Don't Go

"Don't Go" by Lisa Scottoline

I devoured this book, it was so good!  I'm in a time crunch because I checked out 6 books at the library and have to get them all read before they are due.  I'm feeling the pressure but thankful I can read fast.  I just grabbed this book off of the New Release shelf because the cover grabbed me.  It is about a man who goes to war (I'm a sucker for war books) and leaves behind a wife and baby daughter.  He ends up getting wounded and comes home to his life that is in shambles.  Nothing is as he left it, his medical practice is a mess, his wife dead and his baby girl a stranger.  How will he piece his life back together?  Will he ever be the father that his daugher needs?  Will he ever recover from his losses?  This book took some twists that I didn't see coming.  It turned out to be a little bit of a mystery which I don't normally read but this one caught me by surprise and I liked it.  It was very well written and engaged me every with page turn.  It again, left me thankful for all the people who serve our country, fighting for my freedom.  They sacrifice so much.  "She's only human.  Don't judge her.  Just love her."  We are all only human.  We all judge but we all need to do less judging and more loving, showing grace to each other because after all, we are only human.  "Here's what I think.  If I hadn't gone over there, I wouldn't be the father I am.  I wouldn't be the man I am.  War changes everything, and everybody.  It changed me, and the sacrifice changed me.  I've decided to live my life in a way that honors that sacrifice, and all the sacrifices."  War does change everyone involved in it and the circle is big.  The only thing is to live honoring the sacrifice that was paid.  I also see this for the sacrifice that Christ gave us on the cross.  He gave everything and I want my life to honor that sacrifice.  

The Yellow Birds

"The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers

Not a good book, not worth your time.  This is the first book for this author and I think, should be his last.  I'm not sure where I got the idea to read this book but after I finished I was just plain mad I wasted my time reading it.  It was written very strangely and thus made it hard to understand.  When I got to the end I was asking what was even the point.  It is a very detailed book which is not my kind of book at all, too tedious and boring if you ask me.  It is about two soilders going off to war in Iraq.  It is about what the war does to them and about loss.  They are both young and forced to fight a war that doesn't make sense nor were they prepared for.  "We only pay attention to rare things, and death was not rare."  Death in a war is not rare and in order to keep going and survive I believe soilders shut off their brains and move on auto pilot.  "All pain is the same.  Only the detials are different."  Pain is hard and it hurts and we all experience it in some way, just in different ways.  "I feel like I'm being eaten from the inside out and I can't tell anyone what's going on because everyone is so grateful to me all the time and I'll feel like I'm ungrateful or something.  Or like I'll give away that I don't deserve anyone's gratitide and really they should all hate me for what I've done but eveyone loves me for it and it's driving me crazy."  A soilder said this when he came home from the war.  He felt like everything he did was wrong and he didn't deserve gratitude.  He hated himself for all that he had done and couldn't understand why others didn't hate him as well.  Really this story is sad.  It it yet another glimpse of our soilders and all the pain and darkness they encounter.  How do you unsee what you've seen in war?  How do you ever undo the things you've done in battle?  How do you ever recover from that?  I'm grateful to our soilders and their families.  I pray they find Jesus to bring them peace and healing after fighting for my freedom.  And as a side note this book has a lot of swearing in it.

The Chance

"The Chance" by Karen Kingsbury

This is a story about a girl whose family has fallen apart.  She is forced to move and leave behind her best friend, Nolan.  The night before she is to leave town they meet in the park and write a letter to each other, bury it beneath the old oak tree and promise to come back in 11 years and read the letters.  The years go by and Ellie's life looks a lot different and she is ashamed of her choices.  She doesn't ever expect to see Nolan again but that day and her best friend stay hidden in her heart.  Nolan never forgot Ellie and he will do whatever it takes to find her again.  This story is about love conquering all and about forgiveness.  It is a powerful story about choices and how they affect those around us.  "The only right response for the rest of her life was to extend that grace to others, to forgive the way she had been forgiven."  God extends grace to us, and we are so undeserving, in turn we should extend that grace to others.  If your struggling with your choices remember that God forgives and loves you no matter what you have done.  He loves you just the way you are.

Cross Roads

"Cross Roads" by WM. Paul Young

This author wrote The Shack.  Don't know if you read it but it was somewhat confusing.  Well this starts out just as confusing and lost me for a while.  I started it and didn't like it and put it down for a couple months.  When I picked it up the second time I was determinted to get through it.  I will be honest, it took till about chapter 4 or 5 till it started getting good.  But it finally did get good and then I couldn't put it down.  So you have to stick with this one.  It is about a man who is in a coma and meets Jesus.  He is told that he can heal one person, any one person.  The story goes back and forth from earth to the in-between life where the man is while in a coma.  The book is funny, has lots of truth to it and also takes some liberties.  "Hold on to Jesus, Anthony.  You can never go wrong by holding on to Jesus.  And know this, He will never stop holding on to you."  Truth, Jesus never lets us go even in our darkest or worst moments.  "There are lots of folks besides Christians who believe in me. 'Believer' is an activity, not a category."  To believe involves doing.  "Love will not condemn you for being lost, but love will not let you stay there alone, even though it will never force you to come out of your hiding place."  Love never condemns and never forces.  "The arrival of the unforseen reveals the depths of one's heart."  When life suddenly takes a turn it tends to really show whats truly inside of us.  "There is nothin' fair in a broken world full of broken people.  Justice tries to be fair, but fails at every turn.  There is never anything fair about grace or forgiveness.  Punishment never restores fair.  Confession doesn't make things fair.  Life is not about granting the fair reward for the right performance."  Just as things that happen in this world are not fair neither is the grace we receive.  "Sometimes silence speaks loudest and presence brings the most comfort."  Sometimes all we need to do is be there.  "Somehow the pain, the losses, the hurt, the bad, God is able to transform these into something they could have never been, icons and monuments of grace and love.  It is the deep mystery how wounds and scars can become precious, or a ravaging and terrifying cross the essential symbol of relentless affection."  He always turns beauty for ashes if we allow Him.  "What initally kept you safe can eventually destroy you."  Sometimes we build walls for protection and that is good but if we never tear down those walls they will be what kills us in the end.  "But I discovered that when you blame God for evil, there is no one left to trust, and I couldn't live that way."  "Prayer, it seemed, was simply a conversation inside a relationship."  It's really that simple.  There is no right or wrong way, it's just a conversation.  "One never knows if anything's a good idea.  You just make a choice and go with the flow and see what happens.  You only get one day's worth of grace, so why not spend it extravagantly." 

The Longest Ride

"The Longest Ride" by Nicholas Sparks

I got this book for my birthday.  It is his newest book published in September and I think this is the soonest I've gotten one of his books.  I was so excited to read it, he never disappoints.  I dob't know how he continues to write such good books.  This book was a change up from what I have been reading.  It was nice to read something a little lighter.  The story is about an old man at the end of his life, reliving precious memories of the years with his wife and of another young couple just starting out on this road of life.  The couples come from two different eras but soon their lives will connect in ways no one saw coming.  "You kissed me, yes, but it was not just good night.  Even then, I could feel the promise in it, the promise that you would kiss me just like that, forever."  Isn't Nicholas a great writer?  "I think that the point is that people rarely understand that nothing is ever exactly what you think it will be."  That's one of the hardest things to comes to terms with in this life.  We think we will be happily married or we will have well behaved children, or children at all.  We think we will always be healthy or strong.  Often times what we envision our lives to be is rarely what actually is.  But remembering that God has plans even when things aren't what we thought they would be, even in the hardest of times, gives us hope and a rock to stand on.  "For it is one thing to declare one's love for someone and quite another to accept that loving that person requires sacrificing one's dreams."  We say we love but when it comes to sacrificing what we want, that's when love gets real.  That's when love gets hard.  "Your heart is still beautiful.  Your eyes are still kind, and you are a good and honest man.  This is enought to keep you beautiful forever."  Doesn't matter what we look like on the outside, even the most beautiful face will age, what matters and what lasts is the beauty within.  "At night, the space between us in the bed felt like the Pacific, an ocean impossible for either of us to swim across."  Sometimes it feels that way, doesn't it?  A chasm so wide we cannot cross or a wall so big we cannot climb it?  But with God all things are possible and sometimes we just have to show up and be willing to take the first step towards the other person, even if they were in the wrong.  It's sacrificing, putting away our pride-hard love.  "A truth emerges in any long marriage, and the truth is this: Our spouses sometimes know us better than we even know ourselves."  "I know you miss me terribly.  I miss you, too.  But we still have each other, for I am-and always have been-part of you.  You carry me in your heart, just as I carried you in mine, and nothing will ever change that."  Oh I love that.  When you truly love you become a part of each other and when that person is gone a part of you is missing but they are in your heart, forever a part of you.  Another great Nicholas Sparks book, another great read.

