Confessions of an Instinctively Mutinous Baby Boomer and her Parable of the Tomato Plant by Marsha Roberts

Once you get the title, you’ll understand the lovely and lively book that Marsha Roberts has written about the ups and downs of her life. I’ve never met Marsha, but after reading her memoir of parables, I feel as if she’s one of my dear friends.

The book is uplifting—more so than any other thing I’ve read lately—and inspiring. She’s the master of the positive spin, but in a way that makes me feel, “Hey, I can do that! I can create miracles in my life. I can have a faith that is visible and tangible.”

I loved so many things about the book that I’ve bookmarked pages and will use them as my nudge to stop feeling sorry for myself when things don’t always go right. Ms. Roberts writes, “I also believed in miracles. Not as some remote ethereal possibility, but as a real part of my life.” I started remembering the miracles of my life when I read that. I decided those are the times I want to use as my touchstones.

Her story about her father “fixing” the figurines that she had painstakingly made for the people she loved broke my heart in one way, but also showed me that anything can be fixed. Her honesty about her relationship with her mother is another heart breaker until that relationship is eventually “fixed” as well. Maybe it wasn’t done in the way we’d prefer, but we don’t get to choose the way in which our miracles occur.

She shares a profound statement made by her husband Bob that has resonated with me weeks after finishing the book. He tells her during at time of crisis in their lives, “darkness exists by default; light has to be generated.” Just as the sun generates our daylight, it’s up to each of us to step out of the darkness or nothingness into the light, even if we have to generate it each and every moment when we rise.

That’s what this book does—it makes me giddy with joy that I am the one who generates the light in my life, and as Ms. Robert proclaims at the end of the book, “Miracles are inevitable.”

Click here for my interview with Marsha Roberts on Author Wednesday.