Bending Angels: Living Messengers of God’s Love

Inspiration for Cover

The title and beautiful cover of the book come from the painting, Bending Angel, by Texas State Artist of the Year Charles Schorre. This painting, which inspired Jack’s powerful memoir, hangs on the wall in his bedroom and in his heart. Jack writes,

“With the creative gifts God bestowed upon Charles, he brushed her into existence with the mediums of water color and acrylic. To find her way into my bedroom, she made her own miraculous biblical journey through a flood in Charles’ home. Then she was placed in a simple frame. Her image seems to leap off the paper into my daily life.”

Bending Angels: Living Messengers of God’s Love (Carpenter’s Son Publishing, 2016) tells the story of Jack H. Emmott’s journey from a child stricken with polio, to an over-achieving adult. As a six-year old boy in August of 1954, Jack’s life was full of hope and promise. For Jack and for his family the disaster which was about to happen was not the flooding of his home and his neighborhood, Emmottville. Rather, it was Jack ingesting the silent, unseen fecal polio virus as he walked to get the mail with PawPaw, his grandfather, on a shell road flooded by White Oak Bayou waters.

Polio changed Jack’s life and that of his family forever. Today, Jack is married to the love of his life, Dorothy, is a father of a daughter and son, a grandfather of four, a successful collaborative family law attorney, mediator, inspirational speaker, entrepreneur, song writer and author who navigates his busy life from a motorized wheelchair.

Each chapter relates the story of a Bending Angel—from Brownie, the pup, to Mr. Ochoa, the baseball coach, who understood how much of a heart it takes to win, and how much of a soul it takes to lose your most precious dream.

Bending Angels: Living Messengers of God’s Love will inspire and uplift you in times of loss, darkness or ill health. Jack, a life-long Christian, shares his spiritual wisdom and light-filled life lessons learned from thirteen angels who touched his vulnerable young heart after the onset of polio.

Jack believes that every Christian soul needs to be part of slow living and mindful loving for Christ. To take time each day to pray, to count and be thankful for God’s blessings, to be ever watchful for the Holy messengers the Lord purposely places in your path and to consider that you may be an instrument, an angel, to another person for a divine purpose. Jack says, “We have a duty to our Creator to act on the opportunities granted to us to be and become messengers of God’s love to others. As I have received, so I always strive to be an angel to others.”