Lifemark by Chris Fabry … and a GIVEAWAY!

Welcome to Friday Reads!

 

You can enter to win a print copy of Lifemark by Chris Fabry, courtesy of the publisher. (US ONLY!) You can enter by using the Rafflecopter link at the bottom of this post. (Contest ends September 2, 2022.) Share on X If you’re the chosen winner, I’ll contact you for your information to pass along.

 

About the book…

For eighteen years, she tried to believe she had made the right decision—for him.

But if she never saw him again, how could she ever be sure?

Melissa had clung to the thin thread of hope given by the adoption agency that someday her newborn son might want to connect with her. When his eighteenth birthday arrived, she called the agency to simply update her contact information, not expecting a response.

Susan and Jimmy Colton had raised their boy with openness about his adoption. After the heartbreaking loss of two infant sons that marked their early years of marriage, they promised themselves they would try not to hold too tightly to David or hold back any information he wanted about his birth. And so they waited on him.

David was hesitant to talk about the questions and curiosities about his birth story that often haunted him. But as he neared adulthood, his need to know the full story of his life became something he couldn’t shake. Until the call came to the Coltons from the adoption agency, and the first tentative bits of communication and connection set in motion a story that would change all their lives forever.

From the team that brought you the movies Courageous and War Room comes Lifemark, the novelization of the new film inspired by a true story of adoption, redemption, and hope.

 

Q&A with Chris…

Q:  Without giving too much away, can you tell us a little bit about the storyline of Lifemark?
A:  A crisis pregnancy leads to a difficult decision by the birth mother. Years later the son she placed for adoption wants to know his birth mother—but there are complications. The story goes into all those complications and shows the results.

Q: What intrigued you most about this story when you first heard about it?
A:  I was arrested by the courage of the birth mother to choose life in the midst of a hard situation.

Q: What is the writing process of taking a Kendrick Brothers movie and creating a novel?
A: I use a farm analogy to answer that. The Kendricks put in all the fence line and I get to play in the pasture. I know the plot points and all of the hard decisions have been made. All I have to do is ask good questions to go deeper into the people who populate the story.

Q: Is it easier or more difficult to write a novel based on a movie?
A: Nothing is easy about writing. But having the main storyline and characters fleshed out is a luxury to me. My other novels are built totally from my own imagination. I think that’s harder, but there are struggles with both.

Q: What creative liberties did you take with the novelization as compared to the movie storyline?
A:  I wouldn’t call them liberties because the Kendricks have full veto power over anything I come up with. You’re not going to find space aliens parachuting into the story or things like that. What I try to do is go further into the motivation of the characters and mine what’s going on inside. You can’t do that with a film the way you can with a novel.

Q: Talk about some of the major themes of the story and how they impacted you personally.
A:  Forgiveness and receiving forgiveness is a big part of the story that will connect with readers. I find that many people believe God will forgive others but can’t forgive them. I loved the theme of trust in the face of doubt. The adoptive parents have been through the wringer with a lot of loss, so giving hope one more chance made a huge difference in the story. Then there’s the theme of letting go of outcomes. So much of life is about achieving a desired outcome, but there are some things where you do all you can, you pray hard, and then you simply leave them in God’s hands.

Q:  Which character was your favorite to develop?
A: David’s best friend is Nate. He has such a quirky personality in the film and I tried to bring that onto the page. In the novel, you get to see Nate and David in elementary school. You also see Nate’s sister, who has a difficult backstory. I think viewers of the film will enjoy the extra scenes with Nate.

Q:  What role does faith play in this novel?
A: Faith in God and his ability flies like a drone over the whole story. The scene where the birth mother is holding her newborn son, knowing she will have to release him soon, is gut-wrenching, but the prayer she prays is so genuine. All of the characters grapple with the big questions of life.

Q:  The film is based on a true story. Did that help as you fleshed out the novel?
A: It did. We were privileged to have real people who lived this story as a pattern to work from. At the same time, it’s not a documentary, so we added elements that provided dramatic moments but didn’t do violence to the arc of the true story. Having them give input was invaluable to make this a realistic portrayal.

 

Operating from a Perspective of Hope, Not Fear

By Chris Fabry

“I think we have to leave the house.”

My wife spoke those words over the phone. I was in an airport about to fly home, and I could tell by the emotion in her voice that she believed it. Our children and pets had been through one health crisis after another for several years. They weren’t getting better; they were getting worse. And she had put the pieces together that the house was killing us.

But this was our dream home in the mountains of Colorado. How could we leave it?
On the flight back, I worked the equation through. If she was wrong, the worst that would happen was we would be out the cost of a few nights in a hotel. We could move back in and have a big laugh later. 

But what if she was right? If it was possible that the house was killing us, did I want my wife and children to stay? How could I live with that years down the road?

My big fear at the time was that we would go into financial ruin. This was a huge investment. But the bigger fear was that we would lose our lives from the toxic storm brewing inside.

It may sound strange, but hope urged me on. I had hope that if we moved forward to regain our health, step by step we could recover from this disaster.

We did leave the house with the clothes on our backs, taking nothing with us. That decision had far-reaching implications. One of the hardest to overcome was the fear of encountering the same losses again.

Because our health insurance waffled on covering the treatment we needed, there was an endless pile of bills from doctors and laboratories. I held out hope that we would hear one day that it was all covered. The bills kept coming. The insurance denied our claims. The home insurance also refused to cover the losses that we faced.

We moved to Arizona to be treated by a specialist. More bills came since the treatment was out of network. We had lost our pets in the move, as well, which brought about a trauma that went soul-deep. We were overwhelmed with all of the health struggles, all while I tried to keep the plates spinning at my day job. 

What I learned in that season was that I had a choice in how I lived. I could give in to the fear, anticipating the next shoe to drop, the next overwhelming bill to come, another dark horse of the apocalypse rounding the corner. Or I could choose to live with hope that we were all moving toward something better, even though we couldn’t see it at the time.

It’s important to know I’m not talking about “hope in hope.” Hope is only as substantive as that in which it is placed. I didn’t place my hope in all of us being miraculously healed. I didn’t set my hope in figuring out why all of that happened. I set my hope in the goodness and loving-kindness of God.

Lamentations 3:22-24 (ESV) says, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your  faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”
Fear makes you a prisoner of your circumstances. Your enemy wants to paralyze you with fear. Hope sets you free to live, to move forward knowing you are not alone, and that if God is your portion, you have a great hope for the future.

 

About Chris…

 

Chris Fabry is an award-winning author and radio personality who hosts the daily program Chris Fabry Live on Moody Radio. A graduate of the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism at Marshall University and a native of West Virginia, Chris and his wife, Andrea, now live in Arizona and are the parents of nine children.

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