Patty LaRoche is a former Fort Scott High School teacher and a regular contributor to FortScott.Biz and other media outlets.
For the past decade, she has been writing and re-writing a Christian book: A Little Faith Lift…Erasing the Lines of the Enemy.
The book is directed toward those who doubt their worth and encourages them to take risks and was initiated while working with teens as a school teacher.
The school of life has also prompted LaRoche to write.
Married to major league baseball pitcher Dave LaRoche in 1973, Patty spent most of her adult life in the world of professional baseball where wives are subject to much of the same public scrutiny and comparison as their husbands, she said.
“My 30+ moves in 48 years of marriage have given me van loads of humorous illustrations for this ‘Rejection-Collection,'” she said.
“Using humor and candor, no doubt from teaching high school for 20 years, I share not only my spiritual journey,” she said. “One mapped by faithfulness—yet detoured by faithlessness, while also retelling many individual stories of those who have, and have not, refused to let their circumstances or others’ opinions have any power to destroy who they are in Christ.”
The humor in her book has a serious message and is written for all age groups, she noted.
“A Little Faith Lift is for everyone who doubts their worth, to help them move past the pain caused by others that has left them insecure or bitter, to teach them to accept the potential (that) humor has over rejection,” LaRoche noted. “My objective is to convince them to take risks and refuse to give anyone or anything the power to make them less than God desires, to know that He’s the C.E.O. of the ‘Beauty from Ashes’ business.”
“My intended audience is adult women, the majority of people I meet, who have memories of betrayal by teachers, coaches, family members, friends or bullies who used them as their personal punching bag,” LaRoche said. “They have a hard time understanding that hurt people hurt people, thanks to a spiritual enemy who passes out stogies any time he can manipulate their self-worth.”
“These individuals measure themselves against others who have the looks, talents, or personality traits they think they lack,” she said. “Walking into a room full of strangers produces enough sweat to frizz their hair, and if asked to spearhead the church social, they hyperventilate.”
“I taught public speaking to high schoolers for 20 years, but when a group of senior girls asked if I would lead them in a Bible study, the message became clear: if my students could recognize from Whom their value came—challenging in a public-school setting—and not from what others thought of them, their lives forever would be changed. An organizing principle of A Little Faith Lift focuses on the teens in that study,” she stated.
“Nearly one in three teens meet criteria for an anxiety disorder by age 18, and 70% of them describe anxiety as a major problem for people their age, a number exacerbated by Covid,” LaRoche said. “My counselor friends tell me that, because of the pandemic, they are overwhelmed by young adults who feel hopeless. But it’s not only our youth who are affected. Too many people go to the grave never feeling like they were valued or used the talents God gave them, all because they never bought into the truth of how precious they are to their Creator.”
When will the book be ready?
“Probably when my social media numbers impress a publisher,” she said. “Right now, I have a very respected agent who will be pitching it to different Christian publishers.”
To support LaRoche in this new venture of book publication go to her Instagram posts patty_laroche, which is called PATTY’s PITCH
PATTY’s PITCH will appear on Instagram on Mondays and Fridays.