My last post was on July 18th. Its now July 30th. I feel like such a slacker, but in my defense, the last two weeks have been packed to the hilt of me working like a maniac and getting sick.
Roughly 10 days ago I finished reading Redeeming Love, and I've felt the overwhelming need to share my heart about it.
This is undoubtedly going to contain quite a few spoilers, so if you haven't read the book and intend to, which I encourage you to do, then you may not want to read today's post.
Redeeming Love is the heart wrenching story of a young girl named Sarah. An illegitimate child born of a woman named Mae by a married man named Alex Stafford. The story begins with Sarah seeking the love an approval of her father, who in turn makes it known to her that he wished that she had never been born, that she had been aborted. Sarah is crushed. Through a turn of harrowing events, Sarah and Mae are forced to live hardly a shed on a dock in New York, as Mae sold her body to keep them both fed. Mae quickly comes down with a fever and passes, smiling, and finally free from the pain of life. She leaves Sarah to the care of her less than intelligent, drunk friend Rab.
Rab soon finds someone he believes is intending to take Sarah in as a foster parent. He brings her to a beautiful estate to begin her brighter future, but upon meeting Sarah's new "father", Rab finds that there is something afoot, but before Rab can protest, he is killed. Sarah soon finds that at the age of eight, she has been sold into prostitution to an evil man named Duke.
The book then moves forward roughly ten years in the life of Sarah, now called by the name Angel. She has escaped Duke, is now living in a town called Pair-A-Dice, a mining town in 1850's California. Sadly, while Angel has escaped Duke, she has been unable to make a living for herself outside of prostitution. Hardly 18 years old, she is a hard, cold shell of a woman, devoid of emotion and terribly bitter.
Michael begins to pursue Angel. He spends every ounce of gold he has to visit her nightly, to simply speak with her and tell her what God has shown him. She coldly ridicules him, until in frustration, he storms out of Pair-A-Dice. The pain of Angel's life finally overwhelms her and she provokes her the brothel's "bodyguard" into nearly killing her. When she wakes, she is Mrs. Michael Hosea.
Michael then nurses Angel back to health, but she wants none of this new relationship/marriage. Her mind is set on returning to Pair-A-Dice to retrieve her money and live on her own.
Return she does, but to nothing. The brothel had burned down, everyone was gone. She then resumed work in prostitution. But Michael seeks her out, and fights their way back home.
Now enters a new friendship. Michael and Angel take in the Altman family, whose matriarch is ill with a fever. Eventually they convince the Altmans to stay in the valley, rather than continuing onto Oregon. And there, Angel has been given the family she never had.
Slowly, Angel adjusts to life as a farmer's wife, but she's still too broken, too scared. Once she feels that she is falling in love with Michael, and she runs. Again. She feels much too unworthy of his love. And again, Michael seeks her and brings her home.
This time, Angel swears that she's home to stay, she dearly wants to please Michael, but soon, the lies of unworthiness overcome her, and she leaves him one last time for "his own good". This time, Michael felt the call of God not to seek her out.
This time Angel does not fall back into the trap of prostitution on her own free will. Angel escapes to San Francisco, and for a short while leads a decent life. When her bad luck catches up to her, the café where she was employed burned down, leaving her again with noting and vulnerable. As she begins to rebuild her life, the aforementioned Duke finally catches up to her and treats her as his possession once more.
But this time Angel wanted nothing of prostitution and in her desperation, turns to the one person she never thought she would (or could), God.
In short, God finally gets ahold of Angel’s heart and finally draws her to him as she accepts him (Praise HIM! I cried like a baby too =p) After time of seeking Him, she feels his calling to not only live a pure life for him, but to confront her past and become the founder of a home that rehabilitates former prostitutes, giving them education and housekeeping skills. After this home, The House of Magdalena was on its feet, God used a turn of events to call her back home to her husband. As she arrived back home, Michael welcomed her with open arms and an open heart, like she had never left.
And they all lived happily ever after. =)
Man. This book tears your heart out, beats it up against the wall, and then sews it back with a dull needle. From the very beginning my heart ached for poor Sarah. I could not imagine how seeing this reaction from a father would make a child, a young girl nonetheless, feel. She had such a longing to please her father, to be seen as beautiful and his little princess, and in return he makes it known that she is just a mistake and a disappointment to him. And that’s the least heartbreaking part.
I think the part that affected me the most is when Angel is raped by Duke. It made me angry and sick and broke my heart all at once. I can never understand what would possess someone to do such a thing. An innocent child! UGH. That’s one of those things where I’m dumbfounded before God, inquiring why he would let such evil as that occur. We’re never going to understand why. The only hope in that that we can hold onto is that He uses situations like that to ultimately, in some way, turn out for good somewhere down the road that would have been impossible otherwise.
Angel’s emotions struck me. She tried to hide behind this veil of cynicism and strength, and avoid the painful things. This struck me because its basically how I got through the last year of my life. I knew I was wrong, I knew I was making stupid decisions, but I just did not want to face them, thinking that if I acted strong and bottled it all up the pain would go away.
That’s a lie from the enemy. That day will come, like it did for me, where every little thing inside of you explodes. It’s a veil for a reason. Its not meant to be permanent.
Unworthiness was a prominent theme throughout this book. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that unworthiness is a struggle that every woman (and man!) faces to a varying degree. No, I don’t have a horror story like Angel, but I would honestly have to say that I identified a great deal with her feelings of unworthiness. Truth is, we’re not worthy of what we have. We don’t deserve it at all, but the kicker is, GOD DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THAT! He died to save the saint and He died to save the murderer! From Billy Graham to Charles Manson. He died for us all, and the “best of us” aren’t any more worthy of it than the “worst of us”. Its like God’s saying “Just get over it! I don’t care what you’ve done or how dirty you are, I LOVE YOU JUST THE SAME!”
Michael Hosea is a beautiful character. This man is the template for my future husband. =p God really showed me what my heart was longing for, and that as much as I though that I had it in my last relationship, it was so (very) far away. God has so much more for me than that, that I cannot even imagine, and the thought is really exciting to me.
Voila! Redeeming Love. I apologize again for the length between posts.
Update: Since I’m so far behind on the thirty days, I’m going to go another route. I’ll pick it back up on the corresponding day of August.
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