*Please note that book recommendations (BR) #1-3 will begin and end with the same paragraphs. Middle paragraphs (in bold) differ.
If you are a reader, I have three book recommendations (BR) coming to you in the next few days from UntoAllTheWorld. If you aren’t the reading type, perhaps you would consider the awaiting blessings and pleasures from reading.
I love to go where reading takes me. It is a road that has led me to so much self-discovery. As I read, there often is a whisper that wells up inside of me, reminding me of what I want to become, things I want to better understand, and character changes I crave.
To read is sometimes a journey to the past – at times so unfamiliar to me that it makes me weep that I really did not know! It is the chance (even in the present) to be somewhere new – outside of the hum drum of daily living. At times the words suck me into the plot, and I get transported to wonderful things. Even daring and exciting things.
Reading involves learning from people who lived a long time ago or who live now – people with really worthwhile messages, beings who enhance my life by their experiences, conclusions, and stories.
Reading is such a gift. I’m so grateful I can read.
Without further ado, this winter BR #1 by the fire, after supper and most certainly after scriptures is:
The Choice (Embrace the Possible) by Edith Eva Eger
I’d never heard of Edith Eger or this book, The Choice, until I read an article recently where both were mentioned. Based on the author’s article, I ordered the book right away. It is the harrowing story of a Jewish girl and her survival at Auschwitz.
The book contains priceless gems and incredible perceptions from a survivor herself. I marveled at her insights, her soul strength, her conclusions, her outlook, her forgiveness. Upholding everything is the fact that she and we have a choice – even if in Auschwitz.
Incredible read. I often wept as I read. It really is just that powerful.
Having said that, full disclosure should divulge that there are some parts and some language that are not in harmony with everything light and bright. This is the first time in my life that I have not immediately put down a book that had undesirable language in it. The fact is: I couldn’t put it down. In this case, I felt that the book’s author and message were much more important than the sometimes unwelcome and unwanted language, so I slogged through those parts with a pen and crossed out those words. If I remember correctly, each time foul language is present, the author is quoting someone.
In the words of Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author: “…[Eva Eger] survived unspeakable horrors and brutality; but rather than let her painful past destroy her, she chose to transform it into a powerful gift – one she uses to help others heal.”
And that gift is centered around the choice we all have. Even the choice that couldn’t be taken from her while imprisoned at Auschwitz.
Just a few sneak peeks into her valuable insights:
“…My mother links her arm in mine. We walk side by side. “Button your coat,” she says. “Stand tall.”…three hungry women in wool coats, arms linked, in a barren yard. My mother. My sister. Me. I am slim and flat-chested, my hair tucked back under a scarf. My mother scolds me again to stand tall. “You’re a woman, not a child,” she says. There is a purpose to her nagging. She wants me to look every day of my sixteen years and more. My survival depends on it. And yet, I won’t for the life of me let go of my mother’s hand. The guards point and shove. We inch forward in our line. I see Mengele’s heavy eyes ahead, the gapped teeth when he grins. He is conducting. He is an eager host. “Is anyone sick?” he asks, solicitous. “Over forty? Under fourteen? Go left, go left.” This is our last chance. To share words, to share silence. To embrace. This time I know it is the end. And still I come up short. I just want my mother to look at me. To reassure me. To look at me and never look away. What is this need I hand to her again and again, this impossible thing I want? It’s our turn now. Dr. Mengele lifts his finger. “Is she your mother or your sister?” he asks. I cling to my mother’s hand, Magda hugs her other side. Although none of us knows the meaning of being sent left, of being sent right, my mother has intuited the need for me to appear my age or older, for me to look old enough to get through the first selection line alive. Her hair is gray but her face is as smooth as mine. She could pass for my sister. But I don’t think about which word will protect her: “mother” or “sister.” I don’t think at all. I only feel every single cell in me that loves her, that needs her. She is my mother, my mama, my only mama. And so I say the word that I have spent the rest of my life trying to banish from my consciousness, the word that I have not let myself remember, until today. “Mother,” I say. As soon as the word is out of my mouth, I want to pull it back into my throat. I have realized too late the significance of the question. Is she your mother or your sister? “Sister sister, sister!” I want to scream. Mengele points my mother to the left. She follows behind the young children and the elderly, the mothers who are pregnant or holding babies in their arms. I will follow her. I won’t let her out of my sight. I begin to run toward my mother, but Mengele grabs my shoulder. “You’ll see your mother very soon,” he says. He pushes me to the right. Toward Magda. To the other side. To life. “Mama!”