Dirt

Mary Marantz

Description

Dirt is a story about the places where we start. From a single-wide trailer in the mountains of rural West Virginia to the halls of Yale Law School, Mary Marantz's story is one of remembering our roots while turning our faces to the sky. From growing up in that trailer, where it rained just as hard inside as out and the smell of mildew hung thick in the air, Mary has known what it is to feel broken and disqualified because of the muddy scars leaving smudged fingerprints across our lives. Generations of her family lived and logged in those hauntingly treacherous woods, risking life and limb just to barely scrape by. And yet that very struggle became the redemption song God used to write a life she never dreamed of.Mixed with warmth, wit, and the bittersweet, sometimes achingly heartbreaking places we go when we dig in instead of give up, Dirt is a story of healing. With gut-wrenching honesty and hard-won wisdom, Mary shares her story for anyone who has ever walked into the world and felt like their scars were still on display, showing that you are braver, better, and more empathetic for what you have survived. Because God does his best work in the muddy, messy, and broken--if we'll only learn to dig in.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493426706
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Endorsements
“Mary’s story is one that will live deep in the corners of your heart forever, reminding you, through her own experiences and beautiful storytelling, that the good stuff of life is often found in the hardest circumstances. Dirt is the inspiring story of a girl who knew something better was on the other side of fear and challenge. Mary’s words are so poignant and touched my heart in so many ways. This is a story you will keep with you long after you turn the final page. I’m so excited to share this truly extraordinary memoir with everyone I know, and I’m eager for Mary to put pen to paper again.”
Emily Ley, bestselling author of When Less Becomes More: Making Space for Slow, Simple, and Good
“Mary Marantz is a born storyteller! She is an exceptional writer who has that unique ability to transform even the hardest of scenes into profound fine art. Her writing just has a way of taking you by the hand and walking you back to truth, to a place called home. If you’re tired of running from your story and ready to lean into the strength it gives you, this book is for you. Dirt is truly a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps American anthem. All I could think was how our two stories are so different, and yet Mary’s story is also my own. It’s all of our stories. This deeply moving debut book is a triumph in every way!”
Jessica Honegger, founder of Noonday Collection and author of Imperfect Courage
“In Philippians, the apostle Paul talks about the great stuff he’s done, the horrible stuff he’s been through, and how it’s all forgettable in light of God. Those verses come to mind when I hear or read Mary’s words. Her story matters because all of our stories matter—but it’s not her accolades or her acknowledgments of pain that you’ll remember most. Her words reek of God’s grace, glory, and goodness, and of our ability to cling to them. Whether you come to this book with the most successful or the most stinky past, you’ll be blessed and loved well by Mary’s leading. She’s a good friend, and this is a good book.”
Jess Connolly, author of You Are the Girl for the Job and Take It Too Far
“In this captivating, compelling book, Mary Marantz draws you into a moving story with plenty of space to breathe and say, ‘I’ve felt that too.’ Marantz writes from right here on the ground, meeting you where you are. She tells the unique story of her life in a beautifully relatable way, where you will comb through every page and be reminded: through it all, there is grace.”
Morgan Harper Nichols, author of All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts for Boundless Living
“It’s easy to want to discard your roots and turn away from the mess that made you, but Mary Marantz does just the opposite in this beautiful work. Filled with the kind of writing that drops you directly into the gritty details of the story, Mary sifts through her own ‘dirt’ to reveal pure treasures and glimpses of God to hold on to for the long haul. This book is gorgeously written, and every last word is so intentionally placed. The words are stunning. The pictures she paints are so real, I could not put it down! Get ready to have your heart shaken up and made better through the pages of this book.”
Hannah Brencher, author of Come Matter Here and Fighting Forward (2021)
“How is it possible to find myself within a story that is so different from my own? Through gorgeous writing and brave truth telling, Mary guides us to lean into our own stories and find transformation and redemption we never thought possible. Dirt is an anthem of love over circumstances and faith over fear. I dare you to start this book and not read it in one sitting. I know it will leave you inspired, challenged, and changed.”
Nicole Zasowski, marriage and family therapist and author of From Lost to Found
“ Dirt is a beautifully written memoir that I could barely put down. Mary’s words are equal parts poetry and pain, sadness and soaring redemption. For every one of us who has ever wished for an easier story, Dirt is the fight song we have been waiting for. An invitation to trade shame, striving, perfectionism, and unforgiveness for grace, rest, freedom, and reconciliation. I found myself repeatedly nodding my head, seeing myself in her story, even though our pasts could not be more different. I can’t think of a more important, desperately needed message right now. This book is a wakeup call, a resounding reminder to stop running and to dig deep into the mud that made us.”
Tonya Dalton, bestselling author of The Joy of Missing Out
“One word: riveting. If you’re looking for your next page-turner that will make you believe anything is possible for yourself, Dirt is what you need to read.”
Jess Ekstrom, author of Chasing the Bright Side
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2020 by Mary Marantz
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2670-6
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
Photo on page 55 courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-fsa-8a39820.
Published in association with Illuminate Literary Agency, www.Illuminateliterary.com.
Some names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.
Interior design by William Overbeeke.
Dedication
For Dad, Mom, and Goldie, who loved the Girl In the Trailer.
For Justin, who loved the Girl After the Trailer. I have been born a new thing. This time, one with both roots and wings.
For the people of West Virginia, who are unshakable proof of the indomitable spirit that grows wild in the mountains there.
This story belongs to all of us.
Contents
Cover 1
Endorsements 2
Half Title Page 3
Title Page 5
Copyright Page 6
Dedication 7
Prologue 11
Part I: The Girl in the Trailer 17
1. It Always Started with Dirt 19
2. You Have to Dig Down to Get to the Good Part 29
3. A Tiny Shift in Words That Changes Everything 39
4. Marked for Hard Things 51
5. It Was Always in Our Blood 61
6. Something Not Always Seen but Felt 73
7. These Scars We Bear 85
8. Leaving Is a Suitcase 97
9. None of It Ever Made Her Feel More Real 109
10. The Scars That Stitch Us Back Together Again 119
Interlude 133
Part II: The Girl After the Trailer 135
11. A Ship Sailing toward a Distant Shore 137
12. Stories Change Stories 151
13. Belonging Is a Gray J. Crew Sweater 163
14. A Constellation of Complicated 177
15. Substance over Surface 191
16. The Heavy Chains We Never Asked to Bear 201
17. Not Even Real Dirt 209
18. It’s Safe Now for You to Rest 219
19. Grace Is a Root Word 229
20. The Broken Was Part of the Plan All Along 239
21. At Last Freedom Takes Root and Comes Home 251
Epilogue 259
Author Note 261
Acknowledgments 263
About the Author 269
Back Ads 271
Cover Flaps 274
Back Cover 275
Prologue

