What Keeper of My Heart Has to Say to the Person Who Has Everything Together Except Rest
I have a friend who does everything well. She manages the household, shows up for her people, keeps her faith, and never once lets you see the seams. When I asked her once if she ever got tired, she laughed a little too quickly and said she was fine. I believed her for a long time before I stopped believing her and saw the frayed edges.
She is not unusual. She might be you. She might be the grandmother who held the family together for forty years and never once asked anyone to return the favor. She might be the father who provided every practical thing and somewhere along the way forgot that presence was also a provision. She might be the man or woman who built a sensible, careful life and can’t quite explain why it still feels like something is missing.
What all of these people have in common is this: they are very good at being strong. What is harder — and sometimes nearly impossible — is learning to be loved.
The strength it takes to survive was never meant to replace the surrender it takes to be loved.
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What Cecelia Shankel Could Do
In Keeper of My Heart, Cecelia Shankel can outride, outshoot, and outwork every hand on her family’s Missouri ranch. She is not performing competence. She genuinely has it. And somewhere in the accumulation of all that strength, she built a wall she didn’t entirely mean to build, one that kept trouble out and intimacy at arm’s length in equal measure.
When Jimmy Reeves arrives from Philadelphia with a pharmacy degree and a life carefully arranged to avoid anything unpredictable, he is not expecting Missouri. He is not expecting her. And when a smallpox outbreak strips away every formula and theory he trusted, he has nothing left to hide behind either.
Two people who are very good at managing life alone find themselves in a season when management is not enough.
The Question Underneath the Story
There is a moment in Keeper of My Heart when Cecelia has to decide whether strength is something she earned or something she was given. It is not a dramatic moment. It happens quietly, but it is the hinge the whole story turns on.
That moment asked me something too. It asked the question I suspect it will ask you, whatever season you’re in right now.
Is the strength you’ve built to survive meant to carry you forever? Or was it always meant to get you to the place where you could finally put something down?
Matthew 11:28 does not say come to me and I will give you more capacity. It says come and I will give you rest. That is a different offer entirely. It is the offer the book makes, through two people who are exhausted by their own competence and haven’t yet learned to say so out loud.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” — Matthew 11:28
Who This Book Is For
This story is for the woman who has been the capable one so long she’s not sure who she is without it. It is for the man who gave everything practical and is only now wondering why that didn’t feel like enough. It is for the grandparent who poured a lifetime into family and faith and is sitting in the quiet now, wondering if anyone ever really saw who they were underneath all the doing.
It is, in other words, for people who are tired in the way that a good night’s sleep does not fix.
If that is where you are, you might find that Cecelia and Jimmy’s story meets you there — not with answers, but with the comfort of knowing someone else has asked the same questions, and that God was already working underneath the surface of their lives long before either of them thought to ask for help.
Keeper of My Heart is book six in the Discerning God’s Best series and can be read as a stand-alone, but best enjoyed when you’ve seen the growth of the characters throughout the Discerning God’s Best series.
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I so enjoy your blogs and I love the books of yours that I have read. I am my church’s librarian and hope to add many books in this series eventually. I just wanted to let you know that I usually read your blog everyday. May God continue to bless you
I appreciate your thoughtfulness. If your church library ever hosts a book club read, I would be honored to join you in person if close enough, or via Zoom!