My Quote Of The Week this time is an extended comment on WE’s post. And since I’ve missed a QOTW once or twice, I’ll even throw in a bonus =)

Just recently I discovered a verse in the Old Testament that I hadn’t noticed before.

“The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”

Isaiah designed a striking image for the reader to understand guilt/shame and how difficult (and un-worth-it) it is to try and live a lie – always intending to cover up the dirt inside. But just one storm and suddenly, the litter on the beach is disgusting. To WE’s point – all choices have consequences and being free certainly isn’t about confining your every energy to hiding and/or justifying those natural consequences.

On a related but separate note, I am fascinated at the increasing number of ‘confession memoirs’ making the top-sellers list in recent years. It’s almost like the more dirty laundry you air, the more money you make.

Walls’ “The Glass Castle: A Memoir” is stunningly repulsive and yet captivating enough to make you strangely connect with a set of characters that you think surely must not be real, rational people making such incredibly irrational and poor choices.

This week Mary Karr, author of “The Liars’ Club”, has written and released her 3rd memoir – “Lit”.  Although I’ve not read this telling of her after-high-school life, this week I read the following excerpt from the book:

“Only an alcoholic can so discombobulate her insides that she might weigh in her hands two choices – (a) get drunk and drive into stuff with more molecular density than she has, and (b) be a present and loving mother to her son – and, on picking the latter, plunge into despair.”

I wonder if memoirs similar to these are such good sellers because readers are drawn to stories about others with similar problems to their own  – or if they just like to read them to feel better about their own lives. Either way, I’m sure that if you were to paint a picture of Karr’s new book – it would look just like the beach shot above. I guess the best we can hope is that readers (especially young ones!) are smart enough to learn from the mistakes of others and wisely choose good over bad. As Isaiah so poetically penned, it’s the good choices in life that give the soul ‘peace like a river!’