A Book Review

How often have you found yourself curled into the foetal position, sobbing?

On the bathroom floor. The kitchen floor. The garage. The living-room carpet.

There are moments of pain when we do not decide to curl up. The body simply does it. We fold in on ourselves, knees pulled close, arms wrapped around what hurts, making ourselves as small as we can.

There is something profoundly visceral about that. When pain strips away the words, the explanations and the brave face, our bodies sometimes return to the very first posture God gave us: curled, small, vulnerable, dependent.

And that is where this book begins.

On a bathroom floor. With a woman miscarrying. With grief and blood and the loss of a life that had barely begun. And suddenly the title, Foetal Faith, is no clever turn of phrase. It hurts.

Because perhaps there are moments when faith itself becomes foetal.
Tiny. Vulnerable. Curled around pain. Barely formed. Yet still alive.

And perhaps the question is not, “Is my faith big enough?”
Perhaps the question is, “Can something this small still be held by God?”

Jesus once pointed to something almost ridiculously small, a mustard seed, and said: Look at this. This is what the kingdom is like. And Jesus says: don’t underestimate that.

Never underestimate what God can do with something small.

The girl of the title is Amber Emily Smith, but as I listened I began to wonder how many of us have, at one time or another, been that girl on the bathroom floor. For Amber, it is the place she retreats to when life becomes simply too much. She takes us into the painful places of motherhood, family addiction and broken relationships, but at the heart of her story is an unimaginable loss: the death of her three-year-old son, River. This is where we meet Amber, not with everything neatly resolved, but in those very private moments when grief, helplessness and faith collide.

The thing is, Amber didn’t start this grief journey with faith. Faith came to her in her grief. It came as she wrestled with that question we so often ask when life falls apart: why? Why did this happen? Why did their beautiful son, River, die? And she didn’t find some neat little Christian answer that suddenly made everything all right. Instead, somewhere in the wrestling, something began. Something tiny. Something fragile. Something that perhaps she could barely name yet. Faith. Foetal faith.

One thing I loved was her voice. Amber’s voice comes through so clearly in the writing, and perhaps even more powerfully in the audio soundtrack. You feel that she is telling you her story rather than presenting you with a carefully polished theological argument. There is an honesty to it. At times it feels almost conversational, as though she has pulled up a chair and is simply telling you what happened, what it did to her, and where she began to find God in the middle of it.

But there was one thing that didn’t work quite so well for me.

At the beginning of some chapters there is a piling up of Scripture upon Scripture, and honestly, I didn’t think the book needed it. I understand the instinct. Sometimes when faith is new, we are so excited by what we are discovering in the Bible that we want to show everybody all of it. Look! Here’s another verse. And another one. And this one says it too!

But Amber’s story is already doing the work.

The story itself bears witness to the unfailing love of God.

It doesn’t need Scripture piled high around it to make it more Christian or more convincing. A little Bible, carefully placed, allows the story room to breathe. And actually, for me, that is when Scripture works best in this book. Not when it overwhelms Amber’s voice, but when it comes alongside her voice and says quietly:

Yes. This God you have encountered in your grief? We have met him here too.

So who is this book for? I think it is for anyone carrying loss in their heart, whether that loss is raw and recent or something they thought had long since healed. It is for the young mum trying desperately to get everything right and quietly wondering why she can’t. And I think it would be particularly valuable for those who are young in faith, because Amber doesn’t offer a faith that protects us from the hard things of life, but one that can hold us when they come. Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Not because it has all the answers, but because it is honest about the questions, honest about the pain, and ultimately, full of hope.