HappyMama

Well yesterday I read this book. I didn’t mean to, it just kind of happened. The day before we hosted a birthday party for twin 4-year-old girls, so the housework was done and every spare minute nursing, eating, or while the kids played in the park I read. More accurately, I skimmed. (The only book I really read is the bible. Everything else gets skimmed.)

Unfortunately the book was so disturbing it took me 2 hours to fall asleep last night. This is the author’s second book; his first was a best-seller about 2 men in Afghanistan, and this one is about 2 women. Although it is fiction, you know that what he describes has really happened to innumerable women in the past, and continues to this very day. To live as though you were less valuable than a dog, uneducated, unable to leave the house without a male escort, covered head to toe in black cloth, arranged in marriage at the age of 14 to men with other wives, beaten at will, without medical care… all in the name of various Islamic virtues. It was nauseating.

It was also a reminder of the absolute necessity of spreading the Gospel. In countries where such false ideas are lived and breathed, there can never be true political peace, no matter how hard our government and our military try to help it along. There just can’t be peace without respect for human life and the dignity of marriage and family. The Church has written volumes on the sanctity of life, marriage, and the proper role of government. For all of her wisdom, I am so deeply grateful. If only more people of the world could share in the freedom it brings.