"The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom" By Henri Nouwen

  This has been a really slow reading month for me, which kind of came as a surprise considering I thought I would find plenty of time to read while recovering from surgery. But, as it turns out, major surgery takes a lot out of you and being on medication makes it hard for me personally to concentrate for long periods of time.  So it actually ended up being a pretty great thing that I picked up Henri Nouwen's book, "The Inner Voice of Love" at the beginning of the month, to carry me through the past several weeks!

  Now to be honest, when purchasing this book, I flipped through it and thought I'd finish it in a day; two days tops.  However as I began reading the introduction the author explained that this isn't that type of book.  Sure it's possible to read it in a few hours, but it's suppose to be more of a meditation type thing, a devotional, that you read little by little and soak in over an extended period of time!  That ended up fitting perfectly for me.

  Now, I originally heard of Nouwen 13 or so years ago when I was living in California doing a missions program in the inner-city.  I really hadn't thought about him much since then, until the beginning of this month when Jamie Torkowski (the founder of To Write Love On Her Arms.... whom I follow on instagram and twitter) kept posting quotes from another one of Henri's books and my pastor had mentioned him to me.  Not being one to turn down a suggestion, I checked him out again and while I must admit, sometimes I got lost in the sage of advice of it all, I could connect with a lot of what he writes and the story behind his writing (this book in particular was taken from his own journal entries that he wrote for/to himself during a really dark period of his life).

  While there were many quotes that stood out to me throughout my weeks of reading, there where two thoughts in particular that stuck out to me and that I continue to meditate on today....possibly because they fit together in many ways.  First, he writes, "When you really believe that you are loved by God, you can allow your friends the freedom to respond to your love in their way.  They have their own histories, their own characters, their own way of receiving lobe.  They may be slower, more hesitant or more cautious than you.  They may want to be with you in ways that are real and authentic for them but unusual for you.  Trust that those who love you want to show you their love in a real way, even when their choices of time, place and form are different from yours".  I needed to hear that, especially at a time when I have needed to rely on other people, ask them for help, have them come to me, and accept whatever of "themselves" they were willing to give.  To be honest, I often have a tendency to want to be more of a doer in my relationships.  I think I must do for you in order for us to be friends and that if I don't our relationship won't last.  Because of that I tend to not really focus on what others are doing for me, and sadly, in the moments I do focus on what others are giving to me, I often have trouble accepting it as is.  I, as many of us, like to be loved in certain ways and I expect people to see those ways and give me what I want/need as I want/need it.  But life's not like that...and it's helped a lot to truly meditate on this passage and allow it to teach me to begin to accept not only God's love but the love of those around me in whatever random ways they are able to show it.

  The other quote Henri shares that has definitely stuck out to me is that "No one person can fufill all your needs. But the community can truly hold you.  The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God's faithfulness".  I have only just begun to experience my first true sense of real community in the past few months through a life group I joined at my friends house.  It's amazing and scary, fun and embarrassing, open and vulnerable in more ways then I can even begin to explain to myself, yet it's also exactly what this quote suggests.... the human hands of God linked together to hold and to show God's faithfulness.  I am lucky to have this group. And I am also lucky to have other things in my life, like ...my friends, my family, my church.  For me, over the last few months in particular, church has been a hard place for me.  I have been dealing with so much and in so many ways I don't want to disappoint any of the people I care so desperately about there, that it's almost been easier to stay away and not let them see my struggle.  But I guess I am realizing that this isn't what God calls us to.  The church, His body, is His hands and feet and while yes, individually we will all disappoint and hurt each other, as a whole we can and do hold each other and carry each other to Jesus.  Instead of shying away when things get hard, I need to trust the God in the people of the Church will be there even when things aren't so pretty.

  So, while I guess this isn't much of a book review as it is a personal sharing, I would recommend this book and I would also suggest that you take the author seriously in reading it little by little, letting each thought and phrase soak into you and begin to change your heart.

"The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennan Manning

  "If Jesus appeared at your dining room table tonight with knowledge of everything you are and are not, total comprehension of your life story and every skeleton hidden in your closet; If He laid out the real state of your present discipleship with the hidden agendas, the mixed motives and the dark desires buried in your psyche, would you feel his acceptance and forgiveness?". Could you imagine... Jesus sitting there at the head of the table... looking straight at you.  Would you feel his love?  Would you sense His acceptance?  Or would you cower in fear?

