Thin Places

Everyone who really knows me knows that I truly delight in a well-turned phrase. The gift of writing intrigues me. There are a few authors that I absolutely love and will read any book that they write – simply because I love their transparency and style of writing and I know they will not disappoint me.

Mary E. DeMuth has been added to that short list.

With her latest book, Thin Places, she steps away from the fiction that she is known for and jumps into the potentially dangerous waters of memoirs.

Memories are a mental pictorial that trace the path we walked to arrive at this particular moment in time. If we are fortunate, the majority of those memories will be pleasant ones.

But the unpleasant memories can be redeemed if they are marked by spiritual growth.

Mary has the courage to grab me by the hand and lead me on a guided tour of the darkest times in her life. Somehow - surprisingly - I am not left with sadness, but with bright hope.

There are moments when I feel like I'm reading words from my own personal journal. Words that no one else is ever supposed to see.

And I don't feel so alone.

Mary is one of us "messy folk." A tattered soul with some pretty horrific memories that no woman should possess. Very Job-like, Mary questions God and rails at Him for the awful injustices in her life. Like Mary, I sometimes experience the agonizing feeling of abandonment when it appears that God has chosen not to intervene in my little crisis. Awful words are uttered, yet healing flows from above in the aftermath.

People with turbid pasts tend to keep them closely guarded. Some memoirs are so tidy and self-serving that they never open the blinds on the windows of their life so we can catch a tiny glimpse of the real story. But Mary doesn't just open the blinds. She yanks them down from the window frame. And as she exposes the chaos of her past, we see a loving Savior tenderly stoop down in the middle of it all - and start cleaning up.

She takes her mask off. And puts a face on Jesus.

Mary is the Nicole Nordeman of Christian authors. No Christian-ese spoken. Raw, passionate, honest, and real. Just the undressed-up truth of divine grace. Words that jar me out of my comfort zone.

After reading this book, I feel like one who has just returned from a mission trip to a third world country. I’ve beheld things that I knew, in theory, happened or existed elsewhere, but not within my little sphere. That feeling of being completely humbled and changed. An inexplicable change. One of introspection. One of gratefulness for what I have. For what I’ve been through. For the calamities in life that have turned around and worked in my favor. And for those that didn’t work in my favor, but worked in me for good nevertheless.

It is a story of redemption in progress that you will not forget. And maybe it will help you begin to see that same redemption at work in your life.