Title: Death to Life
Author: Wendy Adams
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 978-1-5043-0725-3
Pages: 260
Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir
Reviewed By: Susan Brown
Hollywood Book Review
Before beginning to pen this memoir, author Wendy Adams acknowledged that she didn’t know anything about writing a book. So, what did she do? She asked her friends and family to help her figure out what she needed to know. She also joined a writers’ group for help with grammar and punctuation. That’s the type of person she is. Someone who does not let adversity, lack of understanding or education stand in her way of accomplishing what she sets out to achieve.
That determination was forged in her childhood in Australia’s Blue Mountains. It was a childhood dominated by her father’s violent outbursts. Suffering through the abuse in her home tainted how she went through the day, making her angry, overbearing and pugnacious in her dealings with others. However, her hard-scrabble childhood, while traumatic, propelled her up-and-out of the systemic abusive situation at home.
Life was not easy on her own, though. Health problems, which she suffered through as a child, followed her into adulthood. A difficult marriage, a steady string of imperfect jobs, divorce, troublesome relationships and the challenge of feeling that every step forward took her two-steps backwards brought her to the brink of despair many times.
Until an epiphany at 45 years old when a Christian minister placed his hands on her. She was changed by the Lord, infused by His spirit in that moment. Her acceptance of the Lord had profound results in her life. Her commitment to following His word transformed her, releasing her from the angry, vengeful, aggressive behaviors that were so much a part of her lifelong armor and allowing her to open herself to compassion, acceptance and forgiveness. She writes, “He showed me that forgiveness for these people was for me because it was a burden that had to be removed. I could be set free, and if I didn’t forgive them, then he couldn’t forgive me. This was love.”
As the strength of her faith unfolds, she realizes that the Lord had been with her through all of her trials, she just hadn’t recognized His presence. Adams recounts, “I annoyed a few people until I learned to calm down so that they would stop thinking I was nuts. I didn’t want to scare them away, but I wanted to help them understand and come to salvation. The Lord showed me that he had always been with me, holding me up for this moment of salvation. I realized that it was not because I was tough that the enemy didn’t destroy me, but because the Lord allowed my toughness to work so I would continue to fight.”
With this revelation came gratitude and a fierce devotion to spread His word so others would know that they “have someone to refer to when times are hard, to leave the problems with and take over.”
This memoir is both testimony of one woman’s liberation through the Lord and a call to all who read it to trust that, even in life’s darkest moments, God is present. Ms. Adams’ impassioned narrative is a testament to her unwavering faith and a reminder to those who read it that hope raises is the way out of despair.