We’re excited to welcome Elizabeth Miller Hayes, author of Ever Light and Dark: Telling Secrets, Telling the Truth, a collection of personal essays about life, love, loss, and mystery in the Christian faith. Hayes will be in conversation with Midtown Reader’s events director Katie Hautamaki.
About Ever Light and Dark:
As we look into the stories of our lives, particularly the most difficult ones, we connect more deeply with ourselves, with others, and even with God. Elizabeth Hayes believes that when people tell their stories, things change. We are found through the telling, and so is hope. Hayes has also found faith—a faith that’s mysterious, and at times infuriating, as she experiences a God who refuses to be controlled. God doesn’t promise the elimination of suffering, only that he will be with us in it. It’s not the religion she grew up with; it’s more nuanced than that. But the most important thing it is, is real. Real life is a strange and often unwanted mixture of joy and pain, light and dark.
“Elizabeth believes our stories are a doorway to know God. This book will awaken your heart to your own stories and to the heartache that calls us to seek a larger story. She invites us to engage the wonder and redemption in our darkest moments. You will be in awe of your own life, and even more in awe of the God who wrote your life.” —Becky Allender, Author, Hidden in Plain Sight, Bainbridge Island, Washington
“The past is a complicated thing, and Elizabeth leaves it that way. But in leaving it so, she leaves us richer for having walked through it with her. The unveiling of a life’s secrets drives each page turn, but it is the things she’s learned along the way—about family, God, and herself—that will bless us in each chapter of our lives.” —Andrew Van Kirk Priest, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, McKinney, Texas
“Elizabeth’s invitation is winsome, approachable, honest, and lovely. She hands you her life, simply and directly, and lets you conclude what you will. It’s a refreshing freedom.” —Matthew Tiemeyer LMHC, Seattle, Washington
Elizabeth Miller Hayes lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, with her husband, Tim, and sweet dog, Hoolah. She graduated from Florida State University and worked more than twenty years in the legal field before working five years in the nonprofit world. She believes that any day connecting with real friends in real time, is a good, good day.
