Barbara Johnson
Librarian note: There are other authors with the same name
Barbara Johnson (1927-2007) died July 2nd, 2007 of cancer (Central Nervous System Lymphoma) after a valiant 6 year fight against the disease. During her illness, she added four more books to her long list of published works, including one that takes humorous pokes at her life with cancer. Affectionately called the “Geranium Lady,” a title taken from her bestselling book, Stick a Geranium in Your Hat and Be Happy, her homespun humor and hope in God in the midst of tragedy, ministered to millions.
A strong Christian woman who relied on her faith in God and her sense of humor to persevere through many devastating experiences, her life was plagued by a string of tragedies. Her husband was in a near fatal accident and slowly recovered from debilitating injuries. She lost one son in Vietnam and another son to a drunk driver. Her third son was estranged from the family while pursuing a homosexual lifestyle. But, she emerged from these experiences having learned that though pain is inevitable, people can choose to pick flowers instead of weeds.
Her compassion extended far beyond the pages of her encouraging books. Wanting to use her own pain to help others, she and her husband Bill founded Spatula Ministries, a unique organization that uses a “spatula of love” to help parents “peel themselves off the ceiling” and begin on the road to recovery. She wrote her first book after reaching the age of 50 and was voted “Celebrity Mom of the Year” for 1996. Prior to being diagnosed with cancer, she toured across the country as a popular conference speaker and part of the "Women of Faith" tour. Her many books have comforted millions of women, bringing them hope and humor in times of distress. She will be missed by many, but her life will live on in her numerous books.
“I've gone to look for myself. If i should return before I get back, keep me here”
“Authority seems to be nothing other than the vanishing-point of textuality. And Nature is authority whose textual origins have been forgotten.”
“Love is what makes two people sit in the middle of a bench when there is plenty of room at both ends.”
“Men are like parking spaces, the good ones are already taken and the ones left are running out of their metres”
“There s only one way to deal with misery...I say Avoid it ”
“Teaching literature is teaching how to read. How to notice things in a text that a speed-reading culture is trained to disregard, overcome, edit out, or explain away; how to read what the language is doing, not guess what the author was thinking; how to take evidence from a page, not seek a reality to substitute for it.”
“Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.”
“never let a problem to be solved become more important than the person to be loved.”
“Life is hard and then we die!”
“Cheer Up the worst is yet to come!”
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. ”
“To be in your children's memories tomorrow,You have to be in their lives today.”