I stumbled upon this book while in Walmart browsing . It was late in the evening and I had no whining children with me. I had intended to read another few chapters of John and Kate G's book about their 8 children - twins and sextuplets - like I had last time I shopped at Walmart alone. Alas, that book was gone.
This book looked interesting and it was billed as a "New York Times bestseller," so the next time I was at the library, I picked it up. Perhaps it is just me. I seem to be having trouble getting into books over the last few months. I'm fine once I'm midway through, but the first half feels like plowing snow. I thought I could blame this on a heavy dose of multiple non-fiction titles which I have been trying to tackle all at once (they are all compelling, but I seem to pick them up and put them down and pick up another - at the moment I am concurrently reading one on depression, one on premenopause, and another on mothering, plus I have one on Omega-3 waiting in the wings). However, I found this novel followed the same pattern.
I thought the first half of the book felt a bit stiff and stilted. The characters didn't really jump to life for me. The conflict didn't tug me in. I read the first thirteen chapters in about six different sittings. However, once I got to chapter 14, I read the last half of the book in one sitting. I still believe the characters could have been developed more fully, so that the reader felt more of a connection and concern for them. I still think a more involved explanation of the characters and setting would have strengthened the first half of the book.
However, the best part of the book truly is in the second half. Once you reach that point, you begin to piece together more of the background story. You begin to enter into the really compelling part of this book - the lesson of the strength of love and the power of forgiveness.
I found myself wondering if I had what it takes to write a letter to my spouse once a week. I doubt my spouse would want me to write him a letter each week (he prefers face-to-face interaction). If I did, I certainly wouldn't send them - although it wouldn't be a stretch to think that I would keep the stash of them.
I know when my first son was born, I decided to keep a journal addressed to him, with the intent of sharing it with him when he was older or when I was no longer around. However, even though I enjoy writing, I didn't manage to keep up with the task. His journal is short and the two little boys don't even have any journals addressed to them. I'm afraid if I started one for my MS, it would be repetitive entries of "Today you are driving me insane. I don't think you can be quiet for one moment's time. I am really beginning to hate my name because you use it incessantly. I love you dearly, but deary, could you give me some space!"
Hopefully, my blog will serve those purposes that my journal couldn't. However, I doubt I will drop any big secrets or tales of family trauma here. Things like that would have to be reserved for private addresses and even then, I wouldn't know whether it would really be beneficial for my sons to read something like that later in life.
It would be interesting to hear whether any of my readers follow through with this sort of thing. Do you write a journal to your children or regular letters to your spouse? Do you reveal things that you might not share otherwise? Do you have a special place that you store these letters? Even more interesting, has anyone ever stumbled upon secret letters of this sort and gained a glimpse into someone else's life?
I do recall finding a scrap of paper in one of my mother's books one day when I was a pre-teen or teen. I remember reading it and feeling like I was violating her personal space, reading something she had not written with my eyes in mind. I'm quite certain she wrote with nobody's eyes in mind. She wrote to vent her frustrations.
This particular scrap outlined a day when my father was late getting home from the church office. She ended up feeding us kids (were there four or five of us at the time? I don't know?) and not even eating anything herself. She was feeling the weight of shouldering the intense mother role (something I can now relate to quite clearly). At the time, though, I think I realized for the first time that we were quite a handful and steering our boatload of children wasn't exactly a grand job.
Am I glad I stumbled upon that paper? You bet, because now I can look back on it and acknowledge that my own mother struggled with her mothering role as well. My own mother also wearied under the constant driving needs of small children. And, even better news, she weathered the storm. We all survived. Some of us even flourished. This was another thing I took away from Jason Wright's book: Without God in the boat, helping us weather the storms and manage the forgiveness, we might literally sink.
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