Santa Thief

Book Review - Choosing to See

Last weekend I downloaded Choosing to See through my kindle app on my IPhone. I have been wanting to read this for a long time and finally caved and downloaded. I could not put it down and ended up attached to my kindle app for the weekend and finished the book by Sunday.

I am not sure what I was expecting the book to be about. For some reason I thought it was more adoption related and less about the death of maria (their 4 year old that passed away in 2008 after an accident). Possibly I might have been less likely to pull the plug and read it if I was under the impression that it centered around Maria's death. But for whatever reason I am so glad I read it.

While death is not something any of us want to think about or dwell on, to see the process of a mother losing her child and standing strong it inspiring. The way mary beth puts her feelings into words is startlingly honest. I felt like I was part of the family and feel like I went a little bit through the circumstances with her. She was able to make me laugh and cry in relatively close quarters. Hearing about a precarious rafting trip in Africa had me doubled over laughing. And many of the parts of their history that I had no clue about both surprised me and encouraged me. Have I mentioned that I am now dying to adopt special needs china after ethiopia? hehe. We will see where God leads.

One of the other interesting parts of the book is how she relates parts of her life to words of SCC's songs. I am not going to lie - there were a few scc albums downloaded to fill in gaps of my scc collection.

The story is told of how SCC and MBC met all the way to birthing children, house fires, adopting three girls from china, losing a child, and the grief and hope built afterwards. The ending is filled with her journal/blog entries to date.

If you have any interest in Adoption, Christian Faith, Music, or SCC I would recommend this book. It encouraged, inspired, entertained and provoked. Pick up a copy for your iphone/kindle/ipad and if you don't prefer paperless I hear they still print books. :)