  As Brennan Manning says in his decades old book The Ragamuffin Gospel, "sooner or later we are all confronted with the painful truth of our inadequacy and insufficiency.  Our security is shattered and our bootstraps are cut.  Once the  fervor has passed, weakness and infidelity appear.  (And) we discover our inability to add even a single inch to our spiritual stature".  And it's in those moments...when we seemingly hit our spiritual rock bottom... that we hopefully encounter God and in turn can say along with Manning, "my deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it".

  Maybe it's just my misinterpretation of the world, but it seems to me in our day and age there is this sense that if I believe God exists, I'm good.  There is nothing more to it.  There's no life change... no moment of realization of the amazing grace of God.  We just have this head knowledge of some big guy in the sky whose watching over us, but it has no real meaning for our day to day lives... there's no hope, no freedom, no gratitude or sense of rejoicing.  Manning explains how "in earlier times it did not take faith to believe that God existed... almost everybody took that for granted.  Rather, faith had to do with one's relationship to God... whether one trusted in God.  The difference between faith as belief in something that may or may not exist and faith as trusting in God is enormous.  The first is a matter of the head, the second a matter of the heart.  The first can leave us unchanged, the second intrinsically brings change".

  I think it's that moment "When we accept ownership of our powerlessness and helplessness, when we acknowledge that we are paupers at the door of God's mercy, (that) God can make something beautiful out of us".  That's when God moves from something out there, to the center of our lives.  We so badly...or maybe I should just speak for myself and admit that I so badly... want to feel like I am in control and like I can do good and make myself acceptable to God.  I try to cover up and hide my faults and wrong doings and perform for God.  But even the Bible says that "We are all like one who is unclean, all our so-called righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in God's sight" (Isaiah 64:6).

  It's the moment though when you recognize the truth of that verse, but then allow "the focus of your life (to) shift from your badness to His goodness and the question to become not what have I done, but what can He do, (that) release from remorse can happen;  (and) miracle of miracles, you can forgive yourself because you are forgiven, accept yourself because you are accepted and begin to start building up the very places you once tore down".   It's the moment when true faith comes into being. As Manning says, "Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have not only been forgiven, but forgotten".

  I am not making much sense am I? And I am in no way doing this book justice.  Brennan talks so honestly and eloquently in his book about grace and what God truly accomplished on the cross, and none of this even begins to touch the surface on that. 

  For me, I needed to read this book again to be reminded of hard truths like "if in our hearts we really don't believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross". But also I needed to hear comforting knowledge that "it is this risk ....to bring the truth of ourselves just as we are, to God just as He is, ... is the most dignified thing we can do in life" and that "we may not be the kind of people we want to be, we may be a long way from our goals, we may have more failures than achievements, we may not be wealthy or powerful or spiritual, we may not even be happy, but we are nonetheless accepted by God (and) held in His Hands".   And maybe you need to hear that too. 

  Maybe you, like me need to read and re-read this book until it makes sense an engrains itself into your heart.  Because ultimately the Ragamuffin Gospel is the Gospel of God... the story of His grace... and that's the only thing we can truly place our hope in! So, don't let my rambling and lack on congruency distract you.  Take the time, read Brennan's words for yourself and allow God to speak to you through them!

"One Thousand Gifts: a Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are" by Ann Voskamp

  "Sometimes you don't know when you're taking the first step through a door until you're already inside", that's what Ann Voskamp says in one of the opening chapters of her book One Thousand Gifts.  To be honest, in some ways my own life feels like a series of stepping into new doors and new rooms that I've never knew existed, or was to afraid to peer inside because of who or what I thought it would make me, not realizing in the moment I was even doing so.  Lately, I've been a little less afraid... or rather a little braver in the midst of my fears.  For the first time ever I find myself realizing that maybe the way I've looked at the world has been wrong.  Maybe the reason why I think things are a certain way, isn't because they are that way, but because I've blinded myself to the truth... afraid of what that truth might be.  This kind of living though, has come at a cost.  Over the years I've become quite pessimistic.  I always see how things can/will go wrong.  I dwell on the brokenness and the hurt of myself, others and the world around me.  I question everything... even God.  But I'm silent about it all... keeping all those things wrapped up tightly in the caves of my heart.  I don't want anyone to know, anyone to see.  But maybe... just maybe... I am the one who needs to have her eyes opened... and maybe in the opening of my eyes I will release me grip and become more real with myself and the world around me.

  I think Ann Voskamp does a great job of showcasing how to do just that in this book.  Sewn throughout the chapters and pages you can see her very person journey not only from depression to joy and ingratitude to gratitude, but also from hidden doubt to firmly planted faith.  She asks in the very beginning of the book, "Can there be a good God? A God who graces with good gifts when a crib lies empty through long nights, and bugs burrow through coffins?  Where is God really?  How can He be good when babies die, and marriages implode, and dreams blow away, dust in the wind?  Where is grace bestowed when cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly die off without reason, erode away?  Where hides this joy of the Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I fully live when life is full of hurt?  How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all the empties me out?".  We've all been there haven't we?  At least I have... in the dark quiet nights of loneliness or the pain of suffering loss.  We sit there in these moments and we wonder, "where is God? Does He even care?" and if we are lucky, if we listen closely enough, we might actually hear His answer....or we might not.

  It's in these moments of not that we start to doubt...walking ever so slightly away from faith.  But, as Voskamp says, "Perhaps the opposite of faith is not doubt.  Perhaps the opposite of faith is fear.  To lack faith perhaps isn't so much as intellectual disbelief in the existence of God as fear and distrust that there is a GOOD God".  She follows that up with the idea that maybe "that which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond.  To Him.  To God whom we endlessly crave".  What a thought...albeit not new... to think that maybe the brokenness of our lives are the cracks not only through which God can shine through us, but also through which we can see Him!  Maybe it's like Ann says, "When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows".  I want to see life grow in me again, don't you?!

  This whole book is the story of Ann Voskamp's dead things coming back to life... of her finding God in the midst of looking for His blessings.  After writing down, day after day, week after week, month after month, a list of over 1000 ways God has shown His love and blessing and love towards her... His gifts".. she reflects that "the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is", advice that we all need to hear, because it's so easy to close up and shut down in those moments when He seems most absent.  But as Ann learns in all her listing and her noticing of God in the mundane and holy moments of life, "Nothing I am counts for anything, but all that I count of Him counts for everything"!.  She says,  "While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things, because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving" and that "it's impossible to give thanks and simultaneously feel fear".  I have so much to learn!  And yet maybe this... the seeing and giving thanks for the blessing that Voskamp talks about again and again in her book... actually is the key.  Maybe in doing so we discover, as she did, that the answer to the question can God be trusted is found only when we take the time to "count blessing and find out how many of His bridges have already held".  I guess it's time to start my own gift list!  How about you?

"Coming Clean: A Story of Faith" by Seth Haines

  "Be honest: in moments of clarity, of stone cold sobriety, do you ask how a good God could allow so much pain?  Do you wonder whether Jesus is a figment of your imagination, whether God is real?...do you love and do you forgive yourself the way God loves and forgives you?  Do you wonder whether God will ever speak again, and whether He ever spoke in the first place?  Do you wonder whether it's just your noggin talking to you?  Do you wonder whether God likes you?  Do you hear your accusers casting aspersions, telling you that you're unloved, unworthy, a thing to be discarded?"  These are the words tucked away in the second to the last entry of Seth Haines new book "Coming Clean".  It seems only appropriate that they would be hidden in the last few pages of a two-hundred some odd page book.  Not that the author is trying to hide anything...in fact he's insanely honest and vulnerable from the very first line, of the first entry, on the first day... but rather, it's ironic that it resembles the human heart... particularly the heart of this follower of Jesus.  These are the types of questions that I keep tucked away deep in the recesses of my brain.  These are the types of questions and wonderments that I have sometimes, but that I don't want anyone to know... because these aren't the questions of the super-powerful, awe-inspiring Christian....or are they?!  Maybe these are actually the types of questions that when faced, lead us to the deepest truths of our faith!

  Anyway, I think there's something about pure honesty that really draws people in.  When someone takes off their mask, stops pretending, and is just real...even when it might not be acceptable, even when it might not be understood, even when it may cost them something... it captivates us (or at least me).  Probably because it's so rare!  But this is exactly what it was like reading this book.  There were no false pretenses, no sense of trying to please the crowd and say/do what's right.  It's just a man sharing his struggle, his pain, and his journey back to God...and it is POWERFUL!

