One Call Away by Brenda Warner is the memoir about her life. Brenda is the wife of NFL star Kurt Warner. She is also a registered nurse and a former Marine. The memoir details the dramatic and often devastating life turns she’s experienced, one phone call at a time, and how she has dealt with them and survived.
From having her baby become seriously and permanently injured in the bathtub, dealing with an emotionally abusive husband who betrayed her and the divorce that followed, poverty, to the tragic loss of her parents, and dealing with the pressures of fame. Brenda has experienced great suffering. Yet, she had survived.
Brenda’s story is not a bad one. It is encouraging and uplifting on many levels, and it just may be the thing to read if you’re going through a rough time and need a reminder that you can overcome as well. I did have a few problems with the book however. When I first started reading I didn’t think that I would like the story, because I wasn’t sure that I would like Brenda. I had never heard of her or her husband before as I am not a big sports fan. So I wasn’t sure what to expect.
When I first started reading I was really thrown off by her vanity and her being caught up in her identity as the “pretty one”. Titles seemed to be important to her and she seemed to validate herself through them. The pretty one, the marine, the nurse, the strong one. These titles were reiterated numerous times. They appeared to be masks she wore to hide her insecurities. It was irritating.
Brenda became a Christian at a young age and has served Him since. However in a few instances she seemed to willfully do wrong. One area is premarital sex. I was surprised with how recklessly she threw away her virginity as a young Marine because it was her birthday and everyone was doing it. When Brenda first started dating Kurt he was not a Christian, and they slept together for many years. She said in her book that through the years she had been trying to lead him to the Lord because she refused to marry someone that didn’t serve Him.
Yet, it wasn’t until Kurt got saved and learned through Bible Study that sex before marriage was wrong that they stopped because he said so! It took this newly saved man to tell this long saved woman that premarital sex was wrong even though she claimed to have read her Bible all the time when she was a teen, though not so much as an adult, and went to church regularly. I’m not judging her. Every Christian messes up, but I was really surprised about that. She lived in sin very openly and was not sorry about it, even when her Mother reminded her that good Christian girls do not live that way. And even when they came to know it was wrong they continued to live in the same house and sleep in the same bed for a full year before they were married. Though she claims they did not have sex during that time. And there were times when she spoke too openly about sexual things. There is such a thing as too much information.
I was also disappointed in just how little God was present in the story. How did God bring her through? How did He comfort her? How did He speak to her through His Word? What Bible verses did she stand on during her times of need to help her make it through? Did she turn to Him at all? It seemed as if He were an afterthought at times, and she was too busy trying to do it all in her own strength instead of being dependent on Him. I assumed that since this is a book about not only how hard her life has been, but how God has brought her through, that He would have been more present in the book. I figured that He would be more present by showing how He brought her through. She seemed to only call on God when she needed something from Him, not to draw closer to Him and get to know Him better. I was really disappointed about that. She seemed to be caught up in how self-sufficient and strong she believes herself to be instead of being dependent on Christ. It appeared that she saw herself as being able to survive as she has based on her own strength and not on the strength and mercy of Jesus Christ.
All in all it was a good story. Not great, but good. No, God is not as present as He should have been considering that this is supposed to be a “christian” book. And sometime there was too much detail when it came to her sexual sin, though she did acknowledge that she realized she has lived wrong in that area for years, but now knows the error of her ways. She has made many mistakes, same as we all do. But she has admitted them and worked to do better. She could be vain at times. But the book still has merit. She was real and honest. God gave her the strength necessary to pull through, and she has.
There is hope even during your deepest, darkest struggles. God hasn’t stopped loving you just because bad things happen. His love is unending. There is no challenge so great that it can’t be overcome. These things seem to be the underlying message of the story.
I know in some instances I seem to be harsh and judgmental. I don’t mean to be. No one walks a perfect faith walk. That’s just a part of being human. I am by no means perfect. I fall sometimes too. And the examples above just point out her fallen nature, and the things that really upset me about the book. I don’t mean her, or anyone else, any harm. But this is my opinion and since I’m free to have one, and the purpose here is to express it, I have. Please don’t take anything I have said here the wrong way. I recognize that as humans we make mistakes. They are unavoidable. Even when we serve Christ. I just wish that I could have seem more of God in this book and how He has worked in Brenda’s life. He was sorely missed.
I give the book three stars.
Lord bless you
Copyright © 2011 Haneefah Turner All Rights Reserved.
I am a member of Thomas Nelson’s Book Reviewer Blogger Program Book Sneeze. I received a copy of this book free of charge in order to review it. I was not paid for this review. I also was not required to give a positive review, but to give my honest opinion of what I felt about the book. Whether positive or negative, this is my honest opinion of this book.
