Night Driving: A Story of Faith in the Dark

by Addie Zierman

How do you know God is real?

In the emotionally-charged, fire-filled faith in which Addie Zierman grew up, the answer to this question was simple: Because you’ve FELT him.

Now, at age 30, she feels nothing. Just the darkness pressing in. Just the winter cold. Just a buzzing silence where God’s voice used to be. So she loads her two small children into the minivan one February afternoon and heads south in one last-ditch effort to find the Light.

In her second memoir, Night Driving, Addie Zierman powerfully explores the gap between our sunny, faith fictions and a God who often seems hidden and silent. Against the backdrop of rushing Interstates, strangers’ hospitality, gas station coffee, and screaming children, Addie stumbles toward a faith that makes room for doubt, disappointment, and darkness…and learns that sometimes you have to run away to find your way home.

Genres: Memoir, Faith, Christian, Nonfiction, Christianity, Religion, Theology

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 19, 2016

About the author

Addie Zierman is a writer, blogger and fledgling speaker.

She has an MFA from Hamline University and is the author of WHEN WE WERE ON FIRE: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love and Starting Over, due out through Convergent Books on October 15, 2013 (and available for pre-order now!).

Addie is a Diet Coke enthusiast with terrible taste in TV and an endless pile of Books-To-Read. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, Andrew, and her two young sons.

Reviews

[Leigh Kramer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured my friend Addie Zierman's second memoir. The level of honesty and vulnerability is rare for the spiritual memoir genre. Had Addie waited several years before writing it, we would get a very different book. But I'm glad for the immediacy and that we can learn from someone who is still figuring it all out. Someone who can be honest about the ups and downs and the fears and the doubts. Addie's writing is permeated with grace and wisdom and she's an amazing writer. I'm so proud of her. Plus, I make an appearance, which is a first, as I hosted her for one night during her Epic Road Trip.

[Carmen Liffengren · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

Addie Zierman does it again! I still think about her first memoir, When We Were on Fire which is heartbreaking, honest, and poignant. She recounts the unraveling of her faith and the shattering and brokenness that led to rebuidling it on a more firm foundation.

In Night Driving, Zierman is still struggling to put those pieces back into a more coherent and mature faith. In the Winter of 2014, she packs up her two young sons into the minivan for an epic road trip to escape the bleak Minnesota winter. Her plan is to get to Florida. She is so desperate for warmth that she is willing to drive thousands of miles to get it. Along the way, her imagined idyllic and magical road trip collides with the reality of traveling with small children. Maybe the warmth of Florida isn't exactly what she expects or wants it to be. Maybe there's a lesson she didn't quite expect.

Zierman's insight on darkness is worth the price of admission. I found so many of her thoughts resonating deeply within me. I will read anything Addie writes and I hope she will continue to write her story.

[Clare Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book #5 of 2019 Challenge: Read a Type of Book You Rarely or Never Read

Zierman has such a way with words! Beautiful imagery and descriptions! This is an insightful and encouraging read for those who are "in the dark" with their faith and don't "feel" that God is there.

[Cara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a masterful book. I read and loved Addie's first book, but this one has become my new favorite of hers. She dexterously handles both past and present, managing to weave a seamless, artfully constructed narrative that sucks me in with carefully chosen details and tight writing. The book is written in the present tense, but I barely noticed (meaning that's it's done extremely well and doesn't jar). Her characters are real people. She is a real person. I will be returning to this book for years to come.

[Tony Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, not least because it forced me to look at darkness in life in a new way: not necessarily something to run from but as something that might actually change your life for the better in the long run. All the way through, I felt like she was a friend I would want when going through dark stages. Excellent!

[Andi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I long ago grew weary of self-help books, particularly those about faith. . . but Zierman's book is not self-help - it's story, story powerfully-told and honest. A simple story - a road trip - but rich in it's meaning both as an experience and as a metaphor. If you've felt the darkness of you faith, I cannot recommend this book enough.

[Cara Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Addie does it again, this time delving into a raw honesty not found in very many spiritual memoirs. Can God be found in the dark, just as much as the light? I love how she begins to uncover an answer to that question.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked Addie's first book, but for some reason I had trouble with this one. I can relate to her struggles with doubt and the evangelical subculture, but the whole book felt like a long way of saying that sometimes we have to hold on to hope in God even when we can't feel him.

