The Long Awakening: Christian fiction book review

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The Long Awakening:  what is it about?

    The Long Awakening is a riveting true story of a life-threatening coma, a miraculous awakening, and the long quest to regain what was lost.

    The day Lindsey O’Connor’s fifth baby entered the world, was the day she left. For 47 days she lay suspended in a medically-induced coma, hovering in nothingness. The time before and after her long sleep were spliced together in O’Connor’s memory. The time in the middle, too long for her loved ones, and time erased for her. The miracle her family desperately prayed for was a miracle that Lindsey missed. She awoke to a world that kept moving without her and began the long journey to love her newborn daughter, to search for her identity, meaning and lost and found love. Applying her journalism background, O’Connor set out to discover what happened during her time lost as she does when researching a piece of literary journalism about someone else. In a strange twist, she reported her own story.

    In The Long Awakening, O’Connor beautifully and bravely shares her journey to re-stitch her life after a life-altering trauma and her continuing search for self.

    On August 30, 2002 at the age of 41, O’Connor experienced childbirth complications and received over 20 units of blood, two times the amount of blood in her body, while giving birth to her daughter, Caroline.

    Doctors put her into a medically-induced coma to allow her brain, lungs and body to heal. Initially, her doctors did not know what was medically wrong, and there was no promise she would wake up. While in a coma, Lindsey suffered multi-organ failure and was close to death several times, leaving her family on an emotional roller coaster.

    For 47 excruciating days, her family waited with Lindsay’s expected death looming. Miraculously, she woke up. With no memory of the time spent in a coma, in her mind she was holding her newborn only hours ago. She knew who and where she was, but other things took much longer to know. Faced with time that kept moving when her time had stopped, she began her recovery – her long awakening.

Joy In Our Journey's review ~ by Julie

    The Long Awakening:  A Memoir is a true story and difficult to read, especially if your family is going through or has gone through a serious medical trauma.  Lindsey writes about her experience of giving birth to her fifth child - and minutes later succumbing to very serious medical issues which caused her to sink into a complete coma for several weeks. 

    This is her remembrance, about 12 years later, of what she can recall from those weeks away from reality and of her very difficult and gradual recovery of that---and of the realization that she will probably never be quite the same due to the trauma to her brain.

    This is an interesting insight into what is happening to patients who cannot communicate but are still “there” and trying to figure out what is really happening.  It is also a wonderful testimony of the incredible love of her husband, her children, and other relatives and friends who never give up on her but are going through horrendous difficulties in dealing with this situation.

    Lindsey has great faith in God but has to deal with why this happened to her and why it is not getting better, something each of us has dealt with emotionally and spiritually at least once, maybe many times, though certainly not in the way she has had to think through and overcome. 

    Praise God for her outcome, even though not perfect.

Lindsey O’Connor is the author of four books, a freelance journalist, and speaker who has contributed to American Public Media’s Weekend America, WashingtonPost.com, The Rocky Mountain News, Christianity Today, Guideposts and others. She’s a former radio and television anchor and her audio book was a finalist for an Audio Publishers Association award. True story is her thing.

http://www.lindseyoconnor.com/

    The Long Awakening is available as of October 2013 at your favorite bookseller - from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

    I received a copy of this book for review, but was not compensated financially in any way. The opinions expressed are those of Joy In Our Journey.com and are based solely on experiences while reading this book.

    In the interest of full disclosure, some of the links in my posts are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I receive an affiliate commission. I only recommend products I use personally. Your purchases through these links help support Joy In Our Journey. I humbly thank you for your support!

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