Found Art - Book Review
After a whirlwind romance, Leeana Tankersley married the love of her life. When her Navy Seal husband was deployed to Bahrain she followed and immediately found herself in a strange, alien world beyond anything she imagined. Removed from her circle of friends and family and continents away from anything that felt like home, she was forced to discover who she really was - and who she really could be - for the first time in her life. In Bahrain she had the remarkable experience of a ‘detox’ from all the trappings of Christianity; trappings that were never hers to wear in the first place. In place of all things Christian she entered into an extraordinary encounter with God.
The result of this encounter, aside from her changed life, is a powerful and very personal memoir from Leeana called, ‘Found Art - Seeing Beauty in All Things.” I don’t think we really understand how our normal, every day life creates a framework in which we place the world, a grid through which we evaluate, understand and grasp meaning and significance. Leanne tells of how, in the otherworldly landscape of the Middle East, a fight with her husband strips away years of denial to reveal a deep inner wound and, without the gauze of her normal American life hiding that wound its rawness is fully exposed - and in confronting it she begins to find healing. As she realizes that she has no organized and formal way in which to seek out God - no framework of contemporary, western Christianity - while in Bahrain, she struggles to know what her faith is truly about. Not quite knowing what to do next she decides to simply sit on the floor of her apartment and open her heart to God. She finds inspiration in the call to prayer from the minaret and sees the beauty of God in a teenage girl who guides her tour of the county’s most significant mosque.
In ‘Found Art’ we also get an understanding of the price that military wives and families pay for their husband’s call to serve. Ms. Tankersley tells us of her fears and concerns, of the difficultly of living with a Navy Seal who gets phone calls in the middle of the night, leaves abruptly and often and returns unexpectedly, unable to say where he’s been. She shares with us the enormous pain of attending a funeral for a member of her husband’s team. And, perhaps most surprising of all, the difficulty of returning home after a desert sojourn with God.
It is that last detail - ‘with God’ - that transforms this book from a collection of personal anecdotes and confessional journal entries to a powerful and compelling story. God is faithful. God is present, even when we don’t know the way. God creates beauty and wonder in even the most desolate of places - in both our world and our lives. This is a book of great hope, never preachy, never condescending. In a world where truth is so often shaded, nuanced and qualified this book is a rare and precious thing: it’s a true story told by one who has lived it.