53. I Still Believe

53. I Still Believe. Jeremy Camp. 2013/2020. 160 pages. [Source: Library] [4 stars, memoir, biography]

First sentence: Pick up your guitar. I didn't want to. I didn't want anything to do with music. It had been two weeks since Melissa had gone to heaven. My wife was only twenty-one, and we had been married just three and a half months when she passed away from ovarian cancer.

I Still Believe is Jeremy Camp's memoir. The edition I read was newly updated in timing with the 2020 movie release for I Still Believe. Both book and movie tell the love story of Jeremy and Melissa. 

The book provides so much more context to Jeremy's life--both before and after. The movie focuses almost exclusively on their love story and nothing but their love story. The book gives a much fuller picture in regards to Jeremy's spiritual journey AND his actual biography. Learning of his family, his childhood, his teen years, and the decade(s) following Melissa's life certainly gives you a more complete picture of who he is. 

The book and movie are both sad. Sad in a bittersweet way. Melissa's life was short--yet every day of her life's story was written by God [before one of them came to be] and written to bring him glory.

I Still Believe isn't necessarily a book [or movie] that you "enjoy." But I think there are spiritual lessons within both. 

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible