Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Tropical Thirst: Chasing Purpose, Finding Destiny
    Tropical Thirst: Chasing Purpose, Finding Destiny
    Tropical Thirst: Chasing Purpose, Finding Destiny
    Ebook133 pages1 hour

    Tropical Thirst: Chasing Purpose, Finding Destiny

    By Denise Price Gilhousen

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Come join the journey as a child of the 1960s sails from the mainland to the tropical island to the Amazon River and beyond in search of her purpose and identity. Connecting with wonderful people, and some peculiar ones, beautiful lands, deep waters, and even deeper spiritual struggles, she finally finds what she is looking for.

    Come along on this crazy, true adventure to discover the treasure she finally found that changed her life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChristian Faith Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateDec 10, 2021
    ISBN9781638740315
    Tropical Thirst: Chasing Purpose, Finding Destiny

    Related to Tropical Thirst

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Damien Cave On Letting Go

      Aug 22, 2021

      When I was about four years old, after our cabin in the woods of New Mexico burned to ashes, my father decided to get me out of my mother’s orbit. Her drug habit was spiralling faster than his, so he threw me in a borrowed VW Kombi and stepped on the

      8 min read

    • Article

      Steven Pinker

      Oct 24, 2022

      Steven Pinker
      5 min read

    • Article

      Sir Kenneth Branagh

      Jan 17, 2022

      Sir Kenneth Branagh
      5 min read

    • Article

      Two Fathers

      Jun 18, 2022

      Two Fathers
      9 min read

    • Article

      Around The World

      Nov 29, 2021

      Around The World
      5 min read

    • Article

      Adeel Akhtar

      Mar 25, 2024

      Adeel Akhtar
      5 min read

    • Article

      Vivian Pham On Reigniting Our Inner Child

      Aug 2, 2020

      IT IS A strange time to be alive, and an even stranger time to be a child. Toddlers today are only doing it for the first time and should not therefore be regarded as authorities in their field. Only handfuls of humans have managed to remain in the E

      4 min read

    • Article

      Family Man

      Apr 15, 2020

      Family Man
      5 min read

    • Article

      In Conversation With ELEANOR SHEARER

      Jan 5, 2023

      As the granddaughter of immigrants who came to England with the Windrush generation, Eleanor Shearer was drawn to Caribbean history, and studied the legacy of slavery for her Masters in Politics at the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, River Sin

      2 min read

    • Article

      Cresting the Wave

      Oct 28, 2021

      Cresting the Wave
      12 min read

    • Article

      An Epilogue to Homeschooling: A Mother Hangs Up Her Homeschooling Hat…Now What?

      Oct 3, 2022

      Estimated reading time: 11 minutes — My chest feels achy. It’s felt like this for weeks now. I keep catching myself holding my breath, losing focus, reaching for something to soothe me, staring into space. This isn’t me — who is this person, I wonde

      7 min read

    • Article

      10 Questions Rose Carlyle

      Dec 23, 2024

      10 Questions Rose Carlyle
      3 min read

    • Article

      FAMILY Secrets

      Mar 28, 2024

      FAMILY Secrets
      6 min read

    • Article

      Totally Out-foxed

      Dec 31, 2021

      Totally Out-foxed
      10 min read

    • Article

      Nixen Osborne

      Dec 10, 2017

      Nixen Osborne
      7 min read

    • Article

      Turning the Page

      Nov 24, 2020

      Committing to our seven-year dream of opening a brewpub wasn’t possible for my husband and me without a move from our 4-acre hobby farm to a 700-square-foot apartment behind the future brewery. Relocating was necessary to make our new jobs as full-ti

      5 min read

    • Article

      FROM the MAILBOX

      Jan 31, 2023

      FROM the MAILBOX
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Arrangements: Coming of Age with Books

      Jun 26, 2018

      1.  “How many of you still play with dolls?” Depending on our moods: We rolled our eyes; we buried our burning faces in our arms; we groaned; we shrieked; we wished to be elsewhere; we were present. In the exact middle of eighth grade (the season in

