Tag: Christian

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, my friend Adrienne and I biked to Nisswa last week to hear Pat Bluth speak about her book, from Pain to Peace.

Anger will eat away at your soul. It can turn to deep depression and can be emotionally debilitating. Bitterness and unforgiveness are emotional suicides that inflict constant pain and steal joy. When you reach this depth of despair—when life seems like it will never be good again—how do you go on? How do you overcome a rage that burns like a volcano?

Pat Bluth was that volcano. After the death of her teenage daughter by a drunk driver, Pat Bluth wanted revenge when he was let off with a mere slap on the wrist. From Pain to Peace is her compelling story, tracing her journey from rage to forgiveness and healing.

From Pain to Peace is for everyone who has known pain or experienced loss. It will be welcomed by anyone who is looking for an example to follow, a proven path to find spiritual healing. It is a story of tragedy, but it is also a story of great joy. Pat discovered a joy and an intimacy with God she never knew possible. She came to experience his love and peace beyond measure.

I went to school with Pat’s daughter Tammy who had been killed by the drunk driver in 1985.  I was there the night of the accident and was one of the many teenagers who witnessed what happened.  Due to all this, I was anxious to hear Pat’s take on the book and her feelings after all these years.

Having been through my own tragedy of losing my mom and step dad in a head on collision in 1996 due to another driver crossing into their lane – this review takes on a bit of a personal feel for me.

I found From Pain to Peace to be brutally honest.  Pat pours out her heart in this book from the immense despair, to the extreme anger and hate that can fill your heart.  Having felt many of the emotions that Pat did, I could relate well with this book.  What Pat says through the healing process is all the things I wish I could have expressed.

Pats journey through the tough times into God’s grace and healing is reflected well in this book.  At times, her grief caught in my own throat as I remembered all to well what it felt like to be on that treadmill….constantly having to move forward, feeling if you stopped to breathe…. to think even…. you would slip off the end into a dark abyss.

Pat’s words in her chapter on mourning I found also to be right on.  The constantly being asked, “How are you?” Turns into a response that is automatic as we guard our heart against the real truth of how we are…. as if speaking it out loud would cause us to shatter into a million tiny pieces.  Pat’s response was, “Fine.”  I remember mine was, “I am o.k.”

Pat Bluth’s book is an incredible testimony of God’s healing.  I would recommend this book to anyone who has had a tragic loss of someone close to them.  I think you will find comfort in these pages.  Thank you Pat for sharing this healing book.

¹ O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
² You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
³ You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.
⁵ You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it.

⁷ Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
⁸ If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.

I am a bit behind in my reviews here…. I actually finished Back to Life about a month ago.  It took forever to get through…. I bought this book in Tegucigalpa Honduras – at the airport – and in a hurry as my plane was loading and i just needed something to read.  The cover looked good and I just needed a light read for the plane…..

Lindsay took to marriage like a starlet to stilettos, but her husband had a deeper love for his business. Left alone after his death, Lindsay must find out who she is when there isn’t a party to plan or another person’s life to be organized. Can she find her way Back to Life?

Lindsay realized when she married Ron, a man seventeen years her senior, that the odds were he’d see heaven before her, but she never expected to be a widow at thirty-five. She knows there’s too much of life remaining for her to just sit around in mourning, but she can’t seem to kick-start the rest of her life. Then unexpected help arrives…when Ron’s first wife, Jane, shows up at Lindsay’s front door.

The executor of their late husband’s estate, Jane is everything Lindsay’s not: strong, stubborn, independent…and a lot older. There are other surprises as well, including Ron Jr. (whom Jane insists is not “really” Ron’s son). But against all odds, a most unlikely friendship begins to develop—as each woman discovers how to own up to her past mistakes and to reevaluate what is really important. Told in the alternating voices of Jane and Lindsay, and featuring the return of many of the unforgettable characters introduced in The Trophy Wives Club, Back to Life is a lighthearted, relatable read about where to turn when life goes in a direction you never planned.

Ok – I know…. once on the plane I reviewed my choice and felt I had picked up something pretty cheesy.  And when I noticed it said it was one of the trophy wife club books I really thought I was in for it. The book was pretty much what I expected – lite Chirstian fiction, not a lot of meat to it… kind of on the lines of the Ya Ya Sister books and the Potluck Club.

I didn’t find the characters particularilly likable…. Lindsay is pretty shallow and I just never can wrap my mind fully around Jane.  It took me months to complete and basically I just wanted to know if it ever got better.  In my opinion it did not.  A  D- rating.

Today is your birthday… I want you to know that you are in my heart, as you always have been. I pray for you every day. I pray I did the right thing…

Thus wrote Miranda DeSpain on the anniversary of the day that changed her life forever, the day her heart was torn in pieces. Ever since that wrenching event, she has been unable to settle down, embrace life. She finds herself starting one adventure after another, trying to forget. But she never can. As she approaches her twenty-seventh birthday, she determines once again to reinvent her circumstances, to start anew. But there’s one loose end to tie up first…

This book, In Search of Eden,  was loaned to me by a fellow Bookie (my book club), Brenda.  It had passed through a few of the Bookies hands and now it was my turn!  I brought it with me to Honduras and read it on the plane, in Texas, and then finished it in a small bedroom in the top bunk at the Manuelito Project in Talanga Honduras.

This was a good read.  I enjoyed the story line and character development.  Miranda is a likable character, and while she starts out with little to no self worth she grows quickly in her mission and in her liking of herself for who she is.

This is a great read about faith and finding where you fit into all of it.

On the plane, while reading this book, I dumped blueberry (yup… blueberry even)  yogurt all over the book and me.  Of all the books I brought with me, this is the only one that wasn’t mine….  figures.  🙂  I continued reading, and then passed it on to Tim Lake, our Team Leader who had not brought a book with him to read.  He comments about the blue pages…..

I will be buying my friend Brenda a new copy of this book, she will want to have to continue to pass this great story around to others.  I love that about books – you actually can share worlds with your friends.

Thanks Brenda for allowing me (blueberries and all) to share this read with you.

A 4.5 rating in my book…..  and in my blog.  🙂

(This book passed through many hands before it got back to me… and everyone who read it really enjoyed it).  A friend of mine who was expecting, after reading this named her baby girl, Eden.

Update on This Post – July 11, 2009:  As of this date I am saying this is the best Faith and Fiction read so far this year.  I am responding to the question presented by My Friend Amy as to what is the best Christian Fiction I have read to date…  Amy’s question actually reminded me that I have a few others waiting on my book shelf that I need to get to as well.  🙂

For the past few months I have been digging into this book slowly processing and re reading and  telling you now – I think I have struck gold.

Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental,” young Americans share an impression of Christians that’s nothing short of . . . unChristian.

Groundbreaking research into the perceptions of sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds reveals that Christians have taken several giant steps backward in one of their most important assignments. The surprising details of the study, commissioned by Fermi Project and conducted by The Barna Group, are presented with uncompromising honesty in UNChristian.

With great input by Rick Warren, Gary Haugen,  Mark Batterson, Andy Stanley, Jim Wallis, Sarah Cunningham, Chuck Colson, Louis Giglio, Andy Crouch, Jim White, Brian McLaren, Margaret Feinberg and many more – this is a hard to put down, yet a must read for anyone trying to understand what we face in trying to reach the 16 to 29 generation.