"Waking Up In Heaven" by Crystal Leigh McVea~Disappointing

SUMMARY :

Someday soon, one of my precious three-year-old twins is going to ask me the question “Mommy, what happened to you when you died?”

Someday they will overhear me telling my story to someone and want to know more about it. They will look at me with their big, innocent eyes and try to make sense of what they’re hearing. It isn’t always easy explaining what happened even to adults, so how am I going to explain it to my kids?

There is so much I want to share with them, so much I want them to know. You see, my story is one of hope and forgiveness and salvation, and of the glorious healing power of God’s presence. It’s the story of what I saw and what I learned when, during a hospital stay, I left my body for nine minutes and went to heaven and stood before God. And it’s the story of how, when I came back to Earth, my life was profoundly and permanently changed— changed down to the very core of my being.

But it is also a story that, for the longest time, I didn’t want to tell.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Publisher: Howard Books

Publication date: 4/2/2013

Pages: 245

Price:  $17.50
Author:  Crystal McVea
Purchase:  Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Other


ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND CO-WRITERS:

Crystal Leigh McVea was born in southwest Oklahoma and still lives there today. She is a schoolteacher and has four lovely children. Crystal and her husband Virgil, a US Army veteran, are devout Christians and active in their local church.

Alex Tresniowski is a former human-interest writer at People and has written several books, most notably The Vendetta, which was purchased by Universal Studios and used as a basis for the movie Public Enemies. His most recent book, An Invisible Thread, has spent more than twenty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Laura Schroff is a former advertising executive who has helped launch three of the most successful start-ups in Time Inc. history—InStyle, Teen People, and People StyleWatch. Schroff has also worked as the New York Division Manager at People magazine and Associate Publisher at Brides. She lives in New York City.

THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

I wish I could say that this is a book I found uplifting and convincing in terms of a woman's leaving this life for a brief time to visit the "other side" and to see and experience the Divine.  I'm sorry to say, it was a book that felt amateurish, and flat-footed.  I was not only left unimpressed, but I was also discouraged and disgusted by some of the content.   It concerns and angers me when people seek to lead the public on with stories concocted around a hot item such as an "after life experience," and don't really have the goods.

Most of this book is a hanging out of dirty laundry about the author's background of incest and abuse, and her continuation of self-abuse.  It has every form of dysfunction one could place on a pitiful child and family, told in fine detail.  This seems to be the focus of the book, much more than the uplifting part about the author's journey to the other side and her visit with spiritual beings with messages to change her life.

I grew so turned off by the many chapters spent disclosing her aberrant life and her own bad/destructive behaviors.  So much so, the small bit she does disclose about her time in "heaven" is sullied in my opinion by the surrounding mass of personal (sewage) destruction.  

This isn't a book to give one hope and heart.  It's not a book I would share with a friend or family member.  It's a chronicle of a life of sin and degradation in full Technicolor...merely shaded by a few moments of a visitation with saving grace.  There is very little of the hope and redeeming quality of that glimpse into the Light.  Too much darkness overwhelms this small book.

I think the co-writers of this author's story should have advised her to take a different tact.  A more spiritually lightening story with her sad life included (the flip side of the one written) would have been much better. 

I fear the reality of her "visitation" just wasn't strong enough to really carry a book.


I wonder if I make myself clear here.  It's the difference between a person whining about how they got punched in the face, broke their arm, then cut their own finger off, and then found a way to get an education;

and a person who tells you their life was difficult but they found a God who loved them and showed them how to overcome it all through love.

It's how you say it and where you place the focus. 

Can't recommend this one...

Deborah/TheBookishDame

"Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife" by Eben Alexander, MD ~ Lacks Umph!

Summary : 

A SCIENTIST’S CASE FOR THE AFTERLIFE

Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. A highly trained neurosurgeon, Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.

Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human—shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then, as his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back.

Alexander’s recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.

Alexander’s story is not a fantasy. Before he underwent his journey, he could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. Today Alexander is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition.

This story would be remarkable no matter who it happened to. That it happened to Dr. Alexander makes it revolutionary. No scientist or person of faith will be able to ignore it. Reading it will change your life.

Particulars of the Book :
Publisher:  Simon and Schuster
Pages:  196
Genre:  Nonfiction
 
About Dr. Alexander :
Eben Alexander, M.D., has been an academic neurosurgeon for the last twenty-five years, including fifteen years at the Brigham & Women’s and the Children’s Hospitals and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Visit him at http://LifeBeyondDeath.net.


The Bookish Dame Reviews :
I wanted very much to find something special about this book, and bought it for my Kindle with great anticipation this weekend.  Sadly, I found it disappointing.  While there are certainly many redeeming qualities to the book in terms of a biographical profile of him and his family, telling us about the "other side" or "out there," as Dr. Eben refers to it, isn't one of them in whole.  There's really nothing new to be learned in the book if you've ever read anything about Near Death Experiences.  In fact, this man's story isn't as exciting as many I've already read.

What struck me about the book is that it's an apology of sorts.  Dr. Alexander sets about to tell us his life story accompanied by his experience as a desperately ill man, comatose and then experiencing his meeting with "beings" and God (whom he calls "Om") in the "out there."   Then, he tells of how scientists and the medical profession should believe him based on theories which would be difficult for the lay person to understand. It took some real concentration on my part to understand his explanations, and I couldn't tell you exactly what he meant, though I can give it a ball park try.  He completely lost me in this second section of his book.

I felt the book was a sort of conceit, if you will.  A person's saying, and he did, by the way in so many words, and I paraphrase: "I know this sounds like I'm saying I'm special...but I am unique.  I got to experience something nobody else ever has. Even other NDE's haven't experienced it in the same way...."   He actually made this sort of statement a couple of times which undermined his story, in my mind. 

His descriptions of the other side seemed infantile and not well developed; i.e., a beautiful girl on a butterfly wing, an earthworm view, people frolicking and dancing in circles in a grassy meadow in plain clothes, bright flying objects in the clouds.  This is the stuff of every child's kindergarten picture. 

Other than the universal messages we have heard from other NDE people's experiences:
You are not alone,  You are loved and cherished, You can do no wrong, You have nothing to fear. 
And that God is always near and here with us, there was nothing new or amazing about Dr. Alexander's visit or his message to us.   I believe in the divine spirit of God, so I believe we all have the opportunity to see and know Him.  I don't discount Dr. Eben's message, but his telling lacked something real.

I know I sound angry.  I don't mean to be angry, I'm just disappointed.  I was expecting something different and more profound, I guess.  And it bothered me that he spent such a goodly amount of time in his book trying to convince a scientific/medical community of the truth of his "visit" when he had made a point of saying that his point was to send a message of spiritual significance.

This is a book best borrowed from the library or waited for in paperback.   If you've read any other books by those who've been to the other side, you'll have read Dr. Alexander's book, except the others will most likely give you more insightful and spirit-building information.


2.5 stars                       Deborah/TheBookishDame