Rolla mother’s book traces path of redemption

There’s a really big picture that I don’t think most of us are aware of, but we all play a part in it.”

Faith-Ann Dalton, author

Faith-Ann Dalton was convinced that she could never be a good mother.

Her newly released memoir, In This House We Lived: A Faith Journey of Choosing Life Again and Again, is about how God keeps proving her wrong.

“My subject is choosing life for my baby, and the help I got along the way,” said Mrs. Dalton, a member of St. Patrick Parish in Rolla.

Her book also recounts the things that brought her to become an abortion-minded client of the Pregnancy Resource Center (PRC) of Rolla.

“Little girls don’t grow up dreaming of having an abortion one day,” she noted. “A lot of things have to go wrong for you to be in a desperate-enough situation to consider an abortion.

“I hope my story reveals some of the things that can go wrong for women,” she said. “And things that can go right for women.”

Mrs. Dalton describes herself as a “wife, mother, cosmetologist, instructor and author, passionate about generational healing, honest storytelling and helping women rebuild their lives with courage and charity.”

She is a daughter-in-law of Joe and Jane Dalton, CEO and executive director of the PRC of Rolla.

Her story of accepting the life of her son, learning to thrive physically, spiritually and emotionally, finding a loving husband, becoming Catholic and sharing her joy among some of the nation’s most powerful people has been widely told, including in the Knights of Columbus’s international magazine, Columbia.

Her book reveals more about the stories behind those stories.

Nine years ago, Mrs. Dalton and the man she was engaged to became pregnant.

She was cautiously optimistic about embarking on motherhood, but then her world started tumbling down around her.

“Between her collapsing relationship with her fiancé, turbulence with her dysfunctional family, and the pressure of her mounting debt, motherhood looked more like a sentence than a gift,” the book’s publisher stated.

“But in the quiet spaces of an unexpected maternity home, the shackles of her old life began to crack open.”

In due time, that maternity home, known as Bridges, helped Mrs. Dalton prepare for motherhood and successful independence.

It’s also where she and her newborn son Noah crossed paths with Gabe Dalton, one of the sons of the home’s executive director.

What followed was a miraculous testament to healing, transformation, kept promises and the infinite goodness of the Creator of all life and truth.

“This book is for anyone who has lived through chaos, regret or survival-mode decisions,” said Mrs. Dalton, “especially young women and mothers who need hope that their story isn’t over.”

Where to begin

As an author, Mrs. Dalton wanted to show that healing is possible for people who take ownership of their situation — “and that it’s rarely a straight line.”

She started writing the book in 2021, shortly after giving birth to her second child, Mary Jane.

“I was taking care of my baby, but I felt I wasn’t being productive,” she said.

She set about doing what she does whenever she’s “in an emotional place.”

“I started writing,” she said. “This is what the next five years of writing led to.”

Her husband had been encouraging her to share her extraordinary story with a larger audience.

“We actually had that conversation on our second date,” she recalled.

He’s been tremendously supportive.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do the late nights of writing and working full-time and taking care of four children without him,” she said.

For Mrs. Dalton, writing the book was an act of gratitude for the extreme measures God has taken to reach her.

“I’m most excited to share the kind of redemption that’s real, messy, hard-earned and deeply human, and the ways God met me in places I never expected,” she said.

This includes the process of forgiving the people in her life who, for whatever reason, hurt her or let her down.

“Forgiveness is a lot like grief,” she stated. “It comes in waves, and you have to choose to work through it every day.

“That’s my story,” she said. “Each day, I have to choose to be a mother — an intentional mother — and that includes forgiving myself every day, along with those I love and even those I don’t love.”

She still makes mistakes, but she now sees every day as an intentional “yes” to being a wife, being a mother and being alive.

“And God fills in the gaps,” she said.

No place like home

A fellow author once told Mrs. Dalton: “An artist never finishes their work. They just abandon it.”

Mrs. Dalton wound up producing six drafts of her book before agreeing to let it go.

“I had to decide what was most important for my goal with this book, which was to share a pro-life story, encourage moms who are going through a difficult time, and convince people to support pregnancy resource centers,” she said.

She also wanted her readers to see that people “can have a really hard back story and come from nothing, and still turn it all around.”

And she wanted to help people understand that women who consider having an abortion are not evil.

“They’ve just been sold a lie that abortion is liberating and will solve all their problems,” said Mrs. Dalton. “Of course, that’s the farthest thing from the truth.”

Over time, writing In This House, We Lived became a lesson in trust for Mrs. Dalton.

“My writing process was not exactly routine,” she noted. “But whenever I did sit down to write, I’d say, ‘God, I’m here, and you’re here, and what would you have me write today?’ and just go from there.”

The book’s title was inspired by decorative signs that people hang up in their homes, that begin with, “In this house, we... .”

“In this house, we live!” she proclaimed. “And in the maternity home, we lived. And wherever we live, we’re not just living but also choosing to live, to make life-affirming choices every day.

“That’s the story of the houses I’ve lived in and the life I’ve chosen,” she said. “That all started in the maternity home.”

After researching the best ways to get her book into people’s hands, Mrs. Dalton happened upon a local story about a book that had been published by Anointed Colony Media, a small Christian publishing house based in Greeley, Colorado.

She contacted C. Jonah Abbott, Anointed Colony Media’s founder and editor, and it turned out to be a perfect fit.

“He’s been enormously helpful and encouraging,” Mrs. Dalton said.

She acknowledged that parts of her story are raw.

“I did omit some of the more colorful parts of my life that didn’t need to be out there,” she said. “But I did leave a few things in just as a heads-up.”

Those details help illustrate why she and many of the people in her life thought she was not fit for motherhood.

“But God sure sees things differently,” she said. “Remember, Jesus sat with sinners and ate with them.”

Up to God

Mrs. Dalton sold 50 advance copies at the PRC of Rolla’s Banquet for Life in March.

The book cracked the top 200 on the best-selling Inspirational Christian book list the first week after its official release on May 8.

Now, it’s out of her hands.

“I did my part and am still doing my part with marketing and believing in it,” she said. “It’s up to God to do the rest. If he wants my story out there, he’ll get it out there.”

The book is already making a difference in ways the author didn’t anticipate.

“The people who have bought it and read it have been deeply impacted by it,” she said.

One reader wrote to tell her that she’s using the book for homeschooling her children, as part of a theology curriculum that includes the Theology of the Body and the sanctity of human life.

“I never expected in a million years that things like that would happen, but I’m so blessed that they are,” said Mrs. Dalton.

Home team

As a mother, Mrs. Dalton is trying to instill a permanent sense of community among all of her children, much like her husband and his parents experienced in large families while they were growing up.

“They’re all there for each other,” said Mrs. Dalton. “I want that for my children. I want them to have a lot of siblings. The more the merrier! You can’t have too many on your team.”

She’s convinced that there’s genuine interest in how God accomplishes extraordinary things in ordinary life.

“The bland, the mundane, the everyday, that’s what makes up most of the human experience,” she said.

“There’s a really big picture that I don’t think most of us are aware of, but we all play a part in it,” she stated.

“God loves us so much that he created this big, huge, beautiful universe that has so much for us to explore and discover, and all of it reveals his love for us,” she said.

“If we just slow down and think about it, we recognize that it’s all truly a miracle.”

In This House We Lived is available in print and ebook editions for $19.99 from Amazon.com and other outlets.

The first chapter, along with Mrs. Dalton’s email newsletter, is available by visiting faithanndalton.com.