Book Review: Do You Know Who I Am

Title: Do You Know Who I Am?

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Author: Angela Thomas

Publisher: Howard (Simon & Schuster)

Date: 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4391-6070-1

Length: 212 pages of text plus ad content, endnotes, acknowledgments, discussion questions

Quote: “We are supposed to persevere…sometimes I forget why. Mostly I forget who God is. And frequently, I forget who I am in Him.”

Meh.

I want to rave over this book. I really do. The author, a cancer survivor, studies twelve “brave questions” (brave?!?) that “women” ask God, or aren’t “brave” enough to ask God, in prayer, and suggest that God’s answer to these questions is “Do you know who I AM?” “I AM,” the Supreme Being, is the biblical Name of God. “Do you know who I am?” is also, of course, the refrain of a children’s singing game: “I’m a fish and you’re a frog! Now you know who I am.”

In the context of cancer survivors…certainly it takes fortitude to be a cancer survivor, and when people are trying and trying and trying to generate the lovely feeling of the immune system recovering strength from Positive Thoughts, it may take a kind of “bravery” to admit that sometimes (often) Positive Thinking doesn’t work.

Nevertheless I suspect that by 2010 anybody who’d been hearing and reading the kind of pep talks Christians give one another for forty, or even twenty, years would have felt cheated by this book because, apart from a few personal stories, it tells them nothing new.

When we are sick in bed, while we are sick in bed, under a doctor’s orders to avoid any unnecessary talking or sitting up, then it might be appropriate to try one more head trip where we try to distract our attention from how sick and tired we are of feeling sick and tired by meditating on God’s greatness. Sometimes it does work. Sometimes, in the subtle way purring cats’ vibrations can relieve pain and listening to spacey or even jangly music can reduce hypersensitivity, meditation on God’s greatness can actually trigger the feel-good hormone cycle that can boost the immune system. So it’s not that books like this one are useless—it’s just that the people for whom they can be useful are a minority.

Outside a cancer ward, however, when we hear someone who ought to be a full-grown woman whimpering, “Do you know I am trembling inside? Do you know I am suffering? Do you know I am lonely?”, bravery is not what comes immediately to mind. Yes, we know she’s a whiny self-absorbed little girl, and the best way she can get over that is try to stop thinking about herself and do something useful. Prayer and meditation are valuable, but it’s a lot easier for adolescents, or the adolescent-at-heart, to break the me-me-me cycle by doing physical work that has measurable results.

A lot of “inspirational” books are written by and for people who have, or whose students or patients have, serious medical and/or mental issues. I’ve made this comment on some other Christian books. These people’s insights do seem to help others with the same conditions but it’s a mistake to generalize them, to expect that what helps alcoholics avoid alcohol or sick patients face painful treatments is going to help healthy people find jobs, or do their jobs, or adjust their budgets so they can stay home with their children.

And I’ve said this so many times, in real life as well as in reviews of “inspirational” books. What really helps improve our emotional moods, I consistently find, is that when we FIX FACTS FIRST, FEELINGS FOLLOW. When we’re alone it’s good to take the time to consider exactly what we’re feeling and why, whether we really feel hungry or even have food cravings or are just reacting to a TV commercial and so on. When we deal with other people, one of the big dumb mistakes women make that allows men (and sharper women) to exploit and abuse them is to bog down in talking about their feelings rather than fixing the facts.

In a hospital, fixing the facts is likely to take a long time and anything at all that gets people through the agony of some of those drug reactions can be valuable. Talking about the feelings is not an ideal way to get through the hours they last, because it focusses attention on the feelings. Talking or thinking about God, praying, even meditating if a patient can do it, is better.

In a garage or a courtroom or even the break room at work, however, the person who says “Did that hurt your feelings?” is not the close friend or helpful psychologist he or she is trying to sound like. Since this person is not a friend, anything you say is likely to be used against you in some way. If you whip the topic of discussion right back to the facts, the hostilities may consist of “tough, hard, unfeminine, etc.,” but isn’t that better than “clueless chick, natural-born victim, cash cow just bawling to be milked again”?

And in a church…obviously the only good reason for going to church is to worship God, and many people believe that good things can happen when fellow believers talk about their feelings about practicing the disciplines of their religion. But when we read the Bible and compare the adventures of the first-century church to the modern church’s choices of either scandal or tedium, what stands out is that real, radical, apostolic Christians spent remarkably little time blathering about their feelings compared to the time they spent actually practicing their faith—feeding the hungry, or as their programs grew the elderly and disabled who were hungry, and helping the able-bodied people who were hungry find useful work to do, and similar things. The modern church just sit around babbling about their feelings of helplessness and discontent, slapping emotional patch after patch onto their emotional feelings, and not even letting themselves notice when their “feelings chatter” suggests a course of action that might FIX THE FACTS.

“I know a woman who is teetering on the edge of despair…divorce…five children…just a couple of dollars above poverty…loss of her parents…rebellion of her children… [ex’s] verbal attacks…My sweet friend needs the hope of God,” Angela Thomas emotes. That, too, no doubt, but what about some practical help with money and child care from her fellow believers?

What would be brave would be for more Christian women to start answering the real questions underneath one another’s emotional whines. 

How often does “Do you know I feel invisible?” really mean “Do you know I have a sick relative at home, and walking out to pay bills or buy groceries or wash laundry means leaving person alone for too long, and letting me drive agitates person so much it aggravates per symptoms, but person is still close enough to our reality to feel better after riding in the back of someone else’s car while I do those chores?” 

The answer to that question has nothing to do with “Never mind, dear, God sees you,” which Christians of a certain age will recognize as the punch line of the old joke about what the Christian teenager said to the "date" who was more interested in physical than in spiritual matters. (He said, “My hands are cold and nobody loves me.” She said, “God loves you, and you can sit on your hands.” And the deeper message was: when Christians say “God loves you” they mean “I, on the other hand, find you repulsive.”) 

The answer is, of course, “I can be your chauffeur on Thursday.” I have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of church ladies who I’ve suspected would feel less lonely, ordinary, trembly, invisible, disappointed, etc. etc. etc., if they started giving the right answers—the ones that really express their spiritual beliefs and their emotions best, through action rather than words.