Shankle - Sparkly green earrings: catching the light at every turn

I love Melanie Shankle. She is a beautiful conglomeration of so many things I appreciate, and each of them is obvious in these pages. Shes profoundly insightful, witty, relatable, wide open, and passionate about Jesus. She likes people, and I like that in a person. In this book, Melanie lives her life with us and invites us to live our lives with her. Relish this ride, sister! You wont be sorry you took it.

BETH MOORE

New York Times bestselling author and Bible study teacher

In her memoir, Melanie uses an irresistible combination of dab-the-corner-of-your-eye emotion and laugh-so-loud-you-scare-the-cat humor. Every chapter of Sparkly Green Earringsactually, every pageis a splendid journey through sudden, side-splitting laughter and utterly relatable tears... and back to laughter again. She captures every fear, crazy notion, nervous breakdown, and desperate moment of new motherhood so expertly and hilariously that I actually wondered if shed tapped into my memory of having my first child. And all throughout the book, as Caroline grows and starts school (and has a very short stint in Brownies), Melanie establishes just how much her faith has guided and propelled her through this miraculous privilege known as motherhood. Her memoir is nothing short of a delight.

REE DRUMMOND

New York Times bestselling author of The Pioneer Woman Cooks

What happens when you read a book thats one part Blue Like Jazz, one part Anita Renfroe, and two parts Big Mama? You laugh too loud, nod till your neck hurts, and throw your hands up with a relieved yes! Simply put: I love Melanie Shankle, and every page of this book shimmers with her fabulous voice, honest hilarity, and the light of a Savior that makes even the wackiest, hardest days of motherhood somehow glimmer with something grand. Sparkly Green Earringsthe perfect accessory to be dazzled by grace and more than a glint of God.

ANN VOSKAMP

New York Times bestselling author of the One Thousand Gifts

Melanies writing is insightful, hilarious, and full of encouragement for the journey. Sparkly Green Earrings is refreshment for the soul. For all the reasons thousands of people love her blog, you will be smitten with her book. Mostly because you will fall in love with Melanie through its pages, and more important, with the God she serves.

KELLY MINTER

Bible study author, writer, and speaker

Melanie has the rare gift of making you embarrass yourself laughing while considering the deeper undertones of each story. I dont know a mama who would say that parenting is exactly what she thought it would be all the time. Its a delicate dance we do, this balancing of the ordinary and the holy, and often we get it wrong. The ability to pull the humanity out and examine it in the wake of what really matters is not an easy task, but its one Melanie has done exquisitely. As writers, we pray our words string together in a way that connects our flesh to the Storyteller, and Im so honored to have my endorsement on a book that does that as well as this one does. I dare you to read it without laughing, without seeing your own life embedded in its corners. Youre in for a journey with a beautiful woman who, in my estimation, has a lot more light catching to do around a million more turns. Her wit, humility, and true writing ability will make you want to chase her as she goes.

ANGIE SMITH

Author of I Will Carry You and What Women Fear

Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.

Visit the authors blog at thebigmamablog.com.

TYNDALE and Tyndales quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Sparkly Green Earrings: Catching the Light at Every Turn

Copyright 2013 by Melanie Shankle. All rights reserved.

Cover image and script copyright by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Author photo taken by Catherine Hornberger of Peacock Photography, copyright 2011. All rights reserved.

Designed by Jennifer Ghionzoli

Edited by Stephanie Rische

Published in association with William K. Jensen Literary Agency, 119 Bampton Court, Eugene, Oregon 97404.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shankle, Melanie.

Sparkly green earrings : catching the light at every turn / Melanie Shankle.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4143-7171-9 (sc)

1. Shankle, Melanie. 2. MotherhoodUnited States. 3. MotherhoodReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

HQ759.S46153 2013

306.874'30973dc23 2012030434

Printed in the United States of America

19 18 17 16 15 14 13

7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Build: 2013-01-03 10:13:45

To Caroline:

If it werent for you, this book wouldnt exist.

You are the absolute light of my life.

You have brought me joy, laughter, and more happiness than youll ever know. Youll always be my best girl.

The Book of Dreams

Okay. Yall. Apparently the hardest part of writing a book is figuring out where to begin. Its certainly not that I havent always wanted to write a book, because I have. Ive wanted to write a book ever since I read Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume in the fifth grade. Say what you want about Are You There God? Its Me, Margaret, but I have always been partial to Sally J.

And so my love of the written word compelled me to start a blog almost five years ago, when my daughter, Caroline, was not quite three years old. I knew I should document her childhood, and I also knew there was no way that was going to happen in any sort of scrapbook form unless I paid someone to do it for me because all those different papers and scissors and stickers totally freak me out. I have way too many perfectionistic tendencies to take on something that requires all that cutting and pasting.

In a shortsighted turn of events, I christened the blog Big Mama. I say shortsighted because there are now times when Im out in public and someone will recognize me and call out, BIG MAMA! And then everyone in Starbucks will turn around to see if Martin Lawrence is there.

But the name Big Mama seemed appropriate at the time because thats what Caroline called me in those days. We were in that mode of getting rid of the pacifier my mother-in-law said she never should have had in the first place and learning to use the potty like a BIG GIRL, and Caroline decided there was no higher compliment that could be given than BIG. And so I became Big Mama.