Book Review: Walking Through Twilight

What a gorgeous, apt cover for this tragic and tender book about a man's experience losing his brilliant wife to a rare form of dementia. I love the blackness of the bottom half - the ground; I love the hazy purple twilight and the stark outline of the living trees against it on the top half. The book opens with a George Herbert poem, "Bitter Sweet," addressed to the Lord:

"Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.
I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love."

As Job 2:10  says, "We take the good days from God—why not also the bad days?" Indeed, the foreword identifies the author's aim: "to understand something of the hand of God in this valley of suffering and to discern how to live lovingly and faithfully in this shadowy place." I think we all need this lesson. We all encounter our shadowy places and struggle to accept the meaning in the pain.

I appreciated the author's words on lament, giving permission and offering the understanding that there is a time for lament. He writes, "If the perfect Son of God can lament and not sin, so may we." I have been on the receiving end of well-meaning Christian expectations to cast off lament quickly and get back to doing what God would have you do. But, indeed, there is a time to weep.

While this book is definitely a difficult read - such intense sorrow for the loss of an articulate individual's ability to form words and ideas - it offers the author's truth with candor and faith. He is not a sunny Pollyanna, but a realistic climber who only wants to see the slope and make the wisest steps to trek the mountain. How do we live well amid suffering? I think with integrity, honesty, and faith. Somehow, we allow God to hold our hand and surrender the journey to His control.