The Mountain Between Us
This summer, my reading has been generally me catching books that have been pitched to me by my mom, sister, or friends. To be honest, I have been pleasantly surprised at how they have all pretty much been exceptional. I suppose it is a possibility that my enjoyment could be credited to my general love of books and reading. However, I believe the real reason is because I live with and hang out with people with such awesome taste! Anyways, this time, my reading recommendation came from my parents who both spoke highly of The Mountain Between Us. And may I just say, Charles Martin has done it again! If you haven’t read my previous posts, he wrote When Crickets Cry a book I read earlier this summer that quickly became one of my favorite books to date, and which I plan to review officially maybe next time I read it. (Yes, it was that good!) He quickly took the position of my favorite author at about that time too. This time, his words touched my heart in The Mountain Between Us.
Personally, one of the great things about this book is that I feel completely comfortable recommending it to men. By the prologue, you know this is not your typical love story or romantic novel. While it is a story full of emotions and talks about love and marriage, it is ultimately a story about a great adventure, battling for survival, and the importance of decisions. It helps that it is written by a man and narrated in the voice of one, but I think even the insight, specific skills and strategies, and life or death situation provided in the book will have men turning pages wanting to read more and see if the protagonist Ben has what it takes. I know for me, as a female, I kept flipping the pages, yes, interested to see if survival would be a reality, but also to discover Ben's secret.
Charles Martin writes like no other author I know. He draws the reader in so well through his creative ways of story telling and elegant word play, gives the reader a front row, almost participant like, seat to the tale, and, in all of that, incorporates real life and Christian values. Also, in both books I have read by him, the outcome is never what you expect while consuming the novel. At the same time, it is not shocking when the final pages come to an end the way they do. It's almost as if you expected that outcome all along….when you really didn't. I'm going to go all "literary" on you for a second and give you my "professional" opinion. I think this is due to his delicate use of foreshadow. That's all I can say without completely giving away the best part of any book, the end. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good read. Being fiction it does not require a ton of time to digest and being interesting that time can be shortened even more!
For me, the fact that the main character is a surgeon is a great bonus. (In both Charles Martin books, this has been true and makes my heart flutter just a bit to get the extra side of medicine with a great book.) Getting insight into how he views the world, explains himself, and thinks as a physician is so interesting to me. Being a future physician myself, understanding the life of and mind set of physicians, even fictional ones, is always an interesting experience and opportunity to reflect on what my life in the future could look like. I think about what I would do in their situation, what choices I would make differently, and if I would be able to do what they decide to do. It's always a great time of reflection for me. This leads right into one of the more interesting take-aways I got from the book: The importance of decisions that are made.
Being that this book is a story about the struggle for survival, many decisions that are made or not made have the potential to result in life or death. I'm pretty sure that is the definition of life and death decisions. This got me thinking. While not every decision I made today or will make tomorrow would be considered life and death, who says that they aren’t? I don't mean that my decision to not go into the gas station this stop on the road trip will result in someone's physical death. I mean, what if that decision keeps me from making a connection with a stranger I'll never see again but needed to see the face of Jesus today. Just a thought. The thing is…. If I just keep thinking about these "what if's" I'll think I've missed out on an opportunity to share Christ approximately every half hour at least. So what's the balance between living your life and obnoxiously walking into gas stations standing around a few minutes smiling and then leaving? I think the simple answer is listening better and becoming more like Christ.
Personally, I've been focusing on listening to God a lot more recently. Josh Wilson's song "Listen" sums up some of what I'm trying to say better than I can say it. Basically, sometimes, I TALK to God more than I LISTEN. You would think that's easy to fix right? I mean God gave me one mouth and two ears after all! However, I'm over here using Deliberate Practice and really focusing on spending my prayer time or really any time just LISTENing for what God has to say. I've noticed one thing. His voice gets clearer every time I choose to do this. I think that's the answer to knowing you have made the right decision. If a still, small, but powerful, voice whispers to you to do something the only right decision is to do it. No matter how dumb it looks or how uncomfortable it makes you. I mean it is what Christ did isn't it? In John 5:19-20 Jesus shares how "He can only do what he sees the Father doing." Shouldn't we respond the same way. Not only to become more like Christ which is like one of the ultimate goals of LIFE but also because it allows us to be confident in our decision making because….well our only decision that needs to be made is to do what God asks us to do. That's pretty easy. You don't have to live in fear of missing opportunities if you listen and decide to act like that. He will show you. You just need to listen. And in some ways, this is depicted in this book. But you'll have to read it to see if you see what I mean ;)
Message from the Author:
