A book review

I don't know if I've ever done this on my blog. I guess I've been blabbing away on here long enough that I can't remember what-all I've said but I just read a book I found pretty moving
and somewhat relevant to anyone going through a hard time as my family is. It's a pretty popular read now called "The Shack"by Wm. Paul Young. My friend read it in her book club awhile back and my
book club never took it up so I went ahead and read it this past week. Interesting book. It starts
off with a bad event and it goes on to talk about mans' relationship with God. What it is and what
it really is supposed to be. Sitting on a mountaintop last weekend, despite the level of acceptance I have with our situation, I still found myself asking God why this had to happen to us. To Tim and our kid. I'm convinced these answers are revealed when we get to the other side
but it sure is a struggle to make sense of it all now. Sometimes I just look at Olivia and think about what a warm, loving, compassionate, innocent little thing she is and it just breaks my heart
that she has to live with her dad having cancer and the possibility of losing him. I don't want to
spoil anything about this book 'cause I really do recommend it but basically, after years of grieving over this event, a man learns about God, Jesus, and the holy spirit and how to heal his
relationship with them to help him move on with his life. One of the things that helped me in the book is when it spoke about living in the present. This is something I had to start working very hard on after Tim's diagnosis. I even bought a ring when I was in Mystic, CT that is printed with the words "live in the moment" so that I have a constant reminder to bring myself back when my head gets too far into the future, or past for that matter. I'm not going to repeat this word-for-word because I'm taking it out of context, but basically there's a part in the book where God tells him that He dwells in him in the present. Though there's a lot to be learned or remembered from the past, you should go there only for a visit and not an extended stay. And that when you imagine things about the future, it is almost always dictated by fear. It goes on to say that living in the future is a desperate attempt to gain some control over something that you can't, something that isn't even real. It's like trying to play God. You imagine the evils that you
fear becoming a reality in your life and then you try to make plans and contingencies to avoid what it is you fear. These statements in this book stopped me in my tracks. How many times has
this exact scenerio taken place in my head? My whole life really has been trying to prepare for the "what-ifs" but even more so now. It's these imagined fears that aren't even real that have probably taken years off my life. You think that somehow thinking about what may happen can
help you prepare in some way. Well the truth is there are just too many things in life that you can never be prepared for. Oh sure, you have to plan ahead sometimes, especially where money
is concerned but the fact is, if you think you are steering this vessel, well... you just ain't. You may be paddling and trying to get to where you're going but there's all sorts of plans for your life that you cannot control or change. Somehow you have to have a level of faith and trust that it will all work out for good in the end.....that someone up there knows what the heck He/She's doing! The book also went into forgiveness. It said that forgiving is for the forgiver. It's not about forgetting, excusing, or even forming a relationship with that person. To quote, "It is about letting go of another person's throat" to release yourself from something that eats at you, destroys your joy and ability to love fully and openly. Anyway, not since "Embraced by the Light" have I read a book that moved me like this. It got a little repetitive sometimes and is
a first novel but a worthwhile couple of hours. The author is the son of missionaries and his father was also a pastor. He has degrees in religion too and has seen pain and tragedy in his own life.
He had a lot of good things to say and supposedly, there may be a movie made of the book someday. Anyway, the other book I just mentioned is the most spectacular life-after-death story
I have ever read. This woman died after a surgery and was eventually revived but not until she got a lot of answers to the whole mystery of life. Very comforting to read when you find yourself asking all those WHY questions. Did you ever see/hear one of those kids that just keeps asking
his/her parents "WHY" about everything? Everything the parent says, the kid just keeps asking, "why?" Kinda like adults with God, doncha think? Well, for some of us anyway. Wonder if God ever gets tired of it and says, "OH ENOUGH ALREADY, BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!"