During the time of Jesus' earthly life, a young wife and mother named Joakima delights herself in her husband and young son while dreaming of a promised Deliverer, as many Jewish women before her. When trauma and tragedy break into her life, they leave her broken, bitter, and filled with shame. Her suffering is intensified by the crushing weight of religious regulations and the chafing yoke of political oppression. During a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a seed of hope is planted deep within her heart through the compassion of an extraordinary youth. Then the words of the prophet Isaiah begin to come alive to Joakima. The eyes of compassion and the words of release even visit her dreams until, years later, she comes face-to-face with Love Himself. This debut novel delves into the pathos of 1st Century Israel and explores the psychological, spiritual, and relational conflicts suggested in Luke chapter 13. The scriptures briefly describe the bent-over woman who could not 'in any way' look upward. A 'spirit of infirmity' had kept her bound for eighteen long years, looking downward. Yet Jesus called her a 'daughter of Abraham', indicating her faith. The author has given the name 'Joakima' to this broken, spirit-oppressed woman who is unnamed in the Bible. This dramatic healing in the religious meeting place was immediately and strongly opposed. All the threads of longings, conflicts, false hopes and real hopes that weave throughout the novel, come together in the climax--in sometimes surprising ways.

Face to Face: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Catherine Lawton

Contemporary

Cladach Publishing

Women readers are sure to find themselves in one or more of these stories filled with grit and grace. The courageous authors of Journeys to Mother Love aren't merely venting about their mother wounds. Neither are they giving pat answers. The hurts were real and the healing was real.
 From manipulation to abandonment, from neglect to favoritism, from mental illness to emotional distance, from abortion to Alzheimer's, these nine women from several generations, tell their personal stories with heart-wrenching honesty. Each had hurts and conflicts in their mother/daughter relationship that left them wounded and affected their relationships with others. Each tells how, with God's help, they experienced healing and new freedom to give and receive love.
 Begin your own healing journey as you read: Take Care of Your Mother by Verna Simms Walking My Mother Home by Ardis A. Nelson Run, Run, as Fast as You Can by A.R. Cecil White Knuckles by Loritta Slayton Beauty from Barrenness by Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton Finding the Blessings in my Mother's Alzheimer's Disease by Kerry Luksic She Did Her Best by Treva Brown When I Feel Forsaken by Catherine Lawton Finishing Well by Ellen Cardwell

Journeys to Mother Love : Nine Women Tell their Stories of Forgiveness & Healing

Parenting & Relationships

A.R. Cecil

Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton

Ellen Cardwell

Ardis Nelson

Loritta Slayton

Kerry Luksic

Treva Brown

Verna Hill Simms

Family Relationships

Honest poetry coming out of everyday life, joys and struggles, keen observations of nature, family, friends, and faith. A beautifully-presented collection composed at various times throughout the author's life. Many of these poems have been published in national periodicals and are collected here in book form for the first time. Together, they offer a poetic memoir of a life of searching faith - in both metered rhyme and free verse. Original color illustrations are interspersed among the 73 poems. 
From the INTRODUCTION (copyright 2016): 
Poets compose poems and readers enjoy them because nothing quite distills the feelings of a moment as does a piece of verse with its resonance, sound, and form. A poem comes from someplace in the heart. And when read, it can reveal something about the heart. Like music, it may employ major or minor tones. I hope the poems in this volume, selected expressions from each stage of my life, will touch a chord for you, my reader - perhaps in a major key of delight or consolation; perhaps with minor overtones of grief or longing. May you find something here to illumine your path and lighten your soul at whatever place of life you find yourself. 
From my wanderings in and wondering about nature; from opening more and more to the Divine; from faith, family, and friends; out of noisy living and quiet places; out of whelming emotions, questionings and questing ... come poems to help cope, to make sense of it all, to ennoble earthly life. In crisis has come hope; in fear has come faith; in fragility has come strength; in joy has come affirmation; in loss has come bounteous grace. I want to remember it all, but softly. Table of Contents 
I.Poems from Adult Years (in reverse chronology) 
In the Cleft of a Cold White Rock 
Weights of Glory 
Earth and Heaven 
Snow On Good Friday 
God's Anvil 
A Choice 
Glory 
Gladwin 
A Man With a Sword 
Consolation 
In My Heart an Altar 
Longing For Home 
Friends 
Sitting In the Grass On an Autumn Day 
Deborah 
After the Reunion 
God's Inexplicable Work 
Living Wounds 
Autumn Walk Along the Poudre River 
Rhymes For Grandchildren 
Waves On the Cladach 
After Saying Good-bye 
If I Hadn t Looked 
On a Walk In Ferndale 
A Walk At Dusk 
Affirmation 
Evening Light 
Three 'First' Poems 
God Plus One Is a Winning Majority 
A River Is Flowing 
Cleansing, Healing and Deliverance 
Footprints In the Snow 
He Calms the Storm 
Window Washer 
Antidote 
God's Husbandman 
Beauty 
A Friend 
Wings of Faith 
Why Me? 
Blue Asters 
Leafy Lament 
She Prays 
It's Fall 
Shadows 
Release 
Autumn 
Renewal 
Sleep Baby 
II. Poems from Childhood and Teen-age Years (written under the pen name Katie Estell) 
Meditation 
Daydreams 
A Book 
My Thoughts 
Dreams 
Spring 
I Have a Friend 
For Us 
To Larry 
He Loves Me 
Limerick 
I Like To Eat! 
Delight 
Solution For a Soul In Torment 
Joy 
It's a Beautiful Day

Remembering Softly : A Life in Poems

Poetry

Lawton's poetry evokes, provokes, and soaks the reader in both the earthy and the transcendent. Enter these poetic pages and let yourself feel that you are: <ul> <li>musing in an old-growth Redwood forest.</li> <li>exploring an Island off the coast of Maine.</li> <li>finding hope in a wildlife-welcoming garden.</li> <li>awe-struck in a Rocky Mountain meadow.</li> <li>amazed by stars singing in the night sky</li> <li>delighting in the return of spring birds</li> <li>attending births and deaths of loved ones</li> <li>experiencing healing of painful memories</li> <li>affirming faith in the God of all creation</li> </ul> composed in lyrical, penetrating, sometimes-playful words, these sixty-six poems and meditative verses, varied in style, are organized into seven sections: <ul> <li>Relating</li> <li>Communing</li> <li>Trusting</li> <li>Living</li> <li>Dying</li> <li>Praying</li> <li>Word-playing</li> </ul> As the author states in the Introduction "What do I mean by 'Glory'? A taste, a flicker, a glimpse, a glimmer; a flash, a whisper, a rustling breeze; a fleeting moment that lingers on taste buds, nerve ends, rides overtones of sound, tingles with goose bumps of closeness, surprise, recognition...God is for us, with us, in us, among us; but only in the glimpses--usually coming uninvited, unexpected--are we awake to God's presence and life's mysteries and surprises...We may be awakened in momentary, sensory experiences--as the Spirit hovers over our chaos--of beauty, living things, a word spoken, thin places...These moments in which we receive glimpses of glory are worth holding and treasuring. That is my purpose in writing these poems."

Glimpsing Glory : Poems of Living & Dying, Praying & Playing, Belonging & Longing

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Books by Catherine Lawton