  Seth Haines is a man, a husband and a father...he's also a Christian, a true follower of Jesus, just trying to figure it all out.  The story written in the pages of his book are wrapped around the two flagpoles of his youngest son's illness and his own struggle with alcohol... but there's so much more in-between, basically a whole lifetime.  Haines states in the beginning of the book, "If faith starts as a mustard seed, maybe doubt does too" and throughout these pages he learns where those doubts of faith began in his life and how to begin to overcome them. 

  There's a culminating incident that leads him to make the decision to stop drinking (what that actually is, I will leave up to your reading pleasure to find out) but reading the story I felt myself cringing for him, because had it been me I would have been so embarrassed.. I would have felt like I had lost all control and respect and wouldn't want to show my face again.  But he doesn't do that.  Instead it becomes his opportunity, his moment of change.  So even though, as he appropriately mentions, "our ghosts always seem to surface at the most inopportune times", maybe that's exactly what we need... to be thrown off balance at the worst possible moment to get us to the place of reaching for the help we need.

  As Seth begins to walk into and through his own pain, he shares some of the most insightful things I have heard on the topic... and maybe it's just because here's a man not just spewing advice at something he's not even affected by, but rather he's talking from his very own walk.  He says, "If pain took an organized, namable, tangible, physical shape it'd be an easy thing to put to death.  It turns out, though, that to beat the shame out of you, you have to give the pain in your life contours".  Basically you have to give shape to it... you have to figure out what it is.  Then he follows that up with the comforting truth he received from his therapist, that "if you deal with the pain, you won't need the numbness"... which is the straight up honesty we all need to hear whether we go looking for comfort in alcohol, like the author, or food, power/success, men/women, etc. (something the author points back to many times throughout the book).

  He even admits, "I am a Christian who has used systems and liquor to numb the pain that God might not answer my prayers, that he might not heal, that ultimately, he might not be present in my life.  The pain is evidence of this idea of non-conformity, I have used these vices to kill the pain". Then he ever so inspiringly connects this pain to the story of Jesus in the garden of gethsemane and meditates on the idea that, "to ask for relief from God... this is human.  To pray through the pain, to live in it instead of numbing yourself to it, to subjugate your will to the will of God, even in the face of potential suffering.. this is what it means to be like Jesus.  This is what it means to yield to the mystery".  Again, these aren't words of a pastor trying to convince a congregation, these aren't words of salesman trying to make a few bucks, these are the words of a man in the midst of the muck and the mire, crying out to a God he's not even sure cares to listen, and finding that God is closer than he ever imagined.  And maybe that's what makes his thoughts that much more meaningful.

  I am not one to be so open with my struggles.  It's very hard for me to open up with even the closest of my friends, when it comes to the deep down, nitty gritty, messes of my heart.  Yet in reading Haines story I was convicted by the idea that maybe it really does "take a village to break through to freedom". And I was reminded of a conversation I recently had with a friend where she said, "Maybe in being honest with your struggles and with who you are some people will walk away from your life and reject you for it, but those who stay, the ones that really matter, will get to know the real you and be able to love you in a more deeper, intimate way".  Maybe this is why God places us in community... so we can share our stories and our struggles with one another, and that maybe in sharing what we've learned in them we can help one another through this  journey of life (and maybe that's exactly why the devil works so hard to convince us me need our masks).

  Seth Haines book is more than just words written on a page.  It's life, and hope, and a hand reaching out to you in the darkness saying, "I know, I've been there, let me show you the way" and I am more than grateful that he put it out there for all of us to read (even if this is only the beginning of your journey)!  Thank you Mr. Haines for your honesty... for being real... and for showing that in even in our darkest moments, we are never to far beyond the reach of God!

"Jesus > Religion: Why He is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, Doing More and Being Good Enough" by Jefferson Bethke

  Jefferson Bethke broke out on my scene several years ago now, when I and about 23 million other people watched his YouTube video "Why I hate Religion, but Love Jesus" (you can watch it here ).  I remember watching that video and just thinking, "Wow, this kid gets it!".  He was speaking truth, hard truths that we religious folk don't often like to hear and amazing truths that those who have been hurt by the church need to listen to.  It's the truth behind that statement, "It's a relationship not a religion" and it was something I needed to hear then and I still need to hear now.

