If My Heart Could Talk

Starred review from March 14, 2016
In this intimate Christian devotional memoir, Osteen (Choosing Life One Day at a Time), mother of famed pastor Joel Osteen, describes herself as a simple girl from Pelly, Tex., who loves Jesus. With a honeyed and gracious south Texas style, she opens her memoir in the 1930s oil fields with her hardworking parents, Roy and Georgia. In 1954, she marries a pastor, John Osteen. Together they found the Houston-based Lakewood Church. "From the very start, Lakewood Church saw the world as their mission field," she writes. Today, pastored by her son Joel, one of America's most successful televangelists, Lakewood draws 40,000 to 50,000 attendees per week and has a medial outreach to more than 100 million U.S. homes and tens of millions in more than 100 countries. In unadorned detail, Osteen offers hagiography of her famous missionary husband, scriptural inspiration for the quotidian Christian, and a uniquely American narrative of self-made virtues, divine blessing, and hard work. Through struggles with cancer, children's illnesses, a letter-bomb attack, and the death of her spouse, "Ms. Dodie," now in her 80s, is still that simple girl from Pelly, Tex., who loves Jesus, has received his miracles, and believes he has a salvation plan for everyone's life.