It’s beginning to look like Book Week here at Stray Thoughts, isn’t it? 🙂 Sorry about that. The last two I have just finished up in the last couple of days. I normally would have spaced out the discussion of them a little more except that the Spring Reading Thing Wrap-Up is today!

I had read Gracia Burnham’s In the Presence of My Enemies during the fall reading challenge, the story of how she and her husband, Martin, were captured by Islamic militants in the Philippines and held for a year, ending in Martin’s death during a rescue attempt. Gracia has written another book with Dean Merrill, To Fly Again, which kind of updates us on how the family is doing and shares more of what she has learned in the time since this ordeal. Actually, the whole title is To Fly Again: Surviving the Tailspins of Life, using an analogy from her husband’s experiences as a pilot.

Gracia, as her name implies, is very gracious in her dealings with others, yet she doesn’t shy away from facing the hard questions and problems she has dealt with. She deals with many topics — faith, anger, confusion, impatience, forgiveness, contentment, praise, and so much more, sharing something of the wrestlings of her own heart and mind, always coming back to the God Who loves us and is trustworthy even if circumstances are excruciating.

This book is an excellent read, really, for anyone, but especially for those who have gone through a crisis and wrestled with some of these same topics.

I want to share just a couple of excerpts. In a chapter dealing with praise, she writes:

I am not claiming that the praise of Paul and Silas directly triggered the earthquake. But I do believe it is fair to say that affirming the goodness and power of God is always appropriate. It tells God we have not lost our bearings. We still know who is ultimately in charge of the world. And we invite his intervention in the midst of our trauma.

She refers to the battle King Jehoshaphat faced against overwhelming odds in II Chronicles 20 and is prayer that “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.” The king then appointed singers to walk in front of the army to sing to and praise the Lord — and the Lord provided a marvelous ad unexpected deliverance. Later in the same chapter Gracia writes:

In the battles of our life, when we face overwhelming threats to life and limb, it is always good to praise the Lord. It states a higher reality than what we see with our natural eyes. It affirms our place in the hands of a loving and strong heavenly Father, who will never stop caring about our welfare. He is, indeed, worthy of every accolade we can offer, whether circumstances seem to agree or not.

In another place she quotes a poem by Annie Johnson Flint that I think sums up the experience of those whose lights are to shine in dark places, as the Burnhams’ did:

His lamp am I, to shine where He shall say,
And lamps are not for sunny rooms,
Nor for the light of day;
But for the dark places of the earth,
Where shame and wrong and crime have birth,
Or for the murky twilight gray
Where wandering sheep have gone astray;
Or where the lamp of faith grows dim
And souls are groping after Him.
And as sometimes a flame we find,
Clear-shining, through the night
So bright we do not see the lamp,
But only see the light:
So may I shine — His light the flame,
That men may glorify His name.

Renovating Becky Miller by Sharon Hinck is one of the books on my spring reading challenge (which is rapidly drawing to a close this week!!) I had read Sharon’s first book, The Secret Life of Becky Miller, last year (it was one of the first books I discussed on my blog!) and just loved it — the characters and situations and struggles were very real — so I knew I’d get the sequel as soon as I saw it. I finished it last week, but this is my first chance to sit down and get my thoughts together.

Becky Miller is a young Christian mom, married with three children, heading up the women’s ministry at church. In the first book she struggled to “do big things for God.” Each chapter started with a “daydream” in which Becky somehow saved the day. This book starts each chapter with a spoof of a movie scene (I didn’t realize that at first because I hadn’t seen the first film alluded to. 🙂 I thought it was a spy scenario like the first book might have had. After a while I began to realize those scenarios were strangely familiar — then I “got it.”) It was fun figuring out what movie the scenes were from. I got most of them even though I hadn’t seen all the films. If I had just read the back cover of the book more thoroughly, it would have given me a tip-off.

Becky faces a number of pressures — her new job at a new church is taking a lot more time than she thought it would; the people there feel that increasing and expanding their programs will reach more people for Christ, so there are constantly new projects and more work added on; her husband’s mother is having physical problems and comes to live with them; something’s bothering her husband, but she can’t get him to open up; something is wrong with one of her closest friends, but she can’t get anyone to tell her what the problem is; her husband think they need to find a new home, and the ideal one in their price range that just needs “some fixing up” is an old farmhouse. Becky think the bigger house in the country will mean a slower, simpler lifestyle, and the “fixing up” will be a good project to draw the family closer. If you’ve ever had a house that needed work, you’re probably smiling and shaking your head right now. 🙂 On top of all of that, the leg that has been having problems since the accident she had in the first book is getting worse because she is so busy with everything else she hasn’t had time to do her physical therapy.

In other words — she is under a lot of pressure.

I could relate to thing on so many levels. The first home we purcahsed was a “fixer-upper” and we didn’t realize how much money, time, and energy it was going to take. I head up the ladies’ ministry at church, and though we haven’t had any church growth pushes, there is always the pressure to do more. We have had parents in just for a short time but have had discussions about what we might need to do in the near future, as many in the “sandwich generation” have. I’ve had physical problems that I wished the Lord would just go ahead and heal so I could get on with my life and minister for Him more effectively. Just keeping in touch with your family (even living under the same roof it is all too easy to just pass by while getting other things done) and trying to be a good mother to your children can be enormous pressure, not to mention these other things.

At one point, Becky asks, “Lord, is serving You supposed to feel like this?”

I think many of us have asked or have felt like asking that question.

I’ll leave you to find the answers Becky found in the book.

Because I have four bookcases filled to overflowing already, usually after I read a book, if I really don’t think I will ever reread it, I pass it on to my mother-in-law or someone else. But I am keeping the Becky Miller books. I want to revisit them again some day. Once again the characters and the struggles were very real (even though my kids are older than Becky’s, I could remember a lot of the “young mom” struggles, and some of them still apply though in slightly different forms) and the answers Becky found, though not new to me, were wonderful reminders.

If I had a rating system, this book would get the highest rating, plus a couple of plus signs. 🙂 It’s everything that good Christian fiction should be. It will have you smiling in some parts and pondering its truths in others.

By the way, Sharon Hinck has a website and a blog and a “Book Buddies” newsletter you can sign up for. She has another book out already, The Restorer, that is on my to be read list. It is a fantasy, and I have no doubt she can handle it well, from the fantasy preludes in her chapters of the Becky Miller books!