“Doxology in the Mist” by Garrett Craw. A Review

 

How would you tell your story, especially the tale of God pursuing you into his family? An ancient North African pastor, Aurelius Augustinus (St. Augustine) told his as one extended prayer. Recently, Garrett Craw, Senior Pastor of King’s Cross Reformed Church in Buda, Texas, recounted his story as a personal memoir in a 234-page paperback “Doxology in the Mist: Confessions of an Inevitable Convert”. Easy-to-read and engrossing, this tale takes the reader through many back alleys and dark streets around the globe. A reader may well join the author at the “sense of wonder at how I got here” (vii). But it will be a wonder well worth having.

Craw, “a hapa boy - half Asian, half white” (10), grew up around military bases until he graduated High School. Many of his exploits happened on, or around, military establishments. He felt, first-hand, the bigotries of the 1970s, as well as the rootlessness that comes with constant family moves, and the unsettledness arising from his mixed ancestry. In the supposed successes and palpable failures, he felt that someone was pursuing him, someone outside his frame of reference. Sometimes his actions will make readers cringe, at other times, laugh out loud. Since Craw is not too many years behind me (I’m 61), it was refreshing to read about many of his adventures, both good and bad, since they paralleled most of my younger experiences. 

But the story is not simply about the author for the author’s sake. It is primarily circling around the book’s subtitle “Confessions of an Inevitable Convert”. This is the story of how God had his eye on him, allowing him to run into brick walls and hitting rock bottom so that “The Reckoning” would come about. And come about it did.

“Doxology in the Mist” will leave readers wanting to know more of what happened after “The Reckoning” but it will not leave them hopeless or baffled. It’s a pleasant read, and would be useful for teens as well as adults. I happily recommend the work.

My thanks to the author who promptly sent me a review copy on my request. I used it for this evaluation. He made no demands on me. No one was held hostage. No animals were hurt in the process of this review. Therefore, my appraisal is all mine, freely made and freely given.