Life IS
Life IS is a brief memoir that testifies to the presence and healing love of God.
Patricia Roedema’s spiritual memoir Life IS records experiences of God’s love in times of distress.
After a fall left her with migraines and back pain, Roedema opted to forego surgery and seek healing through alternative means. She pursued meditation, natural remedies, and communication with the Holy Spirit. Her book records “dreams, visions, realizations, heightened consciousness, enlightenment, and the word made flesh” and declares love for God in brief, ecstatic sketches meant to show that God always answers when called upon.
But as the narrative jumps from descriptions of Roedema’s inner struggles to affirmations of God’s faithfulness, and between flashbacks to childhood trauma and its associated distress and expressions of finding comfort and love in God, it holds its audience at a distance. The circumstances of Roedema’s fall and its resulting injuries are kept vague. References are made to childhood sexual abuse, but the degree to which this contributes to distress that the book names is not defined. More clear is Roedema’s emotional shift from confusion to comfort in God’s presence.
Alternating between experiences of God’s love and periods of distress over her own perceived sinfulness, the narrative conveys both the highs and lows of Roedema’s experiences in emotive language. Its word choices are often hazy: it states that God “implanted” Roedema, for example, and declares her to be “eternally the son of God” without sufficient explanation. Still, its work to affirm the power of healing energy transmission is earnest, and it makes credible efforts to emphasize the healing benefits of love from one’s partner and friends. The book’s descriptions of what can be seen and felt in mystical visions are intriguing as well.
The book begins with clear definitions of its particular terms; they help to illuminate its more esoteric references, including to reiki and metaphysical healing. But Roedema’s own backstory is concealed, and references to people close to Roedema are made without clarifying their relationships to her, rendering the mystical experiences and visions that her book records too short on context to fully connect with outside readers. Missing words further impede the book’s delivery, as do its errors in punctuation, syntax, and spelling.
Life IS is a brief, testimonial memoir about the presence and healing love of God in times of physical and emotional distress.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
