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Part memoir, part devotional, this book candidly covers thirty years of the author’s life, mostly told through selected entries from her journals. Linn describes how she and her husband, Maynard, anticipated the perfect life ahead of them when they married in the 1960s. Linn worked as a schoolteacher until the birth of their children, while Maynard went to graduate school to become a preeminent professor of philosophy. All of their plans went awry when Maynard started exhibiting disturbing behaviors. The young family struggled for more than a decade with getting Maynard diagnosed and treated for what they would discover was paranoid schizophrenia.
Linn’s journal entries range from 1990 through 2010, covering the years she and Maynard became empty nesters. Throughout the entries, Linn exhibits how she uses her Christian faith to help her face myriad challenges. It takes many years for doctors to find the right medication to treat Maynard’s mental illness. They struggle financially as well as emotionally with the ups and downs of his behaviors. Linn’s attempts to hold her family together and her own health issues drive her into depression and even suicidal thinking.
Despite everything that happens to Linn and her family, her memoir clearly shows how their dedication to God helps see them through all obstacles. Linn presents pertinent Bible verses throughout her journals to complement her reflections on what she is going through. The journal becomes more of a devotional in her moments of deepest pain and despair, and many entries are simply verses with a brief interpretation. While this sometimes gets in the way of the narrative, Linn offers them as examples from which her readers can draw strength in their darkest hours. Indeed, her book shows how faith can help one see the good in bad times and appreciate the good even more.