This was a gripping story about a mother whose four-year-old daughter is dying. Her ex-husband is a pastor who is believing for healing, but the mother is struggling with her faith and is trying to be realistic about her daughter’s treatment and prognosis. There is a lot of tension between the two parents, a lot of suffering and heartache. In fact, this book explores how we all go through various forms of suffering and has some deeply beautiful things to say about suffering, for instance,
“I had to learn how to hold someone in their suffering, without denying its existence. I saw the pain in her, pain that no performative prayer could cure but which the loving arms of a mother could actually soothe. I saw how I needed to advocate, how I needed to protect, how I needed to find the right treatment… She needed the comfort of reality.”
Suffering is also contrasted with the miraculous in this book. The miracle of God’s love and embrace. The miracle of feeling a sense that one’s future self will say the journey of suffering was worth it, though one may not feel that way while they are going through it. The characters in this book had something like a vision of their future selves. They had some level of comfort and peace around their own heartache and pain.
The interwoven story of the homeless pregnant teenager who claims an immaculate conception, is truly beautiful because it gives the value of Jesus and Mary to people often ignored, neglected, abused and rejected by others in society.
I loved the religious-deconstruction aspect within the narrative as well—the questions about what faith and religion should be like and how it often fails. All people are invited and included at God’s table. Criminals, drug addicts, homeless pregnant teenagers, police people, parents who have lost children, queer, transgender, and non-binary people. The church has become too exclusive, but God is inclusive and we are on a journey as human beings to learn to include everyone and everything in this love-story of life.
This book reaches into the depths of our pain, deconstructs and reconstructs religious systems and brings hope to the reader.
