The Shack Book Review

I know, another book review. I loved the The Shack! I'm sure everyone else read it a long time ago, but I just got to it. I loved the way it personified God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It made them so personable and so much more understandable.

You know, when I think back, there was a long time I avoided my birthmothering experience, the way Mack avoided the Shack. I didn't talk about it openly. I kept the secret. I grieved all alone. I didn't externally acknowledge the birthdays, the anniversary dates.

But like Mack, I didn't have to acknowledge them. They found me. My own biological clock reminded me of her on her birthday, at holiday time and all the times in between. It wasn't something I had to remember to do.

About seven years into his Great Sadness, Mack gets invited to go back to the Shack. To go back into his pain. Instead of running away from it and denying it, God invites him to embrace it and really drill down into it.

It wasn't until I saw a counselor in college that I really started to face my stuff. To really see it and acknowledge it for what it was. It may have seemed easier for Mack to resist going back to the Shack, but he was desperate for a way out of his Great Sadness, for a way back to living life with his family. Desperate enough to do something crazy like trudge all the way back up that mountain to face his worst fears.

Birthmothering is like that. As painful as it is, God invites us to embrace the hurt, embrace the sadness and trust him with it. God met Mack at the Shack in a big way. In a real way. He can and will do the same for you if you let him.

Where are you today? Are you walking in freedom? Or are you still stuck in sadness and pain?

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