THE BOY AND THE BARN SWALLOW
A True Story of Miracles & God’s Comfort During a Lifetime of Mental Illness. By Cherry Picked (Chosen)
A boy. A broken bird. Chosen. Not despite the suffering. Through it.
On a summer day in Iowa in 1972, a seven-year-old boy shot a barn swallow with his BB gun. When he saw the beauty of what he’d wounded, he cried out — “God, I’m sorry. Please save the little bird.” The bird opened its eyes, looked at the boy, and flew away.
That boy was me. And for the next fifty years, I was that bird.
“A bruised reed [Jesus] will not break.” — Matthew 12:20
This book is for bruised reeds.
What This Book Is
This is a memoir of God’s relentless love through Bipolar Type II, lost relationships, and counsel that sometimes wounded more than it healed.
It is also an honest examination of popular Christian methodology — specifically Neil T. Anderson’s The Steps to Freedom in Christ — including personal experience with it in the 1990s and again in 2019, held up against Scripture read carefully, in context, as written.There’s a principle at the heart of this book:
“Judas ‘went and hanged himself’ appears in one text. ‘Go and do likewise’ appears in another. Stitch them together and the result is absurd. The absurdity is the point — isolated phrases are not biblical teaching. Context is not optional. It is the difference between truth and distortion.”
What You’ll Find Inside
• A memoir of God’s nearness through lifelong mental illness
• Contextual, honest examination of forgiveness, justice, and spiritual struggle
• An honest look at spiritual warfare teaching — what the Bible says, and what gets read into it
• What the Bible does — and does not — say about binding demons
• A look at the ‘open door’ concept in prayer — what Scripture supports and what goes beyond it
• A path where miracle and medicine stand together
• A call to keep our eyes on Jesus — not a formula
An Invitation to Emulate the Honorable Bereans
“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” — Acts 17:10–11 (ESV)
When Paul and Silas brought the gospel to Berea, the people there did something remarkable. Scripture calls them noble — honorable — for two reasons held together: they received the word with eagerness, and they examined the Scriptures carefully to see whether it was true.
Neither cynicism nor blind acceptance. Both, openness and discernment in the same hand.
That is my hope for you with this book — and with the words of anyone else who tries to help you. Receive what you read with openness. Then open your Bible and see whether it is true.You are allowed to do that. You are meant to.
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