Beauty and Struggles
by Danielle Charles
I usually don’t write reviews, because I think that people should experience a book for themselves, and I’m always afraid that I won’t do the book “justice” if I write something! What moves me may not move you, or I may miss something or say the wrong thing. But I have been challenged by this book to come out of my own comfort zone and speak.
I knew Mev before she was a liberation theologian. We went to school together-she was my “big sister” in high school. And we did all those things that high school girls would do: went to parties, shopping at the mall, talked on the phone, fell in and out of love 100 times a day…
But even then, there was something different. We also prayed together, we talked a lot about God and what He could be calling us to be, and how would or could we respond to that call.
In The Book of Mev, Mark Chimel has, more than anything else, captured that spirit of Mev-a woman who was just as on fire for God as for a great movie! It would have been very easy to write a book about a wonderful woman who did a great work in the short amount of time we were blessed to have her among us on the earth. Yet Mark delves deep under the surface, to show the beauty and the struggles, the joys and the pains, the breakthroughs and the frustrations, of living, loving, and journeying with this woman. And, lest we begin to think that it really is just a love story between two people, Mark effectively places their personal story in the midst of the world’s struggles.
This book is an invitation to enter into the lives of two people as they try to “Find God in all things”–the good and the not so good. But more importantly, this book is an invitation to embrace God in yourself-and to listen for the voice that is calling you to respond. We are not all called to be liberation theologians-but we are all indeed called. Maybe in reading Mev’s journey, you will find the strength and courage to travel the road before you.
Danielle is Campus Minister at McKendree College in Illinois.