  I remember also, when this book came out.  I was still working at a chain bookstore and I remember seeing it and thinking, I need to read that.  But I didn't... at least not in the moment.  Instead I recommended it to several people.  I purchased copies and gave them away.  I even put it on a "to-read" wish-list, even though it took me until now to actually read it.  I guess what I knew then and can attest to now, is that the book would be full of the same kind of truths as the YouTube video (after all one is based on the other) and those truths are things we all need to hear... again and again.

  I think Jefferson does a good job of pointing out or at least putting his finger on things we in the church really need to think about... and not just think, but allow what we discover from it, to change us...or in more religious terms, to allow God to change us through it.  He says, "No wonder the world hates us (meaning Christians).  Most of the time we're persecuted not because we love Jesus, but because we're prideful, arrogant, jerks who don't love the real Jesus.  We're often judgmental, Hypocritical and Legalistic while claiming to follow a Jesus who is forgiving, authentic and loving".  It hurts to hear, but it's true.... this in many ways, is how we act.

  He also talks about how, "In a postmodern world where all religious activity is seen as what we do for God, we need to proclaim that Christianity is about what God has done for us.  This would take people's focus off their behavior and put it on Jesus".  Again, truth!  Think about it.  How many of us get so completely shocked and turned off to the gospel when yet again another Christian in leadership "falls from grace" (if that's even possible....maybe they actually fall into grace!).  If those leaders were just honest all along, if they admitted where they struggled and where they see pitfalls in their own faith journey, would we even be astonished when one of those issues tripped them up.  Maybe instead we would take our leaders of their pedal stools and realize that we're all in the together...on the same playing field.

  I like also how Jefferson turns this all around and addresses the flip side as well.  He suggests that, "the minute you think you've gotten on God's good side by your own behavior, you are naturally prone to demonize those who haven't" and opens the readers eyes up to the fact that "no one is more religious than the Christian who gives grace to everyone except the religious older-brother types" (relating to the story of the prodigal son, whose older brother whose always done everything right, comes home from working in the fields to find his father is throwing a party for his wayward brother who has returned.. a brother who has squandered his entire inheritance.  The older brother is angry and refuses to come in to the party).  Following that up with the realization that "the biggest difference between religious people and gospel-loving people is that religious people see certain people as the enemy, when Jesus followers see sin as the enemy".

Then he finished up with idea that "the paradox of the scriptures is that it calls us way more sinful than we think we are, and it calls us way more loved than we think we are".  And addresses how "there is no security in being an employee.  The contract can be breached.  When you're an employee and something goes wrong you can be fired.  But when you are a child who is having a season of struggle and waywardness, parents become more intimately involved in your life" and that's what Jesus did for us. Jesus came to us. Jesus comes to us.  And as the author states, "the most dangerous thing about the human heart is that we want to reverse the roles by making God the responder and us the initiators".  But God is love and "that's what love is... it stays, it pursues, it pushes in.  And that's why Jesus is > than religion.

"Have a Little Faith: A True Story" by Mitch Albom

  Growing up I didn't do a whole lot of exploring of other faiths.  Actually, to be completely honest, I had some weird belief that even in talking to someone of a different faith I would somehow be forced to "convert" and lose my spot in heaven (crazy!  I know!).  However, over the years, especially over recent years, I've come to enjoy learning about other religions and why people believe what they do.  I don't spend my time trying to defend what I believe or convince others that what they believe is wrong.  Instead I listen and I share and I let God do the rest.  It's not up to us to "save" anyone anyway... I'm pretty sure God accomplished that on the cross (and it's really His work in our hearts that truly leads any of us to Him, we are just helpers along the way). 

  Anyway, I picked up "Have a Little Faith" at the library the other week and started reading it mostly because I remember enjoying "Tuesday's with Morrie" and I thought, "same author, same type of writing style, I'll probably like it" and I did.  In reality I enjoyed the interaction between Mitch and the "Reb" way more than the story of Henry, but I saw value in them both... even though they only really intersected in one way in my mind.