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

You think what you want is a fresh start, to fly south in the winter like a free bird, to fly where it's warm and sunny and you can be brave, wild and free like the ocean. And you probably do want that, but guess who's down south? Guess who you're trying to run away from but can't?

You.

Yeah. You'll be in Florida when you get there. Surprise! There you are! With every problem you had up north, except for the snow. And as Addie learns, the trees that don't close up for the winter freeze end up burning out much sooner, they enjoyed perpetual summers and endless light and it turns out they aren't made for that, and it turns out you're not made for that, either. Here's Addie:

"I wonder what would happen if I learned to accept these silent rhythms as a normal part of faith: light and dark, high tide and low tide, summer and winter. What if I stopped fighting, stopped going crazy trying to fill in the gap, stopped running? What would it look like to give in to these rhythms? What if I learned to love my heavy heart? To stop scrambling to be in the light. What if instead I let God pull me lower and lower, like the moon pulls the sea? Would I drown? Would I rise?"

Would I drown? Would I rise? <---- this is huge. The reason this is huge is because until you come to the point where you actually don't know if your faith/relationship will survive, you may be living by principles, but not by faith. You may be following somebody's path, but not walking your own.

I was talking to a new co-worker named Steve the other day. He said a few years ago he went to Germany just for the fun of it, to travel, to have an experience, to drink German beer. He even went on a date with an exotic woman. And he was talking like he regretted going, because the biggest thing he learned from his European adventure is that...you don't need to travel to far-off places to have a good life.

I pushed back a little and asked him if he recognized the irony in that -- that he wasn't able to see that he doesn't need travel in his life until he actually left home and traveled.

Addie came to a similar realization when she was down south:

“Maybe I’m a snowbird--or maybe I’m not. Maybe all this ever was was a case of mistaken identity. I thought I needed to fly away to survive. I’d forgotten about the simple ways we are saved exactly where we are.”

When you're young--in life or in faith--you want passion, you want to be on fire, and you equate that with the depth of truth. When you stop feeling then you think God left you, or the relationship must be over, but

“Maybe faith is the long story of a happy marriage--an average life made fuller, not smaller, by the pockets of silence and darkness that break into it.”

Here's what I think: I think a book needs structure, and even in a book about authentic faith, about embracing the darkness, the narrative needs to ebb and flow and rise and fall like the tide, and it needs resolution of some sort, and it needs little lessons along the way. It needs it because that's how you sell books, because somebody somewhere decided that's how it works.

But life isn't a book, life doesn't resolve, life is water escaping in every direction, flowing down, down, until the sky sucks it up, and moves it across the plains and doesn't let go until the cloud scrapes mountain tips and drops you in a new place. The only way to escape nature's process is to stay inside all day, to keep your faith and your life tidy in the box of your home where it is safe, where it is contained and where even the Cloud God cannot reach you and take you to new places. And love is freedom, and God is love, so in your house you'll remain--safe, untouched--loved from afar and through thick walls on which you hear your own voice echo, and you experience the light and the sky through windows instead of directly on your skin and in your hair. How comfy! How safe! How gloriously coffin-like!

Do you stay or do you go?
Do you drown? Do you rise?
How will you know?

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m struggling to write this review without sounding judgy, but I found a lot of compassion for Addie when I thought about the ways she had/has been formed by culture. By American culture, by influencer culture, but most of all, by evangelical culture. I listened to the audio (which is not read by Addie herself) soon after watching Season 2 of Shiny Happy People, so the impact of Ron Luce and Acquire the Fire were already on my mind.

So much of this memoir is Addie wrestling with the lies evangelical culture sold her. Lies about her role and value as a woman. Lies about the need to fill/avoid/escape her depression/emptiness/darkness. Lies about having a clear purpose and living FOR God. Lies about how faith is supposed to look. But most of all, lies about how faith is supposed to FEEL, that faith is a feeling.

Over and over, Addie comes back to that idea. It shaped her so significantly. It not only became the benchmark measure for her faith, but it also taught her to chase feeling in other areas of her life. And I know she is not alone in being shaped this way by messages like the ones she heard in evangelical youth culture.

