This book. This is why I love memoirs. To read these stories of real people feels like I'm adding them to my own life. By reading them, I feel like they're becoming a part of my life, adding color and character and depth and sweetness. I love these people. I wish I could embrace them and tell them I know their story. I wish I could thank them in person for sharing their lives with me.
I learned about this book at a job interview. I never got the job, which I'm quite ok with - it would've been a move of desperation on my part to accept it, anyway. But, this book... I am so very glad I went to that interview. The person I interviewed with and I were somehow on the topic of religion or people or something. I can't remember exactly how this came up but she mentioned a woman speaking to the congregation at the church where she attends and how she wrote a book about her experiences. I told her those are my favorite kind of books and made a note to see if my library had it. They did and I am so glad. What a sweet story of strength, courage, and survival. But mostly about love.
I finished this book over a week, ago - I've been making notes as I read because it was something I had to digest a little at a time while trying to take it in all at once.
It's a brave woman's story of her unusual upbringing, followed by a change in her parents and their ways of doing things, which led to her well-educated future. She alternately tells two stories - one of her battle with breast cancer at age 27 and the other of falling in love with a Somali refugee family.
As I read of her battle, my heart just broke. (This book made me cry almost every time I picked it up to read it.) That she could not only feel so alone but BE so alone... I sincerely hope her "friends" read this and feel the guilt they deserve to feel and then some. The people who were supposed to bring her meals and didn't, my gosh. How could they? How could they? The visits stopped, communication stopped. Her fiance left her. It's incredible the way she made it through her lowest points. She questioned God the whole time, wondering where He was or if He even cared and how could He let this happen to her?
But then - oh, then - she meets the sweetest family on the bus. She cares for them, clothes them, feeds them, loves them... and in turn, they help her heal. They help her find her purpose, they help her find God. More, they help her see that He was there the whole time. She likened her trial to a mother who happened to be a doctor she worked with. Her daughter was sick. The nurses had to hold her down to get an IV started and her daughter just cried for her, pleading with her to help her. Yet, she stood by the wall and let the nurses do their thing. When they were done with this traumatic event, the mother scooped her little girl up and reassured her that she was there. She felt like God had done the same thing. He had to let the trial do its thing. But He was there, hurting along with her. And when she finally got through it, He was there to scoop her up. I can't put into words her testimony at the end (mostly because I don't have the book to reference and she put it so gracefully), but it was so great and so profound.
This is definitely a book I would highly recommend. It was so well-written and touched my soul.