  From the Reb, I think I was reminded that we aren't called to judge, we are just called to love (I've proven time and time again that I am a horrible judge, yet I still catch myself assuming I have the right to do so and that my judgments are always correct, even though they aren't).  Through out the book the Reb is shown as this man of faith who is completely confident in what he believes and isn't afraid of the hard questions.  He is loving and compassionate and everything a good "Christian" should be, even though He's a Jewish Rabbi (To think how much we miss out on my shunning people of other religions). 

  Then There is Henry, this former drug dealer/user and convict who gave his life to Jesus and turned into a pastor.  You can sense the skepticism of the author as he first meets Henry and I guess that's really why the story of their relationship and interaction truly shows that you can't judge a book by a cover.  While I am not sure I completely agree with everything Henry believes... he talks a bit about how he's not sure he's given enough "payback" for all the wrong he's done in his life for God to let him into heaven... In his story I see the truly redemptive work of God and the proof that nobody is ever too far gone for God to reach!

  I'm glad I found this book, and this author, again.  I'm glad that I have become open enough to realize that a Jewish Rabbi can teach me just as much about the God I serve and how to truly walk out my faith, than my Christian friends and pastors.  It's a simple read... more story then in depth commentary of faith, but still totally worth the time it take to read.  So whether your Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Agnostic, ect.  I would say give "Have a Little Faith" a try... it might surprise you what you take away!

"Monkey Mind: A Memior of Anxiety" by Daniel Smith

  This was another book that took me a really long time to get through...even though it's not very long.  A friend of mine recommended it to me, saying that it had helped him to not feel so alone in his struggles with anxiety.  In fact, reading the "episodes" of the author helped him to see himself in new light, which in turn helped him to seek help.  That's great for my friend.  For me, I didn't have the same reaction.

  Even though I read the entire book, I couldn't really enjoy the story when it seemed so much of it flowed out of sex or sexual circumstances.  Not only that, but the book seemed to flow in a way that shared all the issues (or most of them) but not really how they resolved... just that they did (His therapist helped with that by giving him tools to overcome, but what those tools are, how they helped, that wasn't really explored).  Maybe that wasn't meant to be the point of the book, maybe instead it was suppose to just be a lament of how things had been and other books are about how they got better, but the simplistic overturn of once I struggled, then I didn't, kind of turned me off.

  So why continue reading a book that I didn't really enjoy?  Partly it's my personality... I like to finish what I start, plus I had promised a friend I would check it out so I needed to give it a fair shake.  But, to be honest, it was also because it wasn't all bad.  There actually were parts I could relate to and moments that made me laugh, like when he proved he could get from diagnosing himself with anxiety to dying disgraced and alone in just eight steps in his mind or how he used feminine period pads to try and cover up his sweat stains/ sweat issue as an adult.  In that sense I found the book enjoyable.  I just wish there was more of that and less of the drug and sex content (although I get that's an important part of the story).  I also wish that the author would have written in a way that made you feel like he was inviting you into his story and not just proving how smart and awesome he could be with his words (which is totally judgmental on my part, but sometimes his choice of words took away from what he was trying to say...at least for me).

  Anyway, as if you couldn't tell, I probably wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.  I'm not even sure outside of this blog that I would mention to anyone I read it.  I am glad it helped my friend and spoke to him...which proves it does have it's audience... but it didn't really do anything for me and I'm actually pretty glad it's over with.

"Stronger" by Jeff Bauman (with Bret Witter)

  There are certain days in every persons life that stand out on a national or global scale.  For my parent's generation is was things like D-day and the shooting of JFK.  For my generation (or at least in my case) it's September 11th, the Sandy Hook shooting and the Boston Marathon Bombing.  I can tell you where I was and what I was doing when each of those things happened.  I can tell you who broke the news to me and all the feelings that went through my body as I listened to reports.  I wasn't even "there" (like in the situation) for any of those moments, yet I carry them with me.  How much more those who were there.

  To be honest, this wasn't exactly my next book of the year.  I actually started another book, which was quite interesting but might of been one of those bite off more than you can chew books for me, and I probably wouldn't have finished it for months.  So when reading that book turned more into homework than enjoyment, I returned it to the library and just started skimming the shelves.  I had a list with me (I always have a list), but this book... Stronger... wasn't on my list. I saw the title out of the corner of my eye and once I looked at the cover I immediately knew what it was about.  I hadn't intended to check it out, but a few pages in I was hooked...not just cause of the story or the writer, but more so because of his writing style. 

