Serena

About Serena

https://www.serenabmiller.com

Posts by Serena Miller:

April 4, 2012

An Uncommon Grace

My third published novel came out yesterday and is doing really well. I’m especially grateful for this book to be read because in a small way, it is my own story. No–I never came out of the Swartzentruber Amish faith–but like many Christians, I had to trudge through a whole lot of legalism before I understood the power, the mercy, and the freedom of God’s grace. It became the difference between life and death to me. It became the difference between breathing freely–or barely breathing at all. A reader just sent me an e-mail saying that she saw two complicated love stories going on in An Uncommon Grace–the one between my Amish hero and military heroine, and the one between my hero and God. I hadn’t though of it in those terms, but she’s right. I have some very smart readers.

March 31, 2012

Made In China

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I have a friend who smuggles Bibles and Bible-study material into China. The communist government frowns on this sort of activity. It is a dangerous thing my friend does. You can imagine my confusion then, a couple months ago, when I was wandering through The Dollar Tree, and discovered a bin of New Testaments. I flipped through one and discovered that it was…made in China. I was at the Dollar Tree again (to those who never go to such places–everything in the Dollar Tree is–you guessed it–one dollar). I was picking up candy for my grandkids’ Easter Baskets. Had filled my buggy with cute little candy rabbits, etc. Then it struck me. I wondered where all this stuff had been made. Started reading back labels. Made in China. Made in China. Made in China. Well what-do-you-know…..this one is made in America! I put the made in China candy back on the shelf and started foraging for made-in-America candy, and there was plenty. All I had to do was look. Same price. Wandered on down the aisle. I’ve been a little nose-out-of-joint lately because a card company I used to love working for, Hallmark, has begun to outsource their jobs to […]

March 21, 2012

An Amish Poetess

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One of my Amish friends (I’ll call her Violet) is a homeschooling mother of seven. I asked her once why she home-schooled when she had so much work to do and had the option of sending her children down the road to an excellent one-room Amish school. “For the opportunity to spend more time with my children,” she said. She didn’t elaborate, but the tone in her voice said, “Such a silly question. Why else would I home-school except for the sheer joy of it.” At the time, we had just driven to a private home where a local family makes a modest living selling Amish-friendly home-schooling materials out of a small garage. There is no sign indicating that this building is housing anything more than a buggy or workshop–and yet it appeared to be a flourishing business. There were several customers. I followed along behind Violet while she and two of her daughters selected the materials they needed for the coming year. The girls were as excited about their new schoolbooks as Englisch girls their age would be over a new I-pod. Later, we stopped and did some shopping at a scratch-n-dent Amish grocery store made up of soon-to-go-out-of-date […]