Sunday, December 7, 2008

"Here if You Need Me" - great book

Here if You Need Me, by Kate Braestrup

True Story - a woman living in Maine with four children dealing with the sudden death of her husband, a state trooper who died in a car accident. She goes to seminary to fulfill her husband's wish for himself, and becomes the chaplain for the Maine Game Wardens. It winds numerous stories of death together as her family moves on from their own experience with it.

It is not a Christian book, per se, because Kate is a Unitarian Universalist - there is one point in the book that i literally closed it and was thinking "WHAT!" because -her son had asked her what it meant to follow jesus, and what would his life look like if he did that, and in her head Kate is thinking "Oh please, please dont do that..." I was shocked. Turns out Unitarians believe all kinds of things - and she believes that God is Love. She believes in Jesus, but not that he is God. At least that's what I've gathered from further reading about the Seminary she attended.

Anyways, it is a marvelous book if you are dealing with death or not. Its short and moving and funny and more light-hearted than you would imagine. It is beautifully written and will tug at your heart. For me, i walked away from it clinging to my faith and aware of the need of God's grace to understand why people die.

Kate doesn't avoid the fact that death SUCKS. But she also doesn't give in to the modern day mentality that death can be avoided. At the end, I felt as though the author was really my friend, someone I knew and trusted, who was ready to grieve by yourside at any moment, or to just share a laugh and a story from the woods of Maine.

Read it!! You can borrow my copy anytime. (Added incentive: the cover is really pretty.)

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