Glimpsing God: Snapshots from one family's enduring faith through unbelievable trials
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a very personal book
The author, Rachel Alkire, has written a very personal book about some of her most dramatic life experiences. The book contains the step by step trials of her family and how she handled the stress.
It felt like I was reading a personal journal. At times I felt like I was invading her privacy when reading some of the deeply personal pages. She holds nothing back while sharing all that has affected her life.
How she relies on the Lord is the most captivating. Her spiritual journey is really the key to this book.
I was given this book by christianreviewofbooks.com to review
February 28, 2011
Unbelievable tragedies faced by one family
Glimpsing God by Rachel Alkire is a heartrending story of unbelievable tragedy one family faced. Rachel and her husband Charles always tried to live according to God's will. Raising their four children (age 7-two) to love the Lord and attending church regularly, they finally felt as though it was all coming together in their new home in Holland, Michigan. Their marriage was strengthened, and they were expecting the birth of their fifth child, so only good things were on the horizon. But in the time of just a few months, Rachel's heart stopped while in labor, their only daughter Esther's skull was fractured by a bully with a baseball bat, and their eldest son, Isaac, was nearly killed in a car accident that left him permanently changed with years of therapy ahead of them. As soon the family began to recover from one incident, another would knock them down. Rachel's faith was shaken when things continued to get worse and three of the children were diagnosed with a brain disorder. If it was a novel, the reader wouldn't believe the author would dare to pack this much tragedy into one book! The book could be just unremitting pain and heartache, but Rachel tries to keep the focus on her love of God, Charles, and her children. What really makes the book come to life is Rachel's interior dialogue. She talks to herself the way most women do, but are afraid to admit to, but in these disclosures, Rachel becomes a real woman, someone the reader can easily relate to and sympathize with. SPOILERS: The only flaw I see is that she originally ends the book after the second car accident and then offers a brief epilogue about Charles' injuries, but I think the book would have been stronger had she given them more time within the book and then discussed the family's reaction and learning to deal with the major change in circumstances, yet again. Alkire's book will make most people's problems look very small, and her faith in God is inspirational, not because it was never shaken, but because it was never truly lost.
December 3, 2010