I’m not sure I would recommend this book to many people. But I would recommend to youth pastors—especially those who have bought into the idea of introducing young people to God through “mountain top experiences”—as a sort of warning via flashforward. Addie’s story is a good reminder that when you make Christianity a cheap sell based on an emotional high, you get shallow converts primed to deconstruct. Discipleship is the harder road. It isn’t catchy or “cool,” and it requires effort and sacrifice. But it creates a more lasting and authentic foundation for faith.

[Meredith]

I can't set a rating for this book. When I bought it five years ago, I would have loved it. I was going through all the same things Addie was - a cooling faith, a missing God, the deep struggles of daily motherhood. But we managed these things differently; Addie continues to wait for God to return, and I gave up on him. My life has become immeasurably different, and better, since I did. I wish her all the best; and for the love of all things PLEASE learn how to manage a road trip better. The anxiety I felt just reading about the ways she mismanaged her time and energy to almost guarantee a miserable trip!

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly narrative memoir, but with some personal and profound thoughts on faith and depression, wanting to escape and finding God's light instead. I loved this 2nd book of Addie's.

[Katherine Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m going to have a hard time paring my thoughts down to just a few for this post. This is what Addie Zierman’s writing does to me, whether it’s by blog or book. She open my eyes to what I haven’t seen before and makes me think thoughts never considered. And once exposed, these sights and ideas take some processing to absorb, which I’m tempted to do here. For your sake, I’ll do my best to rein it in.

Addie claims, sometimes, that she’s cynical. Maybe. I���d rather call it questioning. Either way, it amplifies her writing instead of diminishing it. I will also say that while I don’t share Addie’s cynicism (if we’re going to call it that), I think I can understand it. In my own brush with depression a few years ago, I never grappled with the kind of angst she describes. But it allows me to relate to this book in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise.

I also have to say: can we please acknowledge how dangerous it is to insist that faith is felt? If that is so…what makes it faith? If this is what is being taught, no wonder so many struggle to know their faith is real when doubt, or depression, or crap happens. Honestly.

Faith is not feeling, and it is toward this truth that Addie valiantly writes in her gritty, honest, deeply vulnerable memoir. So vulnerable that at times I felt like something of a voyeur, peeking into places where I didn’t belong. And yet by the same token, her courage invites me to journey alongside her as she strives to understand.

I like that.

I claim a pulsing admiration that borders on envy for Addie’s knack of observing the world and then putting what she sees into words. Her use of metaphor is stunning. She has a way of lifting the drab disguise of the ordinary to expose the gleaming scarlet thread of Story woven beneath. She holds a wisdom that reaches far beyond her years — a wisdom, I daresay, that has been painfully hard-won.

Something of a side note: She describes an evangelicalism I haven’t experienced, and it’s hard to say whether that’s because I’ve not been exposed to it up-close-and-personal, or if it’s because I haven’t had the perspective to recognize it. Reading this book, I felt I’ve seen what she describes, but mostly in books or movies. I’ve lived and attended churches the entirety of my life on one coast or the other, where mores tend to be less conservative. Is this the difference? Or have I just been fortunate to land at the right churches? It does strike me that American, Christian subculture is just that — a subculture. It is not Christianity as much as the world experiences it — one has only to travel a bit to see this — and I do think it’s important for American Christians to recognize that.

So. As you can see, already this is devolving far from anything resembling a review. Toward that end, I’ll declare that I found this memoir gripping, enriching, masterfully executed. It is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. Though I finished it weeks ago, while we were dragging through the last days of winter, I’m still pondering its implications. Again, this is what Addie’s work does to me. I read her stuff and I think…and process…for days. But isn’t that what the best writing does? It opens us up to new ideas, and expands our minds and souls. In this way, Night Driving continues to occupy a welcome space in my soul.

Finally, because I so resonate with this truth, I’ll leave you not with my words, but with Addie’s. She writes:

“I wish someone had told me then that eventually the fire would go out and that it would be okay. That it didn’t mean my faith was dying. I wish someone had told me that the fire doesn’t make me whole; that I am whole because of Jesus, whether I feel him or not.” (p. 150)

Thanks to the author and Convergent Books for providing me a free copy to review. All opinions are mine.

[Hallie (Hallie Reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is also posted on Book by Book.

