A Book You Can Finish In A Day

It took me a while to decide which category I wanted to place this book under. Did I want to put it under the author I never read or a book by a female author? I couldn't decide how to classify this book, so I went with what was the most accurate statement. A book you can finish in a day. 

Because I did finish it in a day. 

I've walked by this book many times at my library and have toyed with the idea of checking it out. For almost a year now, debating over this book at become part of my routine. I finally pulled the trigger on it, and I was NOT expecting the lesson that I got from it! 

First, this book is a Christian novel. This wasn't something that I gathered from the cover, but to me this fact isn't a turn off. In fact, I feel as if God may have led me to pick up this book because it had a message he wanted me to hear. 

The general story line is that Meg, the eldest in her group of sisters, finds out she has a brain tumor. She has to have surgery, which leaves her in a moody, angry, all around fowl disposition for a month or so. The doctors had told them that this may happen, and that she needed time to recover and eventually she would return to some sense of normal, or perhaps she wouldn't. Funny how brain surgery can mess with your brain!

Her husband ends up taking care of her and the kids, and he gets to the point where he needs a distraction. He ends up at a diner in another city where the waitress/owner looks JUST like Meg did before surgery and has the same attitude that Meg did before surgery. He continues going to the diner and flirting with the waitress, getting caught in the act once by his step-mother-in-law and eventually caught in the act by Meg herself.  

He doesn't realize he's been caught though. 

The SMIL tells her husband, Meg's dad, aka the town preacher about what they saw. He then preaches a sermon on affairs. Not just of the physical nature, but affairs of the emotional nature. He discusses in the sermon how many people will justify emotional affairs by saying they did nothing wrong since no sex was had. However, emotional affairs are just as volatile to a relationship as a physical one. 

I sure know that from personal experience. My ex spent a solid portion of our relationship investing his intimacy emotional with other women and by the time he realized it was a problem and not something he should have been doing, I didn't trust him not to do it. However, God didn't want to remind me of my ex's mistakes. 

After a powwow with her sisters and SMIL, Meg realizes that she also made the mistake of asking her husband to be God to her when she was recovering. In the end, Meg tells him that she forgives him of his transgressions and everyone lives happily ever after. 

The message God wanted to send me? I haven't forgiven my ex for what he did. If I'm being honest, I'm having a hard time forgiving him for it. The fact that he never complimented me, but saved those for other women has left me the most insecure I've been in a long time. 

My ex wants to be friends, and I'm trying to be a friend to him because he's going through a rough patch right now.

 But if I'm honest with myself, I'm not putting forth the effort of a true friend because I won't let myself forgive him. When he talks to me, I want to tell him to go run to all those women that he spent so much time fawning over when he was with me. He wanted attention from them over attention from me when we were together, so why would he come to me? 

I can't answer that last question. All I know, is that I need to get myself to a place where I can forgive him. Not for him. I learned a long time ago that you don't forgive someone for them, you forgive them for yourself. With this book, God gave me the nudge that until I can forgive E, I'll never experience the next level of happiness. 

Looks like I have some work to do. 

Thanks, book. 

B Star Rating