      5 min read

    • Article

      FROM the MAILBOX

      Jan 31, 2023

      FROM the MAILBOX
      2 min read

    • Article

      Hayley + The Clarence

      Sep 2, 2021

      Hayley + The Clarence
      13 min read

    • Article

      Faith Empowered

      May 27, 2020

      Faith Empowered
      6 min read

    • Article

      To The Stars

      May 28, 2021

      To The Stars
      6 min read

    • Article

      Someone Cares

      May 24, 2019

      Someone Cares
      2 min read

    • Article

      How To Hang A Mezuzah

      Sep 1, 2020

      How To Hang A Mezuzah
      24 min read

    • Article

      Our Path to Healing

      Jun 15, 2024

      We are delighted to have podcast co-host and community activist Angelene Prakash join us to reflect on her journey from her childhood in Ladner to finding—and sharing—her voice. It never occurred to me that I was unique until my peers in elementary s

      4 min read

    • Article

      Peter Ackroyd

      Jul 12, 2021

      Peter Ackroyd
      4 min read

    • Article

      Too Late To Stop Now

      Sep 1, 2021

      When I write I like to listen to the same song over and over again, although need to listen feels a more accurate phrase. This repeated listening returns me to a place where I can see the next thing I want to say, although of course I don’t mean see

      13 min read

    • Article

      Class Is In Session

      Feb 11, 2020

      Class Is In Session
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Tropical Thirst

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Tropical Thirst - Denise Price Gilhousen

      Chapter 1

      Life Is a Journey

      Let me show you how to make a bed—the navy way, my dad declared. He actually took time to teach my big sister and I something he learned at the Naval Academy many years before! Since our navy officer father was often out at sea or just plain busy, my sister, Carole, and I felt thrilled to have his attention.

      Be sure to tighten the sheets and make square corners before you tuck them in, he continued, with a good-natured twinkle in his eye. "Just as they taught us at the academy before I entered World War II, you roll out of bed and turn immediately to make it up. Since you’re sharing the bunk space aboard ship with plenty of other sailors, you need to be ready for whatever the day may hold. Now you girls hurry, get dressed, and come on down for breakfast. This day holds the pancakes I can smell your mom cooking."

      I wonder why simple interactions like this stir such warm emotions in my heart. Our frequent moves, numerous miles, and constant changes characterized my childhood, so I clung to the predictable elements. At the same time, I did relish the excitement of new adventures and the idea that life is a journey. As a navy family, our moves were usually every two years and always in the middle of the school year. That was tough on us kids.

      My dad adjusted well to change, I think. Born and raised in Oregon, his father worked for the railroad, helping to build bridges and rail lines, while his mother tried to farm on the land at the many houses they occupied when moved for his jobs. My dad did well in his schools, even though some of them were one-room country schools. I know he must have been a very good student since the US Naval Academy accepted him. He was part of the class that would graduate in 1944, during the period when World War II was being fought in Europe.

      When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, his class was pushed forward to graduate a year early to help in the war. So he was deployed to the Pacific aboard a navy destroyer as an officer and spent the rest of World War II in various ships. Afterward, the navy stationed him in California, where he met my mother.

      My mother, the daughter of Irish immigrants who had determined to make a good life in America, passed on to us children as we grew up that proper etiquette and conduct was essential to advance in life. She served as a wonderful navy officer’s wife because of her willingness to move from place to place as my father’s assignments and promotions sent him around the country. As a married couple, they lived in California at least twice, Hawaii three times, then numerous places on the East Coast. All three of us kids—my older sister, Carole, two years older than me, and my brother, Monty, five years younger—were born in different states. We all had to adjust to many moves. I was born in Hawaii, which always made me feel extra special!

      With each move, my mother graciously accepted her role as home packer, school relocation detective, new neighbor greeter. My dad’s job would usually send him ahead to select housing and get started on the job. Therefore, none of us, including Mom, knew what our new living quarters would look like or who our new friends might be. Early on, books became my best friends because they could come with me and needed no introduction. My old friends were left behind, seldom to be seen again.

      Oh well, I got used to the routine: move away in the middle of the school year, move to a new school where everybody has their friends and also their schoolbooks, make friends by summertime, and enjoy them for a year. Then the following year, move again—in the middle of the school year, of course.

