Angry Conversations With God

I finished this book "Angry Conversations With God" last night, and wrote the following review for facebook:

Definitely one of the better books I've read in a long time. And who can't help but fall in love with a book that says the things we're all thinking about our conversations with God, and then points out that maybe, just maybe, we've made God in our own image instead of the opposite way around, and perhaps it might be time to divorce this "false god" in favor of the real deal.

I was delighted to be left hopeful, without a completely perfect storybook ending, and equally thrilled to discover that someone else out there has snarky conversations with the creator of the universe!

Let me just say this... I laughed the whole way through this book. The whole way. In the midst of a time while she was struggling, someone gave the author a copy of "The Sacred Romance" and reminded her that her relationship with God was like a marriage. Isaacs responded by commenting that if that was the case, then she and God needed marriage counseling. And then she followed through, by taking God to therapy with her. And I laughed the whole way through.

What I didn't quite expect was to encounter so much of my own journey of the last several years in her words. To need, as I said in the review above, to consider the ways in which I've perhaps created God in my own image, rather than the other way around, and to consider that it might be time for me to let God simply be God, rather than saddling him with my own images and expectations.

I'll leave you with a few lines (mostly from towards the end of the book) that really caught me, some for the way they made me laugh, and others for the way they made me think, and challenged my heart:

The worship band played their usual 7/11 songs (seven words repeated eleven times). (pg. 210)

I saw now all too clearly why I had married God: for the power and the glory. For the money. I was a spiritual gold digger. It is a chilling moment when your soul is laid bare in front of God: the real God who is wiser and fairer, more loving, and, yes, holier than thou. He owed me no apology. I thought of Job's words: "I spoke of things I did not understand...I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:3,6). (pg. 220)

If God really was good, then I had to let go of every expectation and every grudge. I could no longer defy him or manipulate him. I might even have to let him love me. (pg. 224)

A new sense of freedom was born into my life. A dark, beautiful freedom that came when everything was swept away and I was still there. I was still alive. (pg. 233)

God torched my life, and it's the best thing that ever happened to me. But I don't like to say that too often. You know, in case he gets any snarky ideas. (pg. 238)