BOOK REVIEW: When We Were on Fire

This is probably one of the most profound books I've read since I started doing reviews on this blog, because it hit closest to home. Raised in church as a poster child for evangelical youth, Addie Zierman loved Jesus with a passion and lived for Him with a burning purpose. She earnestly desired to please Him and stay within the boundary lines the church had taught her were the biblical pathways to blessing. She even had a poster-child-for-missionaries boyfriend who stayed inside the boundary lines with her. But when he broke up with her, telling her she was a stumbling block to the "call of God" on his life, she was left awash in the foam of Christian cliches she'd surrounded herself with all her teenage life. 

Floundering a bit through Christian college, she married young, to a great Christian guy, and they went to China to teach English. While there, Addie realized she no longer fit into the boundary lines. As she began to realize she had nothing in common with the biblically cliche people in the small church they attended, depression began to set in. Who was she in Christ if she didn't fit into the church anymore? Over the next couple of years she struggled mightily to find answers in the church...any church..but couldn't connect. She wanted God answers, but she wasn't getting them through His people. Deep depression and rebellion took hold, until finally God's grace brought her back. 

The part of the book that hit me the most was when she took the women from their home church out to lunch, one at a time, hoping desperately that one of them would notice the terrible depression she was in, would ask her, really meaning it, how she was doing--so she could unload, so someone would listen, so someone would let her be real, so someone would help. Not one woman did. They all missed the huge need right in front of them. Because she looked just like one of them, every woman assumed she was "fine". 

Who are we in the church if we don't truly see, truly hear those who are right in front of us struggling? Cliches are nothing when hurting people in front of us need real talk. People can look like great Christians and say all the right Christian things and yet feel unconnected. 

If you are a Christian reading this review, I challenge you to look around you for people who need you to let them be real with you. Who is right in front of you desperately hoping you will ask in a real way how they are doing? Let them talk real, let them be less than the cliches, and love them. If you are reading this and have been somehow disenfranchised by the church...open your Bible, pray, and keep going to churches on Sundays until you find one that lets you be real. God created us for fellowship in the church body, so He will lead you to one that meets you where you are. 

I received this book for free for review purposes from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group. 

For more on Addie Zierman, go here and for her blog, go here.