Some books are easy to dip in and out of, to pick up and read to fill a few moments here and there. Sensible Shoes is not one of them – it deserves to be read in longer sittings, away from any other distractions, allowing the reader to immerse and let the story, the characters and the fruit of their spiritual journeys to fully permeate. To minister to your soul. And so it is written at a pace to allow this to occur.
It is a novel about spiritual formation that reads like real life. There are no grand conversions. No thunderclaps from heaven. Just four women, each with their own story that has brought them together at a retreat centre, and the slow, awkward, beautiful work of dealing with those stories and seeing God’s hand on their lives.
The characters are very real. Hannah is reeling from loss and betrayal. Meg arrives exhausted, successful on paper but hollowed out inside. Mara carries questions she can’t quite name. Charissa is competent, controlled and terrified of letting the cracks show. Without knowing it, they each have the potential to minister to each other with a pastoral gentleness. They are not “types”; they are recognisable individuals, whose situations and feelings will resonate.
Through the wisdom of the retreat centre spiritual director, readers will be carried along in the rhythms of Christian practices, some which may well be helpful in the readers own spiritual journey. In fact, as well as being a novel, this book has a deeper purpose -to allow the reader to participate and be ministered to. It is clear that the author understands that spiritual growth is less about fireworks and more about faithfulness. Sometimes just turning up is enough, even if nothing seems to happen outwardly.
The book is real – there are unanswered prayers, awkward conversations, formative childhood traumas to be dealt with and old wounds reopened with glimpses of them starting to be healed. The writing is grounded in the truth that transformation is slow and sometimes even imperceptible from the outside. That it can take a lifetime for grace to fully seep in.
