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Author Braasch has composed an intense religious memoir encompassing remarkable events in her life and offering counsel and spiritual guidance to her readers. Though she has had many remarkable, strongly Christian experiences, the central theme is carried by an auto accident that occurred in 1989. She was alone, driving a pickup truck recently purchased by her husband, Danny, and about which he had had consistent nightmares, leading to his refusal to let her use it. Anticipating a visit from her parents, the author convinced him to let her go to the store alone. At a four-way stop sign, she waited cautiously, feeling positive about the day ahead. But as she pulled forward, another truck suddenly appeared and crashed into her with sufficient force to destroy her vehicle and tear her body apart. But in the instant of impact, she was transported on high, met by Jesus, and floated with him to a great hall where she met God the Father and began to live in that heavenly abode with God, Jesus, and angels who promised to always remain with her.
Unlike the brief flashes of divine light and love that some people experience in a crisis, Braasch’s visit to Heaven felt long-lasting, perhaps eternal. Yet she would return consciously to Earth a short time after the crash, seeing her mangled body lying on a hospital table, her imminent death being discussed by Danny and a medical team. She would learn that the driver of the truck that struck hers was amazingly unhurt and, in fact, had rushed to try to help her. Many miraculous connections determined that, though seriously injured in brain and body, she would somehow survive. She would require years of recuperation, but Danny took her on many enjoyable worldwide journeys, and she also regained contact with her two sons, who had been illicitly taken from her after a first marriage ended in divorce. Her blessings, as vividly portrayed here, have been numerous despite the gravity of the disastrous collision.
Braasch candidly admits that it took her many years to come to the decision to compose these recollections, which she had kept to herself but which she now recognizes should be shared with others. She writes with verve, not shying from the use of slang and relaxed phrasing that will assure her readers that she is one of them. Her narrative is buoyed by varied, sometimes protracted passages from scripture, and she provides an appendix—“Selected Passages from the Bible”—underscoring some of the salient points she wishes to make and demonstrating her diligent religion-based research. Among her personal memories are constant and inspiring exhortations to fight, not for one’s life, but for one’s soul, bearing in mind God’s plan and purpose. She cites natural and international cataclysms that indicate that the last days, the apocalypse, may already be in action. She suggests that a choice must be made between fear or faith, reminding readers that God “knows the intentions in your heart.” After what she herself has endured and overcome, her faith-based chronicle carries undeniable weight and could be utilized for organized group study as well as for individual contemplation among those of like mind and spiritual striving.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review