Slouching City had once been a magnificent place as its
residents cleverly made smart machines to do the work for
them. As the people enjoyed the comforts of life, no one
seemed to do any maintenance. Now, only weeds and ivy
flourished while their buildings crumbled into ruins. Only
a few people in Slouching City remembered the King of Love
and His Son the Servant, although a few remnants of his
songs lingered in their memories. Celeste wanted to
remember more of the songs and she was thrilled to find her
grandfather's copy of the King's Guidebook. The more she
read, the more she yearned to learn more and soon she was
able to set off on the journeys to the King's City.
Meanwhile in Upright Village, Peter had been raised since
childhood by his family to go to the Gathering Hut each
week and to follow all the rules set out by the King.
Despite the fact that many people stayed there all their
lives, Upright Village had only been meant to be a
temporary stop. Yet, the residents there focused on making
it a clean place, even though it had no water. Thirsting
for more, Peter found that people in his village had only
been taught selected parts of the King's guidebook and set
out to find the King's City, despite his heavy burdens.
After starting on their travels, Celeste and Peter meet and
enjoyed finding out they had similar interests. After
falling in love, they are joined in a special ceremony
where they are physically attached by three-stranded
bracelets in a cord, representing their shared strength,
love and promise of commitment. Their Guide points out
that their cords of commitment would reflect how they are
doing in their married life: giving feelings of comfort or
badly chaffing them. If cut, they would be left with
terrible painful wounds. What would the future hold for
them on their journey?
Doing an interesting variation on Paul Bunyan's classic
Pilgrim's Progress, Annie Wald has penned a thoughtful
guide to the typical joys and pitfalls of marriage that is
interwoven with Christian principles and Biblical texts.
Celeste and Peter's journey takes them through pleasant
meadows and terrible places, including the Swamp of
Selfishness, the dangers of the River of Unfaithfulness,
Revenge Chasm, and the Mountains of Maturity. In this
allegory tale, Wald gives a strong message of how love can
be lost in married life and the power of hope and
forgiveness.
The story highlights the truth that in relationships,
people tend to remember the anger and pain resultant from
hurtful and negative incidents with a far stronger
intensity that the joy and thankfulness gained from love
and kindnesses and how couples can lose faith in their
partners and want to seek ways to break the cords of
commitment once so happily made. The life lesson that Wald
puts forth for couples is to learn to how double their joys
and to divide their grief by using their special gifts,
like the Kindling of Affection. This book would be of
special interest to married couples or as a resource for
pastors and others who counsel couples before or on their
epic journey of married life.
Engage for a time in a fresh yet familiar story-one of
pleasure, pain, healing, and divinely inspired
love.
Peter and Celeste choose to travel as one
on the lifelong journey to the King's City. They are
blissfully in love and bound to each other by the Cords of
Commitment. Shortly after visiting the Moon of Honey they
discover that the journey proves much more difficult than
they expected. When they find themselves laboring through
the Swamp of Selfishness, crossing the dismal Plains of
Distance, and nearly becoming separated by the River of
Unfaithfulness, their love for each other and for the King
is challenged. They must choose whether to continue on
together, not knowing if they can be warmed again by the
Kindling of Affection, or visit the Valley of Cut Cords to
journey alone once more.
Inspired by the
timeless classic Pilgrim's Progress, Annie Wald's
Walk with Me exposes the journey of marriage as the
epic passage that it is and the refining process it can become.