Divinie

"Divine" by Karen Kingsbury

If you have been a follower of this blog you know that a favorite of mine is Karen Kingsbury.  Once again, she doesn't dissapoint.  This book is about a modern day Mary Magdalene.  A woman who was saved from demons by Jesus and became a part of His ministry.  A woman who witnessed the cross and was the first to see the risen Jesus.  This is a story of Mary who is lost to her sin and abuse.  A woman who needs rescuing, as we all do.  A woman who is rescued and in turn, with Christ's power, rescues others just like her.  "Women who practice abstinence are healthy women in every sense of the word.  The same is true for young men.  When they make a choice to wait, they tell the world they are worthwhile, valuable, special.  Every other action they take toward their future will fall in line with those feelings."  When we feel worth something or valuable we are less likely to cave to outside pressure, we are more likely to stand up for what we believe.  "I almost believed the lie that killing myself was the only way to find freedom.  But it isn't.  You do that, and the nightmare will continue as long as your daughers live.  Every day of their lives they'll wonder why their mama didn't love them enough to live."  I understand the desperation behind suicide, it's a hopelessness and a pain so deep you just want it to stop.  But the pain is passed on to those who are left behind.  And God offers the hope, the rescue you are looking for.  He has a plan for each one of us, even in the midst of the pain.  "Because people can't be judged by their clothes or their hair or their skin.  But only by the way they love Jesus."  Thats all that really matters, how we love Jesus.  "The horrors that come with abuse are not always expainable.  It's bondage."  Bondage that only Christ can set a person free from.  "Abuse is never fair.  It leaves its mark on everyone involved."  An indelible mark that once again only Jesus can erase.  He wants to make us new creations, not just give healing, but new creations.  "When people give their lives to Christ, He gives them His Spirit.  It breathes from the center of the soul, giving life to the heart and shining bright through the eyes of believers."  "That serving Him is all the life, all the love I could ever want, all by itself."  Now that is something to strive for.  "Telling her story was draining.  It took her back to unspeakable darkness and horror, back to the doubts and uncertainties and loneliness that had driven her into a life that should've killed her.  But she would tell it over and over again until she died, for the privilege of having a woman like Emma ask her about Jesus."  That is what makes all the pain, hurt and sorrow worth it, being able to use your story for redemption.  That is exactly how Christ turns beauty for ashes, how none of the trials or horrors that we go through are in vain.  "Jesus died to take all the pain from yesterday, to offer people a new life, a new start today.  A start that would build one tomorrow on top of another until change in that life became obvious to everyone.  It was true.  The power of Christ wasn't a one-time fix.  It would keep working in her life today and tomorrow and every day that she woke up believing the truth."  God doesn't stop working in us, as long as we hold on to His truths He continues to make us new.  This is a great story of love and redemption.  It is a story about abuse that is sometimes hard to read but most of all it is a story of God's great love for each of us.

The Soul Catcher

"The Soul Catcher" by Michael White

I got this book in a pile with some others.  I'm intrigued by slavery days and all that the blacks endured.  I'm saddened by the fact that this is part of our American history.  I've read numerous slavery books but this one was more from the standpoint of the whites.  It is about a runaway slave and the slave catcher who is hired to go after her.  Cain, the slave catcher is quite good at what he does but his life has only been a life of running away himself, a life of pain.  Through his journey to find Rosetta, the runaway slave, he discovers things about himself that he has kept hidden.  "Like it or not, slavery binds us all.  Master and slave alike."  It truly does.  Unfortunately we are all slaves to something.  But that is what Jesus came to earth for, to free us from our bondage.  "If God decided to put life in me who was I to say no to it?"   Controversial I know, but I dare go there.  We aren't the ones who decide if life is given or taken away.  Often times we think we have such control but really we don't.  God is the One who gives life and takes it away.  "Lot's of folks, especially white folks, find it easier to deny their goodness than go through the trouble of doing what they know's right."  It's not always easy to do what is right, especially when we are just doing what others have done before us.  But God is asking all of us to take a stand, even when it goes against others.  This book comes with a warning as it does have cursing and graphic details of harsh treatment done to the slaves.  But I have never read a book about slavery that didn't make me wince from the brutality of it.  God did create us all equal, none better than another.  We would all be better off to remember this.  This is a good book, where in the end the reality of what our fathers have done before us is not always the right way.