I wrote this book under the pen name Nicholas Deere, as the stories I share in it are so personal, so intimate, I wasn’t sure I would ever publish it at all. But as I shared the first few chapters with a couple of friends, they felt it would be helpful for many. In the end, this book has become my favorite among all the books I’ve written.

If you need hope that God can change something in your life that may seem unchangeable, I hope you’ll check it out. Please know, though, that it is a love story. Some readers may find it more sensual than they are used to reading, as the goal is to show how our passions and desires can and do change.

Jesus is, after all, in the life-changing business. He can do anything, absolutely anything. Remember:

"And that is what some of you WERE. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11).

I’ve included the introduction from the book below, plus a link to today’s podcast, where I read from the book and share a song and a prayer. The song is a love song I wrote for my late wife, Lana, called My Lana from my piano album Clear My Mind.

Watch today’s podcast here!

Get the book here!

"Unspoken Memories"
Introduction to Fifty Shades of Grace
by Nicholas J. Deere

Some memories are too precious to be spoken out loud; doing so might shatter the special place they hold in our hearts. But some memories are too precious not to be spoken out loud, when doing so might bring hope and healing to the hearts of those who hear them.

Memories are powerful things. They can stick with you for life, like this one shared by a character named Mr. Bernstein in the movie Citizen Kane. A reporter had asked Mr. Bernstein how Charles Kane could have possibly remembered a fleeting moment with a girl from so many years earlier. Mr. Bernstein replied:

“You’re pretty young, Mr. Thompson. A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”

You probably have memories like these. I know I do. This book is full of them.

I’ve never shared most of these memories with anyone, and I’m hesitant to share them with you now. It’s not because I don’t want you to know about them (well, there’s a little bit of that), but it’s because they are so personal to me, so intimate, that I’m afraid by sharing them they might somehow shatter.

I’m afraid to share them because I would hate to have someone take them lightly or laugh at them (although some of them are light and laughable). I’m afraid to share them because of what someone might think of me. I wonder if they would still love me the same if they really knew some of my innermost thoughts. I’m afraid to share them because some of them are truly embarrassing—I can’t believe I thought and did some of the things I share in this book.

At the same time, I believe that some of these memories could be very helpful (extremely helpful, in fact), especially for anyone who has pondered any of the thoughts and feelings that I share here. I remember walking through “the stacks” in the graduate library at the University of Illinois when I was a freshman. As an underclassman, I had to get special permission to go into those rows upon rows of books housed in room after room of that massive library. But I had a mission. I wanted (I needed) to find out what other people thought about some of the things I was grappling with in my mind.

There was no Internet back then; nowhere to quickly look up the topics that were burning on my heart. I was excited to find that at least a few books were listed in the card catalog on these subjects. But after getting permission to enter the stacks, I was disappointed to find that the books on these topics took up a mere five or six inches of shelf space out of the hundreds of shelves that filled that one room. I thumbed through each of those books, but found them to be clinical and dry, doing little to help me with my practical questions.

I wish I had held this book in my hands back then. I think I would have been amazed to find that someone else had the same thoughts and experiences I was having. I would have loved to learn from them as much as I could, whether I agreed with their conclusions or not. I just wished someone would have shared their thoughts and memories with me.

So after all these years of gathering and storing these precious memories in my mind, I’d like to pull them out and share them with you. My hope is that you’ll be able to benefit from them in a special way.

Before you dive into this book, however, I want to give you a fair warning. This is a love story. If you’re not interested in reading about passion and romance, heartbreak and sex (or staying up late to find out what’s next), then this isn’t the book for you.

If, on the other hand, you’d like to explore and experience a life lived in love, with all of its glorious, unpredictable and multi-faceted dimensions, then read on. It’s for you that I’ve shared these “unspoken memories.”

Nicholas J. Deere

P.S. The memories I share in this book are all true;
Just the names have been changed (including mine, too).
When choosing a pen name I even mulled over
Names like Laurel or Mary (or Debbie Macomber?),
’Cause who wants to read romance that’s been penned by a guy? But if Shakespeare could do it… (then I guess so can I!).

This excerpt is from my book Fifty Shades of Grace: Love Changes Everything, under my pen name Nicholas Deere. You can get a copy in audio, paperback or downloadable PDF from inspiringbooks.com.