I will admit: this is not the kind of book you want to have to read. Storms and shipwrecks, disasters of any kind are not the kinds of things I like to dwell on. Preparing for a disaster is not a priority for me. I prefer, instead, to pretend disaster won’t happen to me, even though it already has.
I wish I had had this resource years ago.
In How to Survive a Shipwreck: Help is on the Way and Love is Already Here, Jonathan Martin uses his own experience with a crumbling life as the basis for a guide through the wreckage. It is more hopeful than it might sound.
But it’s also deep and a tiny bit painful. Martin does not provide easy solutions or sweet suggestions. It is a guide full of words like “death” as well “resurrection,” “letting go” and “holding on.” It is the baring of a soul who found out that he couldn’t keep his world from falling apart and he couldn’t put it together without help.
So many words moved me, but here is one passage that sets the tone for the entire book:
But it does not really matter how you got here or why; and it doesn’t really matter if it was God or the devil or yourself or some ancient chaos that spilled up from the bottom of the sea. What matters now is that you are drowning, and the world you loved before is not your world any longer. The questions of why and how are less pressing than the reality that is your lungs filling with water now. Philosophy and theology won’t help you much here, because what you believe existentially about storms or oceans or drowning won’t make you stop drowning. Religion won’t do you much good down here, because beliefs can’t keep you warm when you’re twenty thousand leagues beneath the sea. …
The shipwreck is upon you. And there is no going back to the life you had.
The waters that drown are the waters that save.” (p. 20-21)
I read this book while a series of minor storms hit, leading up to a more devastating one. Martin’s words offer comfort as well as encouragement to not be afraid of the fallout. Everything might fall apart, but that is not the end of everything. And, eventually, good can come from it.
The surprise on the other side of the shipwreck is that, while your capacity for pain proved to be far beyond your wildest reckoning, now you have a capacity to feel everything deeper. You are capable of a depth of empathy and compassion that would have been unthinkable before.” (p. 194)
Martin’s book is a must-read for anyone attempting to navigate one of life’s many storms, or for anyone who is helping someone else navigate one. Take it slow and let the words seep into your soul.
If you know someone who is dealing with grief, especially the loss of a child, this is an gut-level honest account of what that’s like. And even if that kind of grief hasn’t reached your circle of family and friends yet, it’s still worth reading. Bring the tissues.
If you feel the nudge for something more in your life, Allen’s book can help you discover your unique role in God’s kingdom. And she does it with encouragement and grace and her own admissions of fear and failure.