Framed by God: The Stories of my Life… by Kevin Mitchell is a deeply, moving autobiography about purpose. If there is one question the human spirit must answer it is the question of purpose: “what is my purpose?” How do we make sense of life and its mishaps? What happens to us when ‘life’ happens? Do we crumble? Do we fall? Do we curse God and die as the biblical character Job was tempted to? Through his own personal life, Kevin portrays the answers to these tough questions.
Though I love personal stories, they do risk becoming sorrowful tales or ‘nice’ fairy tales. However, Kevin makes it very clear to his readers that it is not our sympathy he is after, but rather a place to share and encourage his readers to see that from the day of our inception, a loving God who is also a dutiful Father, is already involved in our lives. It is us that must reframe our perception of life to see the hand of God orchestrating our path even in the midst or in errors of our ways. But this healthy perspective of life can only be achieved when we attain a healthy perception of ourselves and God.
Kevin, an African American male, rejected by his very own family is adopted by a Virginian famiiy during a time still characterized by the Ku Klux Klan. His story is unique in that a young black male is saved by a white family from the South. Being a Pollyanna, I begin to see this situation as a symbol of hope for the future– that there is still good out there in humanity despite the cultural norm. Kevin’s story represents this hope of America that if we can see the good in humanity and still believe in its good, we would be less judgmental and condemning of one another.
The first part of Framed by God portrays the harsh life Kevin endures from a child. However, through the power of the Word of God, he reframes his life’s story and comes out with a healthy perception of himself as a male, a husband, and a father.
The second part of this book is seeing God as that loving Father who was there all along. The autobiography seems to take a turn here and becomes about God. I can only assume that Kevin feels that it is necessary for his readers to understand who God is in order to see the challenges of life as stepping stones rather than setbacks. Though I would have preferred to continue to see life’s lessons told through the first person narrator, I accept the authorial voice that later takes over. Thankfully, the writer maintains his creative style without becoming ‘preachy’.
Framed by God is a motivational book. I am not sure it helps us to find or understand our purpose, but it certainly helps us to see a purpose for our suffering that transcends ourselves. Kevin’s story inspires. It ignites within us the passion to fight—to get up and live again when life deals us a knock -out punch. In fact, he shows us that when we reframe our stories within the Word of God, we all have a story of hope but more importantly we become a “living being framed by God”.
