Forest Prayer

Forest Prayer is a conversationally steered and character-driven life story with the protagonist growing up and older while looking for the Lord. Having a few Christian mentors and a few mentors who appear to be agnostic, Jerry struggles his whole life through trying to distinguish between what he often feels is an infestation of Christianity along with what he knows is his infatuation with forestry and his obsession with wildlife management.

Thinly disguised as Jerry, I had the following supporting characters: Papa, my grandfather and Baptist preacher who was close to God in more ways than one; Uncle Sawyer, my saw boss who insisted that the cure to all our problems was out there in the woods waiting for us to find; Ol' Professor Starlet, who was the forestry teacher who turns out to know more than we first thought when meeting him; the good Dr. Frank, who is perhaps the world's leading international forester; and Patsy, who is my main confidant still today after over fifty years of awesome marriage.

Instead of reading or writing fiction or nonfiction, the fun of this genre that I like to call faction is that we get to enjoy living life over again but doing it better. If you share one of these true-life experiences with me for real and recognize my story is more like the way things should have been, it is. Rather than part of a bucket list, this is part of my to-do list of testimonies for Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So I ask that those of you who knew me before my life became undergirded with Christianity to please remember that both Colossians and the Lord's Prayer tell us that we are to forgive one another as Christ forgave us.

Locations of verses within Bible books are specifically omitted in hopes that it might encourage the reader to spend more personal time in the Good Book for him or herself. As directed by the Holy Bible not to add or take away anything from the Word, I have made that effort to the best of my ability. If I've accidentally missed, added, or misrepresented anything, then I ask that you and God please forgive me. God help me if this causes harm to anyone's faith.

Author's liberty includes the following four grammatical variances for the following reasons:

#1--incorrect grammar and incorrect spelling are sometimes used to better reflect characters, times, and places. After all, what's not about Christ is about people.

#2--italics used all over the place are to emphasize words, phrases, and much more...like out of respect for the various names of God; verses in the Bible; books of the Bible; quotes, whether verbatim or paraphrased; and even sometimes in lieu of quotation marks or for periodic words that rhyme.

#3--overuse of ellipsis is because Psalm does say to be still...and it seems the characters in the book often want you to slow down a fraction of a second longer than you might for a mere comma.

#4--types or names of trees are capitalized and italicized...as it does take them to make a forest.