It was the summer brokenness caught up with my family, that year 2022.

I’d rented a beach house on the water, an outrageous move coming off a grand-finale of losses, culminating in a separation and divorce. The Carolina ocean stretched out in front of us, visible from rooms and two balconies. Normally the sea brought a sense of adventure. But this was a different year for we were a different family.

The beach had been one of my children’s main connections to their father, filled with boogie boards and wave bobbing, although that too had eroded over time like the shoreline. This trip, we walked sand that felt like eggshells. Where were the games of Apples to Apples and Headbanz? The trips to Squigley’s, the best ice cream ever?

Yes, we gathered for meals, semi-circled the beach and made jokes. Yet, an emptiness filled us all, a certain fatigue that zapped our energy to even celebrate the sunsets.

But something strange happened. It was the beach house next door. It mocked me. It haunted me. It’s three-story of barn-red siding with white trim was perky. The people staying there, the thirty-six people, counting that wee baby, were jokesters and downright exuberant. The nerve. A family that was as crazy perfect as something out of a Super Bowl commercial.

En masse they enjoyed tide changes and endless games of volleyball, razzed each other over corn hole and frisbee football. They even had an Olympics of sorts, culminating in a rousing egg race that all but the eldest generation played, those two sweet women seated in comfy chairs, who oversaw all the activities, these precious ones who’d witnessed countless wars, depressions, the internet and Alice Cooper coming to Christ.

I had enough spit and vinegar left in me because I was determined to show up from my side of the beach. North Carolina heat and all, I plopped down in my reading chair with a book. Choosing the beach read had always been part of the vacay fun. Up until this time, historical fiction had been my genre. But not this summer. I’d lived enough history of my own, with the death of two parents, a tree that nearly killed me, a relocation to a farm, then an October conversation leading to separation, and if truth be told, relief.

Needing a change, I searched the backlist of one of my favorites, Tamara Leigh, and found the Southern Discomfort series, no slice of lime required. This series was stocked with people of twisted roots and sassy humor. One of the characters nailed my emotional locale. “Times like these, it might be better if this thing I got would…get on with it” (Restless in Carolina, Tamara Leigh).

This beach read tasted like summer, with someone else doing all the worrying. It also reminded me of good times when I was young, when the days felt endless, when Queen Anne’s lace bloomed out of control and chiggers were not the ‘be all, end all.’ The childhood days I got to stay up past sunset and play while the adults drank one too many glasses of Mateus.

Another read that trip, The Road to Testament by Eva Marie Everson, had the perfect dose of fight and bite to keep me reading. The characters live and move and have their conflicted, feisty beings with the sweet promise of love for the weary-hearted. Lines like this still zing true: “I realized what I’d been missing all of my adult life. Not just the sense of belonging, but of belonging perfectly” (EME).

My beach reads that summer of 2022 told a heap of truth while delivering a band aid to my soul. I could taste the Southern remedy to life: forgiveness with a side of casserole and gherkins from the relish tray.

It’s nothing new to say fiction reflects our Creator’s love, but it’s very new to those going through unmentionable times without a clue what the future holds. This is the beauty of story, of writing, of reading, of our God who is bringing us the greatest story called the Heavenly-Ever-After. Now that will be one family gathering not to miss.

Meet Renee…

Renee Leonard Kennedy is the author of two award-winning books, Tissue, a novel, and After the Flowers Die, a book to encourage those grieving and experiencing loss. A second novel is in the works. Renee looks forward to her family’s upcoming beach vacay, wherein she’ll be reading Miss Beth Bettencourt. Her family has rallied, as it oft does, each one of them growing wiser, more honest and loving.

Learn more via Renee’s website or her BRRC author profile page.

It’s nothing new to say fiction reflects our Creator’s love, but it’s very new to those going through unmentionable times without a clue what the future holds. Share on X