In the pages of her second faith-focused memoir, Addie Zierman’s desire for light and warmth compels her away from the Minnesota winter and into a cross-country road trip with her two young sons. She heads for Florida, stopping for visits with friends and family along the way, and collects a number of humorous anecdotes, expected frustrations, and insightful reflections. As she mirrors her road-trip experience with her progression through doubts and disappoints toward an understanding of a faith that feels different than the expectations of her youth, Zierman’s writing of Night Driving: A Story of Faith in the Dark is beautiful, and it resonates with vulnerability and honesty. Anyone who has struggled to feel the presence of God will surely find this memoir relevant and relatable - I appreciated it and highly recommend it.

Thanks to Blogging for Books, I received a copy of Night Driving and the opportunity to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all the opinions I have expressed are my own.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you know God is real?

Because you’ve felt him.

Until you don’t anymore.

Addie Zierman’s second book, "Night Driving: A Story of Faith in the Dark," officially came into the world one week ago Tuesday. It arrived on my doorstep that night, and as I absorbed myself into it, I found myself within its pages. Like her first book, "When We Were On Fire," it took me to familiar places, hard places, true places.

Like Addie’s debut, "Night Driving" is a memoir. This one chronicles a spontaneous road trip she took two winters ago with her two young boys, to escape the darkness of her even-colder-than-usual Minnesota home for Florida light … to escape the darkness and emptiness inside her to maybe, just maybe, find a Light she could take back with her.

The book flits between past and present, and I was carried along on interstates and into strangers’ homes. I was carried to beaches of yesteryear where fire lit the sky, lit the heart, and to beaches where the rain thundered down, where nothing was as simple as it used to be. "Night Driving" is achingly beautiful; "Night Driving" is achingly real.

[Gillian Marchenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devoured this book. Addie Zierman is a gifted writer who delivers beautiful, staggering, relatable, and at times, shocking prose. As an avid reader and floundering writer of memoir, I grow tired of authors who omit the hard parts of their stories. In my mind, if it isn't the whole story, it isn't one worth reading. Night Driving plunges into the darkness of faith that many of us relate to but don't want to admit. But here is a truth I've experienced personally: A book about darkness dragged into the light, even through (at times) a disastrous road trip with two toddlers, is worth reading. True light CAN bring transformation, a light that many of us with wavering faith often miss whether in the darkness of a night of driving or at home in our comfortable lives. Read this book.

Gillian Marchenko,
Author of Still Life, A Memoir of Living with Depression and Still Life, A Memoir

[S.E. White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another wonderfully honest memoir about real Christian life, that it is not as simple as many evangelicals make it out to be. I loved her conclusion,

Faith spans years, generations, millenia. God's silence marks the pages of the biblical narrative more than I ever knew.
His silence stretches over years, over countries over generations. but its not an abandonment, it's an invitation.
It asks for our trust, for our hope, for us to stay as the night darkens around us and we can't hear a thing.

A sequel to her When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over.

[Garrett Lemons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many Millennial Christians, I crave stories that let me know I’m not alone. I need to read stories of darkness and faith and questions and emptiness. Ours is a transitional generation, connected to a past that fades with our pre-pubescent memories and embracing a future that changes faster than the shudder of a camera. In the middle of all of this, where do we belong? Where does faith belong?

Addie Zierman and I are in dramatically different places in life, but we’re only separated by five years. In a lot of ways, her age shows she’s in the bracket first exploring this new world, while those five years younger than me – those who barely remember 9/11 – are probably the very last grasp of this questioning sect.

Night Driving: A story of Faith in the Dark is a story of fleeing, of escaping, of searching. It’s a story I know so well because it is also my own in so many ways.

As far as memoirs go, this one is beautifully crafted. Addie tells her story with a strong narrative voice, one often on the verge of fracture. We know exactly what she’s feeling from the subtext, not because she’s telling us. Her prose is creative and lively. Some of her sentences were beautiful for the sake of beauty, and my inner writer burst with envy. Her conceits, metaphors, and similes were connected and well strung throughout the entire book.

