KIRKUS REVIEW
In this debut memoir based on a series of personal blog posts, Mueller questions God in order to discover her purpose in life.
Mueller had been a regular churchgoer for several years, but regularly experienced anger and frustration toward her loved ones. One day, after running errands with her mother, who had lately depended on her for care, Mueller had an emotional outburst. She told her mother several troubling truths in a restaurant parking lot, and then left the vehicle and started walking. While walking, she realized how easy it could be to leave her life behind. She began contemplating suicide. Shortly after, she entered a new understanding of God’s power and love. Her suicide plans evolved into a request for God to take her. This plea became a daily prayer for God to reveal her purpose. Mueller began to devote time to reading self-help and biblical stories (“I was starting to think the Bible was more like an instruction manual of how everything was created and how it all worked so we could know how to use them to live and be happy as God originally intended”). Though she felt unsuccessful in business, she was glad for the time to contemplate her relationship with God, and created a new product, called Message Balls—golf balls with text that encourages people to talk with God. Mueller is detailed in her analysis of life, capturing the day-to-day progression of thoughts, the mundane events, and the small miracles, which is natural for a writer working from blog posts. Her chapters are short, and often titled after an emotion or a state of mind with the ending of “ville” (“Complaintville” and “Cactusville,” for example). This strategy seems to indicate that the author has spent enough time pondering a certain element, embodying it, so that it feels like its own place. The book takes a somewhat mystical approach to discovering God’s will. The author pulls heavily from Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret and guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show to complement her reading of the Bible. Mueller often compares the Bible to other self-help books to demonstrate its efficacy in turning a life around. And the author recounts disputes with other Christians to flag theological hotspots.
A worthy book for those seeking company, not guidance, on their spiritual paths.
