Just Finished Reading…

I just finished reading the best book that I have read in a long time!

I never buy books at full price, ever. However, I was desperate for reading material, so I walked into the local bookstore at the mall. I looked around for a half hour before I decided on this book, and when I went to pay, the cashier rolled her eyes at my selection. Note to all sales personnel: don’t roll your eyes at your customers when they purchase products from you. If you sell it, you can’t judge them for buying it! With that said, I picked out Why I Stayed by Gayle Haggard and Angela Hunt.

http://www.gaylehaggard.org/

This book is more like sitting down with a friend for a cup of coffee than it is reading. It is so well written that Gayle’s voice comes to life like a Reading Rainbow adventure, dragons and all. Before you know it, you are in Gayle’s college dorm room right after she first meets her husband Ted. You grow up with her, you raise her special needs child with her, and then your heart breaks into a thousand pieces when you enter the private office where her pastor husband confesses his homosexual tendencies to her. You walk through her journey of personal betrayal, heart-break, and ultimately hope, love, and strength as you watch her choose to love her husband despite his very public struggle with an embarrassing sin.

This book not only serves a memoir, but it also serves as a critique of the churches ability forgive and restore in the light of public sin. It shows sin is everywhere. While one man struggled with homosexuality others struggle with judgement, pride, fear, slander, and unforgiveness. This book does not condone sin, but shows the role of grace despite of it.

As I finished the last page of the book, I felt free from the suffocation of religion. I was reminded that Jesus came to earth for the sinners, for the desperate, needy, broken, me. I was ok with the fact that I don’t have it “together” and hope felt very tangible.

This book is a must read! The pages fly by. It’s real, deep, emotional, thought provoking, loaded with scripture, and most of all it challenges your thinking and gives hope to your soul.

It was worth every full price penny!