenge, power, love and action.
My PT came on Friday for the first time in a couple of weeks (due to a combination of illness, self-isolation and camping) and boy, did it hurt! It was fun (in a masochistic way) - my PT had 5 A4 pages, which I had to select randomly. Each one had a different set of exercises, that I had to repeat 4 times. There was a mix of all the exercises that we had done so far, including boxing, slam balls, weight lifting, Russian twists, sit ups and more. Afterwards, I ached. Normally, I don't ache until the next day, but I ached Friday afternoon, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and this morning my quads were still aching!
Incidentally, if you've been following my FB page (and if not, please CLICK HERE to like and follow me!), you'll know my husband completed Race To The Stones at the weekend. Just because he covered 100 kilometres, does not mean that his legs ache more than mine after an hour in my garden, lol!
This morning, my PT returned and made me start off with a plank. Because I am trying to push myself, I asked her not to tell me the time until 1min30secs had gone past, and then every 20 seconds after that. Today I managed a whopping 2min 08secs in a plank! Beating my previous PB by 11 seconds, and I think I may have been able to go slightly longer had it not been pouring with rain, as my rain coat was much too warm as the hood fell over my head.
The rest of the session today was mainly arms, shoulders and abs. I don't really ache right now, but know it'll hit me tomorrow. At least my legs have stopped aching, so it no longer hurts when trying to go up or down stairs. 😃
Ok, so I have gone through all my past Book Reviews and tried to classify them, so that if you wanted to find a certain type of book that would be easy to do now. All you have to do is look at the Word Cloud on the right, squint a bit, and then choose the genre you're looking for.
If you have read something based on my recommendation and think that I have missed a classification (from the list below), please comment and I will add it. Depending where you read, there are 7 or 8 main classifications of genre (I have made sure I covered them all) but there are also 150+ subgenres and classifications that I can't always see the difference between. As such, some things you'll have to give me artistic license for, such as grouping Paranormal under Fantasy, rather than giving it its own classification. And I'm surprised to see that despite reading a load of Stephen King and James Herbert as a teen, I haven't got any Horror listed. That's probably the only addition that I would make.
And, you will notice that some of the links give more than just books listed, especially in the non-fiction list, but you'll just have to cope with scrolling down to find the books for those.
So here is the list of classifications, so that if you did want to find something quickly, you can either click the link below, or the word cloud.
This past week I have done nearly zero exercise and have been eating crap. I haven't weighed myself, but I hope to get back to it this week After a few days of not eating properly, I'm missing vegetables, so I'm looking forward to our veg box coming this Wed.
What I have been doing, is loads and loads of home ed stuff. I have two different FOIs going on, and have been busy collating the information altogether. I'm even drawing a pretty chart to display the info, which looks good, but wasn't as easy as I was hoping for! DD2 missed her transition day for secondary school due to covid, but has been invited to a summer school. I need to start getting her uniform together - I swear for DD1 I had it all by this point in the year, whereas for DD2, I've barely thought about it.
I have also been reading - hurray! - reading a lot and escaping into other worlds really does help my mental health. I am approximately 5 books/series behind on my book reviews, so instead of doing that (because that would be the obvious thing to do, wouldn't it!), I'm going to go back through all my previous book reviews and group them by genre, so that anyone who wants to find a specific type of book, will be able to find it easier.
I feel the need to preface this post by saying that I know depression is hard for everyone. I know that depression manifests itself differently for different people, and I'm certainly not suggesting Christians are better than other people.
***
Depression as a Christian is hard. Not only do I have the depression itself, but I feel the added pressure of "If God was real, he'd take away your depression" and "If you were a true Christian, you wouldn't have depression" - both of which are lies that add to making you feel worse.
Recently, I've been feeling crap. Nothing, that I'm aware of, triggered it. I just felt numb and 'meh'. I wasn't suicidal, and wasn't in a pit of existential despair, I just felt sad and have been on this ride long enough to know that my depression was kicking in. My self care had gone, and I felt like I had to be everywhere doing everything, but not managing anything - all of which made me feel worse.
I tried to let go of the small stuff. Not worry that my house was looking worse and worse. Not worry that I just wanted to run away and hide, whilst knowing that I have too much responsibility to be able to do that. I'm in the middle of various FOI requests regarding home education and the treatment of home educators; I have my tutees that I love tutoring (whilst simultaneously looking forward to the summer break!); I have DD2 that I am actually home educating (when she is not watching repeats of Miraculous); and even this afternoon I have a meeting with my Local Authority about changing their HE policy. And walk the dog. And see my PT. And spend time with my family. And phone family that live further away. And see friends. And keep in touch with friends who live further away. And... And... And...
Two weeks on, and I'm in a place where my mental health is such that I can write this post, though I have been thinking about it for a while.
Many people think (including some Christians) that Christians have to be "happy" all the time, with stupid grins stuck to their face (yes, I'm jealous due to RBF), never getting angry, with glitter and sparkles wherever they go. However, when you read the Bible, it doesn't actually say that. Nowhere that I recall does it say that Christians will have an easy life with everything they want - indeed it says that Christians will be persecuted* for their faith and suffer hardship.
*Brief segue: whilst some Christians are persecuted for their faith, I do think that many of the claims in the West about persecution are not. This is a discussion for another time.
I listen to worship songs in my car (much to my girls' annoyance), and I can feel the love of God, even when I am depressed. It doesn't take the depression away, however. But I have the knowledge, understanding and faith, that my depression is merely feeling and emotion, and however I am feeling, does not mean that, poof, God suddenly doesn't exist anymore.
Paul wrote many of his letters whilst in prison, after having been beaten or stoned, having to run and flee for his life. He knew that no matter how he felt, God is still in control.
For the individual Christian, more specifically me, this disparity between 'head knowledge' and 'heart knowledge' can make me feel worse at times. Not helped by hereditary Catholic guilt, disagreeing with my current church (Baptist) on a couple of issues, and knowing what I'm really like, all mean that I know I am not a "good Christian", and I wonder if I was "better" then I wouldn't feel like this? Obviously, the answer is "no", and when I'm feeling normal, like I do right now, I can rationalise that. The whole point of Christianity, is that there is nothing we can do to earn our place with God. As good as a mere human can be, we could always be better, however, rather than that forcing everyone into depression, God came down to earth, to meet us at our level, where we currently are, with all our sins and guilt and shame and everything else. And because of that, is why we can still be joyful and sing God's praises, even when we are depressed and 'meh'.
So, my weight is still going up. As of this morning, it is just one measly kilo below the highest weight I have ever been: a staggering 97.1kg.
However, I am not totally disheartened. I am having non-scale victories, even though my weight is increasing. I am still seeing my personal trainer twice a week. She came this morning, and though I didn't quite beat my PB of a plank for 1m57s, I did reach 1m47s - which is amazing considering how tired I felt.
I am also starting to see a difference in what I look like. Yesterday was my day to take my measurements and photo graphs again. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my book with my previous measurements in, so I only know what I am, not whether I have gone up or down. Fortunately, my phone has my previous photos, so I can make a comparison.
I can actually see a difference! It's not huge, and I'm still fat, but I am making progress and that's the main thing. My waist is getting smaller (and I no longer need the bra extender that I'm using in the top photo!), my stomach doesn't seem to protrude quite as much, and though the difference is slight, my shorts are slightly looser around the legs, compared to two months ago.
As embarrassing as these photos are - I am pleased with the difference!