  I don't know Jeff Bauman as the celebrity that many other people do.  I didn't recognize his name, although I did recognize him by the photo I saw in the book (and in the newspapers at the time of the bombing), but beyond that I knew nothing of him.  In fact, it wasn't until about halfway through reading his story that I googled his name and realized there was a whole world of people out there who had all sorts of opinions of this guy and who he is or might be (think conspiracy theorist).  People are entitled to their own thoughts and opinions, but for me, reading this book, I have nothing but respect for this man.  I can't even imagine what he's been through... even after watching it on TV and reading his thoughts.  Then being able to put it all on paper and to connect with people in writing it...balancing the reality of what happened with your own thoughts and feelings, while still recovering from it all (if you can ever fully recover from such a thing).  He's right, He is strong!

  The story in the book talks about the day of the bombing (and a little before), the aftermath, the recovery and the "new normal" Bauman now faces.  There's such a good balance of showing both the good moments and the bad moments of the journey.  Jeff doesn't make himself out to be this perfect saint who just passed through it all with ease and flying colors...perfect A's all the way.  Sure he shares highlights of getting visits from celebrities and moments he was a symbol of inspiration to people, but he also shares about the hard times and the pain and the frustration of it all.  He tells about fights he had and things he said and did wrong.  He writes about his feelings and even how hard it is for him talk about those feeling or even think about that day (ironically since that's what the book is about).  I applaud him for putting it all out there, for not shying away and for not letting anyone take away from HIS story (naysayers, media or even terrorists).

  I will say that for me, the hero of the story isn't just Bauman.... actually pretty much everyone in the story is a hero in someway... but for me, it was actually his girlfriend who stood out to me the most.  What a firm foundation she is... what an inspiration.  Again, she's not made out to be perfect.... her struggles through out are very apparent... but she's there and she's strong and she doesn't let the world (or anyone in it) change their story.  This tragedy happened, but together these two people... Jeff and Erin... made their life through it.  That should be celebrated!

  Again, this isn't really one of those books that can be rated.  I can say it's a super easy read and you get sucked in pretty quickly (although maybe that's cause it happened just a few years ago), but  ultimately I think it's a story of triumph and over coming odds and seeing the good in the midst of the bad... and who doesn't want to read something like that!  But more than that, there's a spirit in this book that goes beyond just the "Boston  Strong" slogan mentioned time and time again.  It's a spirit of love and community and humanity at it's best (and worst!). I will leave you with one of my favorite things that Jeff Bauman said about the whole situation.  He said, "I'm coming out of this experience with damage.  I guess you'd call it suspicion.  I know how evil humans can be, and I'm watchful, because the bad guys are out there. But I know something else too; Bad people are rare.  But Good people are everywhere"!  Here's to the good people!

"To Heaven and Back: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Her Death, Heaven, Angels and Life Again (A True Story)" by Mary C. Neal, MD

  Several years ago an acquaintance of mine, that I have a lot of respect for, recommended this book to me.  The book had really spoken to her and captivated her by the fact that here was a DOCTOR... a real M.D. with a background in science and had every reason to be skeptical... who was talking about her experience of momentary death and visiting heaven.  For my friend, this helped confirm her belief in heaven and in God, and she wanted to share that with others.  I totally get that.

  I on the other hand was pretty skeptical.  So skeptical in fact that it's been over three years since my friend made the recommendation and it's taken me until now to crack the pages of this book.  I can't deny it's an interesting story.  Is it hard to believe visits to heaven and post-visit conversations with angels and/or Jesus himself?  Yes.  But who am I to say it can't/didn't happen.  What do I know.  Plus there are so many things in the story that seem like divine intervention (especially during the author's accident in Chile when she drowned and died... which is the focal point of the book).  It's hard not to see the hand of God or at least acknowledge the miracle of it all.

  The author talks a lot about how we can view much of life as coincidence or miracles, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson in saying that people only see what they are prepared to see. While I agree that we can choose how we view things, and as Albert Einstein said live as if nothing is a miracle or that everything is, as I read this account of near death, I tended to see both.

