Sowing

By Jessica Janna

As an adolescent and teenager, Jessica winds up far from home, far from her mother, and all that was once familiar. In this book that chronicles her increasing years, she is sometimes tearful and afraid. Jessica also experiences things that became...her secrets to carry—until now.

This account in the inspirational true-life series is, in a word, buoyant!

Laugh or cry while re-living Jessica’s increasing years. This, the second of six purse-sized books will again feel as though a lovely friend has told you her irrepressible story. In Jessica’s Relinquish & Reap Series, her seventh book will tie all together. Read each of her books, one for every decade of her life. Share the love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: April Alisa Marquette
• Release date: Oct 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301657766

Book preview

SOWING

The Increasing Years…

The second account

In

The inspirational

Relinquish & Reap Series

A seven book chronicle by

Jessica Janna

&

April Alisa Marquette

SMASHWORDS EDITION

***

Published by

April Rain Publications on Smashwords

SOWING

Copyright © 2010 by Jessica Janna

& April Alisa Marquette

Cover Design by April A. Marquette

All rights reserved.

Thank you for downloading/purchasing this e-book. Please tell your friends about it.

Some of the names in this narrative have been changed.

***

SOWING

Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.

Psalm 31:24

***

Dear reader,

I wanted to share something with you.

I chose the hollyhock, the flower that graces the cover, for its beauty and for its resilience. Although it is a popular ornamental plant, it’s also drought resilient, and does well in full sun –a location that often times causes other plants to wilt. This particular species lives a number of years, and acquires many descendants.

I’ll tell you, I also chose the hollyhock because it reminds me of the human spirit. Beautiful and resilient, many of us have come through droughts—times in our lives that have been fraught with tension and perhaps even tears. Many may have lived in locations where others surely would have wilted, or failed. Yet we have made it, for any number of years, truly by the grace of God, and many of us have acquired descendants.

Today, I urge you to look at the beautiful resilient hollyhock, or even at other flowers. Then I suggest that you think of yourself. Afterward smile, and go on, in the knowledge that yours is a life of purpose. Yours, like mine, is, and can further be, a life of reaping. Yes, when old things, hurtful things, ugly things are not wallowed in, but given up, relinquished… Give and get.

Relinquish and reap,

Jessie

***

Table of Contents:

Now a Youngling

Sweet Mother

Grandmaw Graduated

Experiencing God

Whiskey Still

Clean and Unclean

Beginning the Journey

The Stirrings of Trouble

A Terrifying Experience

Seeking Solace

Peacock’s Wife

Not so Lovely Memories

Needing to Go Home

Strange Cuisine

Terrible Storms

Soda Fountain

Factory Work

Returning To Education

My Own Moving & Shaking

My Thoughts

Now a Youngling

I was about twelve years old, a youngling, no longer a Seedling, when a cousin in Chicago wrote to my mother asking if my older sister would be able to visit her. My cousin wanted this because she needed help with her small children during the summer. Although they would be out of school, she would yet have to work. Therefore, she needed someone to look after them.

My mother, Ms. Cleo, said my sister could not go. Sister was newly married. She was also in college, and had a new baby. However, Mother did say that I could go. She told me about the opportunity. Listening, I remembered my cousin. Older than I was, she’d lived in Tennessee at the same time that we did. She had since moved to Chicago. However, my cousin, a beautiful brown woman, with a lovely head of thick healthy hair had always been fond of me. When I’d been a little thing, Cousin and her husband, a great-looking couple, had carried me to shows, and to the circus.

Therefore, knowing she needed help, I wanted to go, especially since Sister could not. Somehow, I felt like it was my time, at last.

I told you, while recounting my youngest years in Seedling, that for