FREE Christmas Tale with Guest Post by Author Amanda Dykes

I'm so delighted to hand over this blog space to author Amanda Dykes in just a moment. I've gotten to know her over the course of the past year or two as we have worked together on The Message in a Bottle Romance Collection, a set of five novellas written by the two of us, along with Joanne Bischof, Heather Day Gilbert, and Maureen Lang. This month, Amanda is gifting all of us with a free ebook of her Christmas novellette, Bespoke, so I invited her to come tell us about it. Below, she shares straight from her heart...

I’m staring at this screen, at the carefully-laid plans for this blog post that I’ve been adding to all week, and wondering why it won’t come together. The plan is in my head, but I can’t lasso the words long enough to capture them. So I think—if it’s alright with you, I’ll just gently lay those plans aside, and instead share with you my heart. Here goes…

A few years back, I wrote a story about a girl (Aria) and her father (Giovanni St. John). A tale of the tender but scarred terrain of their lives and the unexpected beauty found there in the brokenness. There are other things too—bicycles, blacksmithery, a secret symphony, a bundle of Christmas wonder… but looking at it right now, it’s that idea of the scarred terrain, destined for redemption, etched in my thoughts.

You see, and I’ll mention this corner of my life just briefly only in order to share a little about where I’m coming from—parts of it hit home very closely for me this season. I’m living just such a story of a girl (me) and her father (who went home to Heaven this autumn). I’m not Aria, and my father was nothing like Giovanni St. John (other than being musically brilliant), but losing my Dad has my thoughts freshly rooting into the idea of redemption and beauty in the midst of heartbreak.

Broken places heal, this I know. And the scars left behind tell stories. Of what happened, yes. But also—maybe even more than that? Of the One who knit that torn place back together, fashioned something beautiful of it.

Long about the middle of that Christmas tale, there’s one little line that holds the heartbeat of the story:

“…scars are places made strong again. They don’t function like they did before, but they’re strong for something. Something that matters.” (From Bespoke: a Tiny Christmas Tale)

I got curious about that little word, “scar”, and looked it up. It’s from the Greek word eskhara, which literally means “hearth, fireplace”. A hearth—a holder of comfort, life, warmth. Could our scars—seen and unseen—embody such things? Could the most shattered places in our lives, when cradled in the scarred hands our Healer-God, be the places that offer the most comfort and hope to others if we dare to let Him use us in that way?

Pondering these things, it struck me this morning as I was reading, and happened upon this quote: “…somehow there is good brokenness that grows out of every scar and wound we will ever suffer.” (Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way, p. 56).

It’s the age-old, everlasting story of transformation and redemption, which I—and maybe you, too?-- am holding fast to it this year. It was my greatest hope when I wrote Bespoke that the tale of unlikely transformation might point to the greatest story of all eternity: God’s redemption in our lives. After all… Aria and James may have made something beautiful from something broken in the story, but we… we get to live the real miracle of beauty for ashes.

“[He will]…bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes…” Isaiah 61:3

Bespoke: a Tiny Christmas Tale is a free download for just a few days more--until the end of November.--at Amazon, BarnesandNoble, and other retailers. If you’ve already downloaded it, I do so hope you’ll enjoy spending a wintry afternoon warming your heart by the Blacksmith’s forge or the Silent House’s hearth, listening in on the fishermen’s Christmas concert at Trouble Cliff. And if you haven’t had a chance to grab the book yet, may I invite you in to this enchanting Victorian island in the English Channel for a tale of hope and healing? The symphony is waiting…

About Amanda:

Amanda Dykes is a drinker of tea, a dweller of Truth, and a spinner of hope-filled tales. An emerging voice in Christian fiction, her novelette, Bespoke: a Tiny Christmas Tale, released to critical acclaim from Publishers Weekly, Readers’ Favorite, and more. She’s especially excited to be a part of the Message in a Bottle Romance Collection releasing this March, right alongside Jocelyn and four other incredibly talented co-authors!