Distant Lights- My Book Review

I am excited to share with you Distant Lights, an amazing book that just came out today on Amazon written by my talented and creative friend Marie Gregg. She has graciously allowed me to read before it came out so I can tell you as my readers a little bit about it and what I liked about it and why and who should read it. So here I go.

Distant Lights is a climatic book of poems about Marie's journey through the hard and dark times of her life. Her struggles are some like her husband's scary health problems to her health problems that could not be answered to her struggling with deep depression to having peace in the God who is in control of every detail of her life but also our own lives. Some poems are long and some are short. Some poems are just one word on each line to long and convincing conversations with God. She gives us a glimpse inside her mind to show us that the questions and experiences she has can be similar to our own, that we are not alone in the thoughts that we have about God. But the question is how can we learn from our pain and deep hurts and questioning to draw near to God? Marie addresses this in her book.

There are a lot of things I liked about this book. For starters, I love how it was so relatable to my own thoughts towards God. I have never dealt with depression but through Marie's dark times of doubting God or wanting to understand God's will, her book brought to light that we are all human and we all need God.

We live in an imperfect world. We deal with those hard things that sometimes people don't like to talk about. Marie addresses some of those things in her book, such as the flaws of people at church, difficult relationships with those who we love, going through health problems that cant be answered and having thoughts of wanting to hurt oneself. Through her straightforward and honest words, Marie shows us the battles with having these things but how God is always the answer even when we don't want to admit it.   

The visuals Marie write about are unbelievable. My personal favorite when she had a dream like vision of entering a dark and smelly place. But then a red rushing river appears with no source and light follows after. She can see flowers, birds trees, and two dogs playing. God comes to talk to her telling her this is the abundant life He wants to give to her. She falls on her face because of His holiness but all the while feeling His love and kindness towards her. They have a conversation of her feeling ashamed and how God still loves her and wants her to have this life. She ends it in her poetic and creative way by saying that the red rushing waters is Christ's cleansing blood in our lives.

I also have to put it out there that she has two poems called "I said, He said". These two poems represent a conversation between her and God. They were just plain awesome and real. You just have to read them for yourself.

Some of her poems were inspired from scriptures. She either rewrote it pertaining to her life or used the subject to write about what she was going through. They are found by the title of each poem to encourage you to read it yourself.

I want to challenge you as reader to read this book. If you have ever been over to Marie's blog, you can clearly see she has been blessed with insight and such a precise way to word how she sees things. She does the same with this book where you can get a glimpse of what is going through her mind during these dark times of her life. Maybe you know someone who is a Christian who struggles with depression or health problems. This can give you insight and encouragement.

For those who daily live the life we are called to as Christians, this book makes you feel normal. We all struggle with why God allows situations in our lives. We all struggle with feelings of unworthiness of God's love. We all struggle with how to live life when things are hard. Marie shows us that we are all human and it is ok because we have Jesus as our Lord and Savior who can help us and knows us inside and out.

Just one more thing about this book that you should know. I wanted to read this book because of the psychology point of view of depression but still see her journey of where God took her. But I am not a poetry person and it was hard for me to read it and gain stuff for the long term in order to write this. That is just any poetry not hers. But if you are like me and want a challenge, it is soooo worth the read even if you don't like poetry.

I am glad you were able to hear about Marie's new book Distant Lights. I hope I gave you enough insight to build a desire to buy this book and read it to be blessed but also challenged.

linking up with Jennifer #tellhisstory and Holly coffee for your heart