A few weeks ago, I decided I really need to get back into reading because it really is so important and provides so much more stimulation than my phone does. Quite frankly, its something I love. My mom was a teacher so you can imagine our home growing up. The phrase “Go read a book,” was constantly going around our house. Barnes and Noble was like freaking crack to us. It was to the point where Daniel and I didnt want to read whatever book they assigned us in school because we were so deep in some other book that was leagues above whatever the school was going to provide us. I remember in 7th grade I was so bored with reading the Outsiders. So bored. Not because it’s not a good story, it’s alright, but because it was too easy. Believe me, I’m not tooting my own horn like I’m Miss Smarty Pants or anything like that. I’m just trying to establish the basis for my love for reading. Anyway, in 7th grade, I was reading Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series and I was obsessed. I couldnt put it down. Now imagine you’re a 7th grade English teacher and you already have to deal with a bunch of kids (which lets be real tweens are the worst) and you have a student falling behind. Not because she cant do the work, but because she’s bored and doesnt want to do it. Can you imagine that conversation with my mother? By the way, this is a convo my mom has had with several of Daniels teachers as well. Daniel would have rather written his plays or sketched or read a book than participated in actual class work. Why would I want to read something at a 7th grade reading level, when I’m reading and comprehending at a college level?

Fast forward, I’m sitting in our office, staring at the book shelf, and The Shack is something I’ve been wanting to read for years, because it’s supposed to be this life changing work of literature. I pick it up thinking I’ll probably read a couple chapters then put it down somewhere to collect dust forever. Jokes on me, I couldnt put it down. It’s only about 270 pages and it reads like a dream. The words flow and have this beautiful artistic way about them and it’s not even overly complicated. It’s about a 6th grade reading level.

Without giving away too much, I want to give a little summary of this book. It’s about this man, Mack, and his journey to inner peace and connection with God. He and his family lose their youngest daughter to a kidnapping on a family camping trip and its horrific (to be honest, I cried through this whole section of the book) and as I’m sure many of you can imagine it takes an emotional chunk out of their family unit, especially Mack. Fast forward a little bit, Mack gets a note in his mailbox from “Papa”, which is what his wife calls God, asking him to come to the shack, the last place there was evidence of his daughter being before the trail goes cold. So Mack, in skepticism, makes the long ass drive to the middle of the woods, in winter, to see if this is legit and it turns out it is legit. He spends two days with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Now that’s about as much as I’m going to go into because if I start going down the rabbit hole, you’ll either not read it or this blog will be a mile long.

Now as you can expect, Mack has a lot of questions for Papa (God). Questions about life, about his daughter, about creation, about our relationship with God, etc., etc. Things any person would ask. I’m working through this book thinking “wow, these are good questions”, and surprisingly the author is convincing me that the answers are real. Believe me, I dont put much stock into man’s interpretation of God and I even have my own skepticism on the Bible because human beings are manipulative, selfish, controlling, etc. Also, I fully believe that God is outside the realm of our human level of comprehension that even our best interpretations dont even come close to who he truly is. For some reason, this book puts God into terms that make him real. I don’t mean that in the way that he wast real before, but this puts answers on a page that we didn’t have answers to before. Again, not that I believe this is directly from the horses mouth, but damn. It’s that good.

Even if you’re not a believer, I would highly recommend reading this book. Maybe it will answer some questions you have. Maybe it’ll peak your interests. Or maybe it’ll just be an interesting work of fiction for you that you can say you read, but got nothing out of. I dont know, but what I do know is this story stirred something in my heart and I wanted more. I cant say enough good things about it. So if you need something to read that isn’t going to take you a month to read or isn’t going to strain your brain with big words (it might strain it with the concepts of spirituality), read The Shack. I will gladly loan it to anyone that wants it. Once I force Anthony to read it.