      That may be one reason that Hawaii became my favorite home when we moved back there in my fifth grade of school. Obviously, it contained great tropical beauty, but also, we lived there for five years! My dad got promotions and housing upgrades, all wonderful, but for me, I loved feeling like I knew my neighbors and schoolmates and what they expected of me.

      You see, I discovered over time that each community had different unspoken rules and expectations, both in school and on the playground. I always felt a little out of place and a bit off-balance until I could understand what they measured as important. I don’t know if my sister and my brother noticed that also, but I needed to feel accepted. I needed to know how to be liked and maybe even popular! It was clearly up to me to find clues to any specialness within me because no one else seemed to recognize it! I laugh when I think of that. I was definitely not uppity and proud, yet I felt like I had some secret inside me to unveil. But what was it? For one thing, I needed to know right from wrong. But everyone seemed to see things differently. Maybe there was no right and wrong! Or maybe my ideas came from all the books I loved to read. Or maybe from something or someone above me. Hmm.

      My mom took us to church and Sunday school pretty regularly, and I remember the fun of getting new hats and coats and gloves each Easter Sunday. But my dad didn’t go with us, and we didn’t talk much at home about the Bible, God, or church. Just a pleasant ritual, I guess.

      After spending my fifth through ninth grades in Hawaii, we moved to Virginia to start my tenth. This would be my sister’s last year of high school in a totally new environment, and she did fine. My brother started fifth grade there in McLean.

      First day of school, we discovered that teens were really big on wearing the right brand of clothes—collegiate V-neck sweaters, Bass Weejun penny loafers on your feet, and a certain brand of blouses and skirts! We came home from that first day in a new high school feeling like hick farm girls. Mom, help, what are these name brands, where do you buy them, and can we afford some? My mom asked around and found a discount store where some of those brands were available. Not the Military Exchange, where we were used to buying all our clothes.

      Next, we needed to find a church, one with a youth group. We started attending a nearby Presbyterian Church where the pastor wanted all the youth to come to a class he held to learn foundations of the faith. I realized that I had never truly read the Bible before except in Bible stories taught in Sunday school.

      The pastor taught us some church doctrine, some membership expectations, and then he wanted to convince us the Bible could be believed because most of its miracles had logical, scientific explanations. Moses parted the Red Sea during a season of heavy winds; Jesus walked on water as a mirage seen by weary disciples.

      Doesn’t that make it easier to believe when you understand that? he stated. No! I want them to be true! I yelled inside my head. I kept silent, of course. But I walked out of that class that night shaking my head disappointedly and thinking, He doesn’t even believe the Bible himself. If miracles aren’t real, is God real!

      My personal prayer became, God, if you are real, you’ll have to show me. Because unless you prove it to me, I’ll no longer believe you exist, and I’ll live like you don’t! With that mindset, I headed off to college soon afterward.

      What a major moment in my life. I never said anything to anyone about it, but I felt a shift in my heart away from my parents’ value system of "black-and-white / right-and-wrong absolutes. I felt less optimistic about life and the world and less secure with no sure foundation.

      To put this in perspective, my high school years happened in the late 1960s when our nation was engaged in a long war in Vietnam. Boys in my graduating class enlisted or faced being drafted directly into the army and war; protests and uprisings appeared almost nightly in the news. The planet seemed to be shifting off-balance.

      Just a couple of years later, in college, I walked out of a class again shaking my head and wondering what I had just heard and how to apply it. This time, it occurred in my college English class. First semester of school at the University of Delaware in an American literature class, I heard the professor say, Many authors were influenced by Sigmund Freud and his theories that an Oedipus complex, maternal infatuations, and obsessions with male and female sexual body parts were woven into a whole era of American literature. And we are going to find those references in everything we read this semester!

      What! I froze, totally mortified. My purity remained intact, and I never wanted to discuss such subjects publicly! Yet by the end of the semester, I became convinced that I was the only virgin in the class and wondered if I needed to correct that abnormality as soon as possible! How sad. Even now, I shake my head and wondered how that professor dared to conduct his class that way.

      But I survived and had many enjoyable and mentally challenging classes. I found I loved the philosophical discussions the most,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1