"No Less Faithful" by Marcus Farris. A Review

 

In just a few short weeks my wife and I will be celebrating 45 years of marriage. I state this, not because we're better and more "with it" than others. It really has been two sinners saved by grace who are bound together. But I say this to point out, in many ways I have never experienced what Marcus Farris - Post Traumatic Growth Director for Mission 22 (an organization dedicated to supporting veterans and their families) and former Army Engineering officer - experienced. Farris chronicles the inner details of his soul and mind during his painful divorce in this 132-page paperback, "No Less Faithful: How the Scars of Divorce Reveal the Heart of God" published in 2021. As the author asserts, "God never wastes pain" (ix) and his story shows what he means.

The book exhibits the inner chaos, the mental storm, the messy soul that comes surfaces in a crisis like an imploding marriage. Everything from the self-inflicted gut-punch (so to speak) to the faith-quandaries, to the deep abyss of insecurity. Farris is willing for you to step into his mess and see the confusion and internal conflicts with him. For those of us who are "Fixers" his memoir might be a bit unnerving. You'll want to correct this thought, turn that pronouncement into something you feel is healthier, or straighten out those theological tangles and snarls. I know I did. But then it caught hold of me. Here was a man baring his mourning soul. And having sat with many a mourner, I know things can feel confusing, raw and angry. So I backed up and just let him have his say. And that's how one should read his book, by allowing the author to have his say as a mourner.

Though there were a few things I might want to "fix" - some of which the author and I talked about via FaceTime today (thanks Marcus for taking a chance and allowing me to call you) - yet the book is full of a dawning and developing healthiness that even those married a long time could benefit from. He shows how relationships, all relationships, are all risky. He exposes the idol that often gets made by people out of marriage, where it's "possible to love those things too much" (70). Farris takes the time to show how we really do lose big when we idolize any relationship. "We lose perfect unity the moment we put marriage, a son, a daughter, a job, any lesser longing ahead of the One who had us on his heart before the creation of time and space and sunsets over the Alaska Range" (72).

"No Less Faithful" is the journal of a man walking through the shadow of death while the Good Shepherd leads him and uses his rod and staff to guide him along. For my fellow Christian ministers, if you allow the author to have his say, you will benefit from hearing the cries and groans of one walking through a deep dark valley of divorce. For those who are already trudging and clawing their way down that path, you may well find it useful, if for no other reasons but to show you you're not the only one who mourns that way, or thinks those thought, or throws these kinds of complaints at heaven. You're not the only one. Yep, I recommend the book.

I appreciate that the author sent me the book for free. He didn't ask for a review. He simply wanted some feedback. So this review is all mine, freely made and freely given.