What I’m Reading – Beautifully Broken – An Unlikely Journey of Faith by Paige and Josh Wetzel

I’ve purchased two books because the cover grabbed me.

One was while I was in college and in the bookstore, I saw a book by Edgar Rice Burrough’s, The Cave Girl. The cover sported a Raquel Welch look alike in a fur bikini, clutching a spear in one hand, and the leash holding two tigers back with the other. I mean, how can you go wrong.

This is the other book and it’s a lot more recent. At first glance it looks like a romance novel. A handsome guy and a pretty girl, leaning into each other. They have the flag wrapped around them and they stand in front of a wooden bridge. But at first glance, there’s something wrong with the cover. At second glance, you see the problem. The handsome guy has no legs.

It’s the evidence of a nightmare.

And like some nightmares, this one started with a phone call. It’s one of those phone calls to a wife far from a warzone they knew could happen. But these always happen to other people, not your significant other. The call signals the start of a journey that will span three continents, years of two steps forward and one back, pain, and readjustment.

Because the book follows the lives of two people who were up to their eyebrows in this, there’s places the reader will go, “What were you thinking?” An example is when Paige first heard her husband was hurt and was being airlifted from Afghanistan to Germany. She discovers her passport is expired. Her Mother-in-Law, however, has her passport and flies to Germany to be with her son.

Paige spends the next several weeks kicking herself and feeling guilty over such an oversight. In a novel, she’d gotten a passport somehow. But real life doesn’t get help from novelists.

After they get reunited in the States, and numerous operations and intense therapy, these two people suddenly realize the life they wanted is gone. And the big question becomes, what do you do next?

The next becomes learning to lean on God when the world has ceased to make sense and when you don’t think you’ll make it through the next minute much less to the end of the day. It’s about finding the courage to not just survive, but to overcome. It about living rather than wallowing in your misfortune.

I don’t want to steal the books thunder (and thunder it does), but it’s a book everyone who faces challenges (no matter how big or small) should read.

The book is available HERE on Kindle, Paper and Hardback, as well as Audio.