…”Mama!” I say. I will not be satisfied with the back of her head. I must see the full sun of her face. She turns to look at me. She is a point of stillness in the marching river of the other condemned. I feel her radiance, the beauty that was more than beauty…She sees me watching her. She smiles. It’s a small smile. A sad smile. “I should have said ‘sister’! Why didn’t I say ‘sister’? I call to her across the years, to ask her forgiveness. This is what I have returned to Auschwitz to receive, I think. To hear her tell me I did the best with what I knew. That I made the right choice. But she can’t say that, or even if she did, I wouldn’t believe it. I can forgive the Nazis, but how can I forgive myself? I would live it all again, every selection line, every shower, every freezing-cold night and deadly roll call, every haunted meal, every breath of smoke-charred air, every time I nearly died or wanted to, if I could only live this moment over, this moment and the one just before it, when I could have made a different choice. When I could have given a different answer to Mengele’s question. When I could have saved, if even for a day, my mother’s life…My mother turns away. I watch her gray coat, her soft shoulders, her hair that is coiled and shining, receding from me. I see her walk where they will undress, where she will take off the coat…where they will be told to memorize the hook number to that dress, to that coat, to that pair of shoes. My mother will stand naked with the other mothers – the grandmothers, the young mothers with their babies in their arms – and with the children of mothers who were sent to the line that Magda and I joined. She will file down the stairs into the room with showerheads on the walls, where more and more people will be pushed inside until the room is damp with sweat and tears and echoing with the cries of the terrified women and children, until it is packed and there is not enough air to breathe. Will she notice the small square windows in the ceiling through which the guards will push the poison? For how long will she know she is dying?…Long enough to feel angry at me for saying the word that in one quick second sent her to her death? If I’d known my mother would die that day, I would have said a different word. Or nothing at all. I could have followed her to the showers and died with her. I could have done something different. I could have done more. I believe this. And yet. (This “and yet” opening like a door.) How easily a life can become a litany of guilt and regret, a song that keeps echoing with the same chorus, with the inability to forgive ourselves. How easily the life we didn’t live becomes the only life we prize. How easily we are seduced by the fantasy that we are in control, that we were ever in control, that the things we could or should have done or said have the power, if only we had done or said them, to cure pain, to erase suffering, to vanish loss. How easily we can cling to – worship – the choices we think we could or should have made. Could I have saved my mother? Maybe. And I will live for all of the rest of my life with that possibility. And I can castigate myself for having made the wrong choice. That is my prerogative. Or I can accept that the more important choice is not the one I made when I was hungry and terrified, when we were surrounded by dogs and guns and uncertainty, when I was sixteen; it’s the one I make now. The choice to accept myself as I am: human, imperfect…the choice to be responsible for my own happiness. To forgive my flaws and reclaim my innocence. To stop asking why I deserved to survive. To function as well as I can, to commit myself to serve others, to do everything in my power to honor my parents, to see to it that they did not die in vain. To do my best, in my limited capacity, so future generations don’t experience what I did. To be useful, to be used up, to survive and to thrive so I can use every moment to make the world a better place…I can make the choice that all of us can make. I can’t ever change the past. But there is a life I can save. It is mine. The one I am living right now, this precious moment.”
“To heal, we embrace the dark. We walk through the shadow of the valley on our way to the light…Maybe to heal isn’t to erase the scar, or even to make the scar. To heal is to cherish the wound…I have had many opportunities to influence young people…On the eve of my return to Auschwitz, my responsibility to them feels especially potent. It isn’t just for myself that I’m going back. It’s for all that ripples out from me. Do I have what it takes to make a difference? Can I pass on my strength instead of my loss? My love instead of my hatred?…Now on the eve of my return to prison, I remind myself that each of us has an Adolf Hitler and a Corrie ten Boom within us. We have the capacity to hate and the capacity to love. Which one we reach for – our inner Hitler or inner ten Boom – is up to us.”
“My own search for freedom and my years of experience as a licensed clinical psychologist have taught me that suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. We are all likely to be victimized in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimization. It comes from the outside…In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization…”
“We can’t choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light…Each moment is a choice. No matter how frustrating or boring or constraining or painful or oppressive our experience, we can always choose how we respond. And I finally begin to understand that I, too, have a choice. This realization will change my life.”
“Time doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally, when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.”
“I used to ask, Why me? Why did I survive? I have learned to ask a different question. Why not me?…to run away from the past or to fight against our present pain is to imprison ourselves. Freedom is in accepting what is and forgiving ourselves, in opening our hearts to discover the miracles that exist now…Here you are! In the sacred present. I can’t heal you – or anyone – but I can celebrate your choice to dismantle the prison in your mind, brick by brick. You can’t change what happened, you can’t change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now. My precious, you can choose to be free.”
This winter, may you discover a good book or start by reading this one. I think you will find it has something of worth to offer your soul.
Unto all the world: grab a good book and read, read, read until those cows come on home!