Unbroken

I don't read a lot of war books, it's never been my thing.  After reading The Lone Survivor, I was very compelled to read Unbroken when the movie came out last year.  (books are way better than movies).

In a nutshell, the book is a true story about a man named Louie Zamperini, during WWII.  Louis was an olympic runner, who enlisted.  He was part of a flight that went down in the Pacific and he and one of his crew mates survived floating in the Pacific on a raft for 46 days.  They kept each other alive by telling stories from their past, and quizzing each other on facts.  Louie started praying to God, and made a promise to devote his life to God if he were able to return home safely.  They made it to land alive, only to fall into the hands of the Japanese.  From there, he was put into many different prison camps for about two years.

Having lived in Japan for almost five years, this story was hard for me.  It painted a very different picture of the Japanese people than what I know.  I got so upset, I had to take days at a time off from reading.  The prisoners at the camps had to endure beatings, starvation, humiliation, slave labor, despicable living conditions, lice, rats, and more.  Throughout it all, Louie remained unbroken.

When the war was finally over and the men were rescued and brought home, the torture didn't end.  Nightmares happened and people were asking them questions, which was a constant reminder of their ordeal.  The person Louie became at home, as a result of his ordeal, was too much, it saddened me so much and I was so upset, that I literally put the book down for over a month.  One day, I picked it back up again and started reading- Louie's wife heard Billy Graham was in town and she wanted to take him.  He finally gave in and went.

When he was listening to Billy Graham, he wanted to leave, and all of the sudden, he heard the following words, "God works miracles one after another... God says If you suffer, I'll give you the grace to go forward."  He was stopped in his tracks and reminded of all he had gone through, and that he had made it through all of it- then he remembered that promise he made to God that day in the raft all those years ago.  He had remained unbroken, but it was because God was right there with him the whole time.

From here, it is incredible the life change that occurs with Louie and how he takes his experiences and turns them into something incredible.  All my anger, angst, sickness about what I had previously read in the book, all that stuff that made me put the book down for a month, were resolved.  I felt uplifted.

"What God asks of men is faith.  His invisibility is the truest test of that faith.  To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen."

This quote in the book spoke to me personally.  It's so easy to say God is not real, especially if something bad is happening to you, but those are the times when you need him the most.  This story encapsulated that perfectly.

Things that happen in my daily life too often have me feeling "why me" or "I can't take it anymore".  Not one thing, not one of them even marginally compares to Louie's ordeal.

Not everything is going to be perfect or go as planned, we have to know that and expect it.  I know when I get in those bad situations, where I feel like I might break down, I need pray to God to provide me with the strength to stay unbroken.