H IS HANDS LOOKED even dirtier than I’d remembered, resting against the crisp, white, sterile sheets of a bed tucked away in the far-flung outer reaches of the hospital corner.
I was standing in the same hospital I’d been born in some thirty-six years earlier in the spring of 1980, when Mom was already a wife of three years just two months shy of her twenty-first birthday, and he had yet to find his way to wanting to be a father. But from the first time he held me, I had been my father’s child, and that had been both our unraveling and the common thread that stitched us back together again.
Once, we had known what it was to roar at one another—to shout and spit and fight and rail against one another with all the similarities in us that drove us to our differences. With all the stubbornness and set-in-our-ways that made us both so very much the same. We once knew what it was to fight with one another—and for one another. To hold on with a white-knuckle grip when everything and everyone around us was letting go. And now the blip-blip-blip of the machines casting their pale green light on everything standing between us—my leaving, my running, my staying gone—was the loudest noise in the room.
It had been five years since I had been back home. Not since we laid Goldie in the cold September ground, when Dad and I sat under a cheap tent awning covering her newly open wound of a grave long after everyone else had gone. We held on to each other and cried stinging, biting tears as the rain picked up all around us and thrummed out a holy, haunting rhythm turned hymn on the vinyl above.
A few hours before the tent, I had stood in a small, red-velvet-clad funeral home and delivered the eulogy for my beloved grandmother to a room only half full of people, a few of which might have preferred it if I’d just stayed gone. I hadn’t been bothered to be there when she died, so why should I be the one to get the final word? A day later, Dad moved from our old brown single-wide trailer into Goldie’s little red, suddenly empty house next door—the same house where he had both grown up and grown up way too fast—while my mom went back to her motel.
A year later, he was vomiting up blood every day. It would come upon him with such a suddenness and violence that it didn’t so much spill out of him as erupt from his lips. He rarely made it to the bathroom in time, and as such, Goldie’s pristine green carpeting—the same she had chosen fifteen years prior because it perfectly matche