HOLDING ON LOOSELY
Helicopter parents. Control freaks. Perfectionists. Intolerants. Over-consumers. Social media junkies. We all fit in there somewhere. Read one woman’s stories of clinging, turning loose, and becoming free.
We are overly busy helicopter parents, control freaks, perfectionists, intolerants, over-consumers and social media junkies–who worry, fear, laugh less, and always want more. In the midst of it, we wonder what it would feel like to open our hands and turn loose of all of it.
In HOLDING ON LOOSELY: Opening My Hands, Lightening My Load, and Seeing Something Else, author Dana Knox Wright tells stories of one who is hardwired to cling. To her children when they asked for a blessing to go. To someone else’s ideas, when she didn’t trust her own. She held on to prejudice when she would tell you she didn’t. She shut down for days while clinging to fear. She clung to youthfulness as if what would come next couldn’t be her life’s cherry on top.
In a particular season of her life, she recognized her bent to possess, to keep, to hold tightly, and to control was completely contrary to Jesus’ example. This is one woman’s history of holding on and her stories of turning loose–stories of the gentle and firm, humorous and heartbreaking ways God led her to turn loose. It is living minimally from the inside out.
An excerpt from Chapter 26,
“Turning Loose of Time”
From Holding on Loosely
By Dana Knox Wright
Though she couldn’t tell me the whole story, Rina gave me a map to follow the trail. At first glance, she was a little elderly woman getting pizza. But then she smiled at me and I smiled back and she decided to tell me some things. She was right to tell me I would see her again, because I saw a hundred little glimpses of her the next day in the writings about her husband—and more over the next weeks as I watched documentary after documentary about their lives. Though she was only mentioned a few times by name, she was there in every adventure of the whole story. Those stories were still very much alive in her mind and for some wonderful reason, they spilled out to me in a pizza joint one day. Those thirty minutes were some of the best I’ve ever unhanded.
New York is a million stories. Your town and my town are millions more. They are everywhere. For a few days, we sauntered our way in and out of them—until bits and pieces of one of them was told to us in the last precious hours in a big city.
I often wrap my hands around my time and guard it close. But you know what? It passes anyway. It doesn’t keep. The minutes tick away and are gone, often with little to show for them. When I turn loose of my time and lay it on the table for the taking, sometimes in a pizza joint in Manhattan, an old woman named Rina will wander in and accept the gift of it. Stories that have been locked up in her mind will suddenly be remembered and she’ll tell them to a stranger who reminds her of someone. She’ll do it because of one thing.
Because there was time—the place where the best stories live.
Enter the giveaway below on or before October 22, 2021, for a chance to win some fabulous prizes!
(Link to the video on YOUTUBE)
one overnight stay at the Llano Line Shack.
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| 10/12/21 | BONUS Promo | LSBBT Blog |
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| 10/15/21 | Guest Post | StoreyBook Reviews |
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| 10/16/21 | Author Interview | All the Ups and Downs |
| 10/17/21 | Excerpt | Reading by Moonlight |
| 10/18/21 | Review | The Clueless Gent |
| 10/19/21 | Top 8 Quotes | Momma on the Rocks |
| 10/19/21 | Author Interview | The Adventures of a Travelers Wife |
| 10/20/21 | Audio Review | Forgotten Winds |
| 10/20/21 | BONUS Review | Julia Picks 1 |
| 10/21/21 | Review | Book Bustle |
| 10/21/21 | Guest Post | Sybrina’s Book Blog |
| 10/21/21 | Review | Missus Gonzo |
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