Angela Shears - Reflections on the Shack

Copyright 2009Destiny Image Publishers

All rights reserved. This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. This book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit. The use of short quotations or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request. Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations marked PEB are taken from the Plain English Bible, copyright 2003. Used by permission of Destiny Image Publishers, Shippensburg, PA 17257. All rights reserved. Please note that Destiny Images publishing style capitalizes certain pronouns in Scripture that refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and may differ from some publishers styles. Take note that the name satan and related names are not capitalized. We choose not to acknowledge him, even to the point of violating grammatical rules.

Writers: Shae Cooke, Tammy Fitzgerald, Donna Scuderi, Angela Rickabaugh Shears

Cover designer, and page layout: Dominique Abney

DESTINY IMAGE PUBLISHERS, INC.
P.O. Box 310, Shippensburg, PA 17257-0310

Speaking to the Purposes of God for This Generation and for the Generations to Come.

This book and all other Destiny Image, Revival Press, MercyPlace, Fresh Bread, Destiny Image Fiction, and Treasure House books are available at Christian bookstores and distributors worldwide.

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ISBN 10: 0-7684-3127-1
ISBN 13: 978-0-7684-3127-8

For Worldwide Distribution, Printed in the U.S.A.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 / 13 12 11 10 09

V enturing this second time into The Powder Room brings a feeling of relief and anticipation. This time I know it will be clean and stocked with all the amenities and essentials, and that my three powder puff sidekicks will be there again with a refreshing flow of conversation, wit, and humorreal enough to touch today, spiritual enough to embrace tomorrow, and exciting enough to keep us reaching for our God-given destinies.

Come sit for awhile with us. The seats in front of the mirror are comfortableand the lights just bright enough to reveal things you might like to know.

A s a New York Times and Amazon bestseller and endorsed by Christian and secular notables, The Shack has caused quite a stir in classrooms, board rooms, and blog rooms nationwideand now in The Powder Room.

Millions have read The Shack and parts of it have touched hearts and minds in ways not before experienced. The initial tragedy stuns the moral senses, the bitterness jabs at the heart, the journey to forgiveness keeps us stumbling along, and reaching the destination brings joy and peace.

Along with some underlying controversial theological concerns, this book is ripe for some serious discussionas well as some bantering and badgering.

As the four of us journey through The Shack, our views about life, loss, love, and God are as different as the shoes we wear and the lives we lead.

No doubt these wikipowderroom-type cliff notes about The Shack will spark a fire within you to question your relationship with God, your family, your friendsand yourself.

I ts hard for me to understand why most readers (Im told) rarely read the front matter (Epigraph, Foreword, Preface, Prologue, Intro) of books. The Foreword in The Shack is not to be skipped over because it provides an in-depth look into the main characters life and temperament, and his relationships, past, present, and foreshadowed future. The Foreword, written by Macks friend, lays a solid foundation on which the remainder of the book rests.

I had to lol as I started reading the first chapter because instead of facing the torments of an ice storm, I was actually in the throes of a violent wind storm that blew down tree limbs across power lines, and our rural community was without electricity for 10 hours. Without a computer link from my home office to the outside world, I picked up The Shack and began readingand laughinguntil I read the part about the mysterious note from Papa about meeting him at the shack.

From the enjoyable descriptions of the scenery and humorous ice skating in the driveway scene to the ominous note and the references to his daughter Kates state of mind, the tone changes quickly and I knew something was going to be revealed that was not good.

As a Legally Blonde, Sleepless in Seattle, and Philippians 4:8 kind of person, Im not a hand-me-the-tissue-box Titanic or Braveheart fan.

Angela, I agreethe Foreword is definitely huge in this one. An absolute must-read!

Then we have the first chapter. It drew me right in, I must say. Always a fan of slapstick, I enjoyed the magnificent wipe-out on the ice, especially with the vengeful tree looking on. Hey, I laugh because I sympathize.

Things look pretty normal on the surface in this chapter: Macks chat with his wife and little routines are nothing special on the whole. Yet little hints crop up into view, popping out of their hiding places somewhere below the surface hints that all is not right with this mans world. The note in the mailbox drags up some dark moments before Mack pushes them back down again.

In short, the first chapters attraction is more than just some humorous narration. Whispers of more than meets the eye are weaving into this story already, making me oh so curious about what is really going on.

Color me blonde (Nice n Easy #104). I knew I was picking up a fictional work but the Foreword and Chapter One read like non-fiction, so I was back and forth trying to figure it out. Real person William Paul Young authors the book while Willie, a fictional friend of the fictional main character writes the Foreword. Young and his editors describe the work as realistic fiction; true, but fictionalized in its account of the authors life. Hmmm.

As a mother, and knowing the premise of the book, it was hard enough to pick up. The day I brought my newborn son, my first and only child home from the hospital, we received a telephone call from a man who didnt identify himself but seemed to know us. He asked about the baby by name, congratulated us, and then started to ask personal questions like, where is he now? Thinking it odd but not wanting to appear as though I didnt recognize his voice, I told him he was on his fathers lap, that we were enjoying our first day together as a family after my long stay in the hospital. Suddenly, the man made sexual reference about what we could do to our precious infant. We hung up and dialed 911 who traced the call to a telephone booth in a seedy part of the city. The pedophile had probably retrieved our names from the birth announcement in the paper and then looked up our listed telephone number. Of course that would mean he had our address too, and terror struck my heart. For weeks, months, I kept every window locked, terrified that he would try to hurt my baby. Everything for a while had a dot, dot, dot after it.