And her message? Her discovery in the escape? It was refreshing to find an answer that doesn’t look like what I’ve been raised to “know.” It made me feel a tad less isolated, a tad less alone, to know that there are others in faith, my faith, that are spending more time in the darkness then the light.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Addie's storytelling and honesty. She writes beautifully, turning what might otherwise be an insignificant scene (sitting in the front seat of a car along an interstate) into intriguing imagery.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I wish someone had told me then that eventually the fire would go out and that it would be okay. That it didn't mean my faith was dying. I wish someone had told me that the fire doesn't make me whole, that I am whole because of Jesus, whether I feel Him or not."

I read Addie Zierman's first memoir, "When We Were on Fire" back in April. It felt like a warm embrace. It brought to the surface all of my cynicism and my loneliness and my pain as I navigated faith after breaking apart from my evangelical church. Somehow, "Night Driving" picked up where I left off. It brought me to the present, where I often wonder why God won't just lean down and speak to me audibly, when sometimes I feel like the experiences I had when I first accepted Jesus must have been something I imagined. Zierman decides to take a February road trip with her two sons from frigid Minnesota to warm and sunny Florida in search of The Light. She parallels this trip with her faith experience, driving thousands of miles in search of Light and trying to understand why it feels like God has her in darkness. She's even more vulnerable and honest and raw than she was in "When We Were on Fire" and yet again, I feel so understood. I would read anything Zierman writes and I hope that she decides to write more books in the future!

"What they do know is that from the heart of a dense smoke and the trembling top of Mount Sinai, God is speaking over them, calling them his treasured possession, calling them holy, giving them a new law. And then, as the people remain at a distance, Moses approached the thick darkness where God was. He stays there, in the darkness of God, for forty days and forty nights, Scripture tells us. When he comes down, they say, his face is radiant."

[Cameran Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a place for preachy, sophisticated, theological Christian literature. And then there is a (perhaps more powerful) place for a “hey, you know that darkness you’re in? Me too.” story. This book might be a little slow for readers who don’t relate, but Addie’s memoir resonated so much with me: young mom packs up her toddlers and her numb, cynical heart and drives across the country, running away from the bleak, darkness of winter and searching for God. Or rather the “feeling” of God she once had. Addie’s is a deeply honest story of a faith that isn’t linear. Of what to do when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, no answer that changes everything. And of a God who is near, even when we feel... well, nothing.

[Kimberly Patton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good stuff. I enjoyed reading all of it, but the last half was great, and the last 40ish pages were amazing. But you have to go through the first half to enjoy and really feel the good stuff... that's what life is like too.
I really like Addie. We need her honestly. We need her vulnerability and we need her precious truths. It does feel very "real life" as many memoirs do, but she does do a good job of inserting beautiful little bits of poetry and snippets of valuable words that really speak to the soul. They are few and definitely hidden but total treasures.

[Trevor Limberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again Zierman comes through with her powerful testimony of the discovery that faith is non-linear amidst her early 30's. I love her fierce courage, powerful analogies, vulnerable inner-personal dialogue, and raw expression of the human experience. Without a doubt one of my favorite books that I read this year. Thanks again so much to Addie Zierman for her powerful and important ministry to myself and many whom I'm close to through her literature.

[Sheila Pritchard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated the point she was making but it seemed a very long drawn out way to get to it. I guess in some ways "that's the point". It actually was a "long drawn out" journey with her two pre-schoolers in the car... but somehow, for me, it was too rambling - when there was a genuine spiritual search as the reason for writing the book.

[Shannan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quiet and slow. But extremely relevant.
She wrote a book about a road trip framed in the context of faith crisis.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honest and compelling. I had never read a book on the topic of felt emotion in religious experiences, and it was timely for me.

[Shy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Zierman's first memoir, "When We Were On Fire", in 2013, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This memoir still holds up well, but it tells a different story. What if things were not alright? What if we don't find light at the end of the tunnel? How do we find the light in seemingly endless darkness? It's raw. It's honest. It's moving. I admire her tenacity in telling this difficult journey. If you haven't read her first memoir, I would suggest reading that one before diving into Night Driving.

[Jamie YW · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emotional book about faith and parenting and coming through struggles and hard times.

[Tara Simonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read Addie's first memoir, I absolutely devoured it and couldn't put it down. By comparison, this one didn't totally measure up to her first one. Still a good read, nonetheless.

[Allaiynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

it all makes sense as though I've unlocked a new perspective to the mundane