For Life Archives - Tracy Joy Jones

109 Lbs of Rejection – A Writing Update

When I started writing my first book six years ago, I had one of those “Aha” moments Oprah used to talk about. Every single thing in my experience, life, education, faith, personality seemed to come together in one overwhelming passion. I’d been blogging for years, but writing a novel was something else entirely. I wrote my first full-length novel in five weeks, and it was the happiest five weeks I’d ever spent. I love to re-read books, but I’d never lived in a story for that long. I fell in love with the characters and the adventure of it and …

Wrestling Towards

I have boxes and boxes of my old journals stored in my attic. I have no idea why I keep them, except that every once in a great while I’ll pull them out and read them. Usually, I have a good laugh at childhood drama and teenage angst. But the one thing I always notice in my journal entries, even from an early age, is that I always wrestled towards God. Something deep inside me always believed that no matter what is going on in my life, that God sees and knows more than I do, and that I would …

The Horse of My Dreams

The cover is here, and it’s so very lovely! It makes me want to get to know those beautiful horses and hope against hope they’d like me too. My horse story in this beautiful compilation book is a comedic warning against pretending to know more than you do entitled, “Kendall & the Magician.” It’s the story of the time I rode a thoroughbred racehorse at a barrel racing track. As you can imagine, it did not go well. However, one of my other horse stories bears remembering as well. If you aren’t laughing by the end, then perhaps you had …

Tracy Joy Jones - The Cobbler has No Shoes

The Cobbler’s Children Have No shoes

Do you know that old saying? In the Spanish translation, it goes something like, “In a blacksmith’s home, knives are wooden”. In Chinese “the lady who sells fans fans herself with her hands”. In Arabic, “at the potter’s house water is served in a broken jug”. In the Jones House, “my website is desperately in need of a facelift.” Anyway, for the last few years, my website has been a little sad. Yes, we build websites for a living, but it’s the last thing Matt or I want to be doing on evenings and weekends for ourselves (and no money). …

All Red and All Wrong

I knew something was wrong the moment we arrived at the Christmas party, but I didn’t know much else. I kind of knew the lady through a few common acquaintances, but it was her husband who had invited us to come. He was a client of ours, so Matt and I agreed. We dressed appropriately, and I felt cute in my red sweater. Elegant, not too flashy. Client wear. Matt always looks handsome, but he’d even donned a suit coat for the party. She’d told me not to bring anything, but I didn’t want to arrive empty-handed, so I picked …

Off to the Races

A few months ago, I got a random email in my inbox — Does anyone have a horse story where you learned a lesson from a horse? Horses? In all honesty, I’ve probably ridden ten horses in my life, maybe fifteen. The point is, I am anything but an expert. Although, I have ridden in some spectacular locations. I rode a horse in Montana across the flat, flat earth where all I could see was the horizon. I’ve ridden on long skinny roads in the middle of farmland (see picture – That’s not me on the horse, but it’s the …

Lego Lessons in Confidence

Ever felt like your faith was hanging on by a thread? I know I’ve both felt and spoken those exact words more than once—especially when everything looks dire. I imagine myself struggling to hang on to a fraying thread, clinging with all my might over a Grand Canyon of despair, and knowing that my faith might break at any second. In those moments, faith seems puny and fragile, especially with that mental picture in my mind. I recently saw this exact moment of anemic fragile faith illustrated in a search through the lego pile with my son. My fifteen-year-old boy …

Lessons from Lego

Ever stepped on a lego? Ever vacuumed a lego piece and then had to silence that barb of guilt that wonders if your child will miss it, and if you just vacuumed up the key to his entire lego universe? Have you ever looked at your family’s pile of legos and wanted to cry at home much money is represented in those oddly assorted, multi-colored blocks that now lie in rubble? Whatever your feelings toward lego, God has been speaking to me through my lego pile lately and I wanted to share a few randomly shaped nuggets with you. A …

Once Upon a Time on National Television

Ever had a moment that made you cringe every single time you relived it in your mind? Total humiliation? Awkwardness? High profile failure? Did it make you afraid of failing or did it make you try to protect yourself from ever letting it happen again? In honor of my new novella, “Unlucky in Love and Lyrics,” (releasing on March 17th – free to my newsletter subscribers). I’d like to share a little story of one of my moments which involved all three: total humiliation, awkwardness, and failure. Do you remember the song “Shout to the Lord”? Most likely you’ve heard …

One Step at a Time

Ever started something before you had any idea where it was going or how you were going to finish? Unfortunately, I do it all the time. In fact, I like to joke that I would never start most projects if I knew how hard the project would actually be and how long it would realistically take. But since I just keep leaping before I look, I’ve got to say, we’ve conquered a lot of projects that way. But this week, Matt and I tackled a project in one of the strangest ways possible, and as soon as I took a …

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