  I believe God divinely intervenes in our lives sometimes.  The author  shares multiple stories in this book of what seems to be His intervention in her life.  She talks about the time she and a group were stuck in mud and stranded on a deserted road in Mexico and out of the blue rescue showed up after they prayed.  She talks about a scuba diving incident where she and another man should have in many ways died, but seemingly were directed to safety by fish after turning it to God.  Then of course how when she was dying on the banks of the rapids of  a river in Chile, random strangers came to carry her out through a forest to the exact road a ambulance and her husband all happen to meet up on.  Things like that can't be explained and with a lack of explanation I tend to believe it was God.

  Yet, from my own personal experiences and stories of other peoples lives, I also know that sometimes God chooses not to intervene... case in point in this book, when the authors son was killed.  So it was in some instances hard for me to really breathe into what the author was saying about everything being God directed. On top of that, while she has been in the medical world for majority of her life, much more of her life seemed to have been bundled under the tapestry of religion and faith.  While there is nothing wrong with that and it doesn't change the details of the stories she shares, it does give her a different perspective on it all, one that I makes me wonder if it would produce the same outcome from someone who hadn't grown up under the cloak of some kind of faith.  I guess what I am trying to say is I  think I would have been more captivated by the "heaven" moments, had these things happened to someone with no understanding, no-background, no prior-propensity to believe in it.  But that's really more my issue than anything having to do with the book.

  The author states herself in the Q&A section at the back of the book that many of the things that she shares she probably would not have believed herself if they had not happened to her and that she wrote the story not for fame or for notoriety, but rather just to share her experience, which is what she feels God has called her to do...and that I think is what keeps me from tossing out this book with the many other "heaven is for real" stories that have come out (not to say that I don't believe in heaven, because as skeptical as I come across, I do).  I genuinely believe that the author isn't trying to sell anyone faith or trying to convince people of heaven.... although those things could happen... I think she's just trying to be faithful to God.  For that I would recommend this book.

"Spiritual Misfit: A Memoir of Uneasy Faith" by Michelle DeRusha

  This book took me a while to get through...not long by normal people standards, but much longer than other books normally take me... and I have such mixed feelings about it.  First of all,  I just couldn't seem to catch the flow or connect with the author has I was reading it.  I'd read a few pages, put it down, return hour later and repeat the process. But  I never seemed to hit that moment when it all clicked and I just couldn't (or didn't want to) escape from the authors world.  Yet, after I finally finished it,  as I looked back over the things I underlined or the parts that seemingly stood out to me,  I realized that there were in fact so many moments throughout the story where for at least a moment I did connect and where I felt like I could have written similar words myself. 

   I found myself clinging to the authors ideas that the beauty of faith is that "when all else fails, when you lose control and hit the bottom, when everything you thought was true vanishes, when everything you depended on evaporates, you still have God" and also that "God condones wrestling, even encourages it, because the struggle is a catalyst for transformation".

  I took comfort in her reminder that "many of the people in the Bible, including the disciples themselves, turned out to be ordinary humans... flawed, fallible, and struggling.  Yet through those ordinary people and despite their many imperfections, God accomplished great things", which is something I know (or at least have heard before), but need to be reminded of constantly.

  I stood there beside her taking in an deep breath of awe as I began once again to relax into the belief that "I (don't) need to impress God with perfect words, fully articulated thoughts and catchy phrases.  God (doesn't) need me to come to him as someone else.  He (doesn't) need me to dress up my prayers in poetry or lace them with special sacred words.  He (wants) me, the rambling, bumbling, awkward me.  the misfit me".

  And I even felt the relief oozing out of the Rilke quote towards the end of the story that said to "live in the questions now (because) perhaps you will then without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answers".  Which offers me some much needed relief at a time when I want order and understanding and seem to only be stumbling on more questions.

  How a book can offer so much connection only in retrospect makes no sense to me.  How I seemed to miss and yet still in some way grasp these nuggets of gold during my reading but really only find that true sense of encouragement from them after the fact, seems so strange.  But nonetheless those moments were there and no matter how slowly it seemed to take for them to move from my head to my heart, they did.  And thus, I am grateful to have found this story and to be able to stand, heart connected to a sister in Christ who  isn't afraid to show the good and bad, the ups and downs, the failures and successes of her faith journey.  I have so much to learn from that!