Dear Deb-Book Review

 

 

 

I have been dying to share this book with you. I’m not 100% done with it, but I have a lot of blogs literally scheduled over the next week or so. I don’t want to have to wait until all of those blog posts are done to share this amazing book with you.

 

Maybe it’s amazing to me because of the fact that I went through the journey of my mom having cancer, and I picture me as the person writing these letters and my mom being the one to receive them. Funny thing is when my mom FIRST got told she had cancer she never bothered to tell me until AFTER she went through all of her chemo and other treatments. That was mainly and solely because despite all of our efforts we couldn’t get on the same page at saving our relationship. For us, our miracle was truly gaining a friendship and a loving relationship before she passed away.

 

However, we wrote letters back and forth every week and we told each other how WE REALLY felt about each other in those letters. Now mind you I didn’t know she had cancer, and she didn’t know that I was miserable as all get out and literally fighting my suicidal thoughts quite literally. We were both fighting our own fights, but in totally different manners.

 

She had her church friends helping her through her ordeal, and I had my baby girl that I couldn’t get attached to in order to save my life and a husband who was slowly but surely starting to hate me more and more with each passing day. (I don’t blame him one bit for feeling that way. When I look back on that time in my life I commend him for hanging on as long as he did. I personally would have thrown me into a looney bin had I been in his shoes!! Of course, I was looney and out of my mind at that time of my life.)

 

Anyways, back to the book….it’s nothing but a bunch of letters that this woman Margaret writes to Deb, the woman with cancer. Margaret tells about many different things that have happened throughout the course of her life. She throws in verses that have helped her with all of those situations. (It’s like a devotional in a way, but instead it’s a person sharing her inner most secrets at the same time.)

 

I decided to share an excerpt from this book because it has been on my mind to share it ever since I read it. 

 

Dear Deb,

 

One Sunday after ordering my grande nonfat latte at Starbucks, I slid my five-dollar bill across the counter towards the teenaged cashier. She picked it up, and she handed it back to me.

“Have a great morning!” she exclaimed.

I figured she must have been in training and hadn’t learned that we pay for our coffees before we get them. I didn’t want to embarrass her, so I laid the five dollars closer to the cash register and gently reminded her I hadn’t paid yet.

“It’s on us this morning–enjoy!” She was beaming.

“What do you mean?” I sputtered, thinking I’d heard her wrong. “You mean I don’t have to pay you?”

She laughed as she slid my money back toward me. “You won’t believe how hard it’s been to give people free coffee today. Almost everyone has insisted they pay-so weird. Why won’t people just take a gift when it’s offered to them?” She shrugged her shoulders and called to the barista: “Grande nonfat latte!”

 

I headed for my car, clutching my latte, and thought about why it was difficult for me to accept a free coffee. Was it because I was raised to believe “free” means it has no value? Or was it because I think there is no such thing as free, that everything in life has a cost and eventually I’m going to have to pay?

Then I remembered grace. Grace, the gift that has already been paid for, the gift that keeps on giving no matter what I do or who I am. Grace has always been a mystery to me, how it appears when I least expect it. How it sometimes makes me feel unworthy instead of grateful. I sipped my steaming latte and wondered ow many free coffees it would take before I could understand a gift like that.

Today I wish you overwhelming grace, Deb.

 

Set your hope on the grace to be brought to you. – 1 Peter 1:13

 

 

I hope you’ll consider getting this book to read. Even if you don’t believe in God, but you have struggled with someone who has/had cancer or having been through a life altering event this book is uplifting and full of hope. I wrote about grace a long time here.