“Jess, buy the book.”
I was sitting on the floor of the book store I work at organizing some books in our historical fiction section when my coworker evilly convinced me to buy “Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers.
“Redeeming Love” is a historical fiction romance novel set in the 1850s during the California Gold Rush. The book is based upon the book of Hosea in the Bible to capture the theme of God’s redemptive love towards sinners.
After I added the novel to my growing collection of unread books, I kept putting off reading it. My excuse was that I would procrastinate schoolwork if this book was half as good as my coworkers said it was, but that wasn’t good enough for them. Several of them were constantly encouraging me to read the book, but I waited two months after buying it before finally picking it up and reading it.
I’ve read a lot of books in my short life, and I can at least vaguely picture scenes from many of them, but there are a few that stand out from the rest, a few that live as movies in my mind. These are the books that helped me to understand the things that textbooks, mentors and friends told me as I grew. Books, even fiction books, have this amazing power to teach us about ourselves and others even when we are just reading for fun.
“Did you cry?” the same coworker asked me when I finished the book.
“Every time I picked it up.”
For a frame of reference, I’m a crier when it comes to movies but not books. I’ve never cried when reading a book. Then “Redeeming Love” came along and absolutely wrecked me time and time again.
I didn’t cry because it was a sad story; I cried because it became obvious that it was my story. Despite the setting, circumstances and background of the characters being utterly different from that of our lives, there are books that just seem to be about you. These are the ones that really speak to your heart and not just your mind. They help move head knowledge into more than facts.
In the past few years, I’ve realized that I have a tendency to detach myself from people when I begin to get close to them. If I do get close to someone, I subconsciously begin to cut myself off at even the slightest hint of them drawing away. There’s a vulnerability that comes with being close to another person, and vulnerability is hard. Even when someone is vulnerable with me, able to literally cry on my shoulder, I find myself unable to be even remotely that vulnerable and show that much emotion to someone.
This is one of those things that I knew in my mind, but it didn’t hit me in the chest until I read half of the nearly 500-page book in one sitting. What really hit me was the fact that I found myself relating to a prostitute who had been saved from the trade that was forced upon her at a young age. That’s not something I thought I’d ever say.
Though the character and I have totally different backgrounds, the similarities of our thought processes struck my heart in ways I didn’t think possible from a book classified as historical fiction. It forced me to slow down and reflect on what life is really about: fellowship with God and people. Part of that fellowship is loving God and others. For me and many others I know, the hardest part is receiving love from God and others. That requires trust and being open to being hurt, even unintentionally, by others.
Around the middle of the book, Sarah, the main character, begins to confront her growing feelings for her husband, Michael. She hates the feelings of vulnerability she experiences as she begins to love him, but he shows her time and time again that there is such a thing as honest, healing, consistent love- a love which he receives from God and pours into her.
Unlike the many people who have used her in her past life, all Michael wants from her is trust.
“I want you to trust me enough to let me love you.”
