That book changed my life.
I was a Christian before that - I thought!
It was 1973. My idea of God before that was vague and truthfully, I really couldn't see how He could be every place at once. I was working with a girl and told her about some of the personal problems I was having. She brought me that book and said "read this". I read into it a ways and decided it was depressing and who wanted to read about concentration camps. I knew about them and they were awful but I didn't want to read about them. I brought it back to her. "Did you read it?" "Well, kinda" I said. ""You didn't read it - take it back and read it Diane." So I did - I read and read and finished the book. I read about Corrie in the concentration camp and how she was stripped naked in a line of other people just like her, but she had her little Bible on a string around her neck. She knew it would be sure death when she got to the guard and he saw the Bible. But he motioned her on through never seeing the Bible. I read about Corrie reading the Bible in a single shaft of light in her cell, standing up on her cot to take advantage of the last light. That was just a couple incidents in an entire book of her life in the concentration camp and how God was with her.
After that book my girls and I had a rough time. My first marriage ended in tragedy. But I always knew that just like Corrie ten Boom God was with me, He was real, He was as close as my breath. And I still do.
