I know I have. More than once in my adult life I have complained about what I was enduring, shaken my fist at God and said, “I don’t remember applying for the job as the new Job!” What I was enduring was unnecessary and awful.
Thoughout these struggles, I have read and re-read the book of Job trying to get a better of understanding of the whole concept of how to handle “when bad things happen to good people”. I’m the good person and have endured the bad situations of unemployment (2x), miscarriage (multiple times) and my MS disability (on-going). I’ve gotten the lousy late at night phone call informing me of the passing of my Dad and arrived at Matt’s Dad’s bedside just a few minutes too late.
But I would always walk away from my reading and praying without any real clarity. I just couldn’t make sense of it at all. It just seemed to me God was being mean and punishing me. I was much like Job – I didn’t think I had done anything ‘wrong’ but still I was enduring such pain.
You know what I mean because I know you (all of us) have had those moments when we know, just know, God is asking more of us than we can possibly handle! It is all too much.
Author Regina Doman, well-known Catholic writer and head of Chesterton Press knows this all too well. And in response to her own pain, she didn’t whine and complain as I am prone to do. Rather she put pen to paper and gave all of us an amazing gift in her retelling of The Story of Job.
I picked up my own copy this past summer when I saw Regina at a conference. It spent several weeks on the bookshelf before I picked it up to read. It is not a long book, less than 50 pages! It even has great illustrations by Ben Hatke (of Zita the Spacegirl fame).
Immediately (and I mean immediately) after finishing this book I felt as if a weight was being lifted from my shoulders and my soul. In those short few pages, Regina told the familiar story of Job in such a way that my own struggles began to make a little more sense to me. I couldn’t wait to tell everyone in my family about it and it was now required reading (and re-reading) in the Watkins’ house.
For my older children, they also had lightbulb moments and a better understanding of just who and how God is. My younger kids read it and loved the illustrations more than the message. But in the end, my whole family knows the important message Job wants us to know…..which I don’t want to give away. But as a hint, I’ll quote the book:
“And God came.”
And so He did.
If you are looking for a wonderful Christmas present to give, I highly recommend this little gift of a book or really any of the other great books available at:
