The tag line on the title of this book is “Finding Jesus in Unexpected Places”. Isn’t that how it often goes? We set our plans and mark out our expectations and here comes an unexpected circumstance that once we are right in the middle of it, Jesus is all in it with us.
Datha is one of our wives who has been a part of the Confidante group for pastors’ wives for a long time. She has been living life one day at a time just like us. But she has been paying close attention to the “messy middle” and declaring that with Jesus it truly is marvelous.
She takes us through times of plenty, times of not quite enough, times of smoothly executed plans and times where nothing resembled the plans that were made. But Jesus was always there.
She takes us through times in her life where it was hard to figure how the messy could really be marvelous, and times when it was so clear that she wondered how she could ever doubt how Jesus was involved. Much like our own lives and our own stories and our questions.
She writes in an easy conversational way, one that draws you in to hear the beginning and end of the story and has you fully engaged in the marvelous middle parts.
Just as this book launched, Datha’s husband experienced a serious medical episode and ended up in the hospital. While her book was now out there, published, for sale and being picked up and read, she was in yet another “middle” of life, finding Jesus in yet another unexpected place, not a circumstance she planned or could have even orchestrated, but there in the middle of it. Jesus was there once again, showing her that faith is tested, strengthened and made even more real in the marvelous messy middle.
Enjoy this book for the truth it holds. For the personal stories that engage and for the sheer charm of the messy marvelous middle of our lives when Jesus meets us in the midst.
Patti J
