What Are the Odds?

ISBN: 978-1-7342834-0-2

It is not often that one reads autobiographies of living people–or at least it seems that it takes death to make people who have written an autobiography worthy of having written something that is notable. Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame, however, is not such a case because his book stands as, perhaps, the most bizarre and sincere work simultaneously that one could endeavor to read in the modern world.

Mr. Lindell does not hide the fact that he was once a crack cocaine addict. He was also a gambling addict, and probably also an adrenaline addict. As can be imagined, this gets Mr. Lindell into some serious scrapes up to and including having a drug dealer that belongs to some Mexican cartel holding a machete at his throat in some seedy area of Mexico. This, as one might imagine, is about as bad as it sounds, and it is here that Mr. Lindell begins his exposition which, in terms of grabbing the reader’s attention, does so. Shortly after the machete is applied to Mr. Lindell, his cover story to these dangerous people is in peril of being exposed as an outright fabrication although the cause of this fabrication is that Mr. Lindell forgot or overlooked the small packet of coke that threated to make itself known due to a cigarette being pulled out of his shirt pocket. They say smoking is hazardous to your health, after all.

From here, we are taken back into Mr. Lindell’s life through the twists and turns and ups and downs that his existence has entailed. We learn that he was a bar owner who really was more concerned with having a family than a bar. The family were the customers who came to the bar. Unfortunately, this often meant that Mr. Lindell overlooked his actual family, which is a theme throughout the book. Eventually, this overlooking winds up costing him his wife, and in no small way, one feels that it probably also alienated his children who, after awhile, are no longer in his custody as his spiral into cocaine madness continues.

At the same time, Mr. Lindell keeps receiving premonitions and messages which, as his life attests to, tend to come true. Mr. Lindell attributes these messages to God and while that is not unusual for most of those who use cocaine, what is unusual is that Mr. Lindell’s messages seem to come into reality into fulfillments. The biggest theme is that one day, Mr. Lindell would have an important “platform” that was also important to God. The phrase “the son of man had no place to rest his head”, comes to mind as perhaps an ironic commentary on a business which is founded on nothing other than pillows. Maybe God has a sense of humor, or perhaps He simply wanted a lot of people through Mike Lindell to have a place to rest their head for their specific dreams.

The majority of the narrative involves Mike Lindell receiving messages from God in some serious, totally improbable way, and then Mr. Lindell more or less somewhat discarding those messages until a series of absolutely insane events transpire. MyPillow is a success, in no small way, according to Mr. Lindell’s exposition, because God was threatening to kill him if he did not stop doing crack and get to work.

At the very least, this book discusses the divergence and confluence of fate and free will and where divine intervention lies and the patience of God in such matters. Mr. Lindell eventually finds “Jesus” and feels that he has a moment where he truly releases much of his traumatic past as he begins to realize that Jesus was there all along. The only thing Mr. Lindell does not realize is that the relationship he seeks to have with a love interest in part because of her relationship with Jesus is unusual in the sense that his experiences which he attributes to Jesus and his relationship therewith is, in fact, all ready extraordinary. On some level, Mr. Lindell must view all the things that have happened in his life as being somehow “not tight with Jesus” except that it is clear through reading the exposition about the only entities capable of slowing Mr. Lindell down would have to be supernatural. Of course, love is one of those gifts that we all have trouble seeing when it comes to ourselves perhaps because though we may be compassionate in a thousand ways to others, we are not so when it comes to our own self.

Mr. Lindell is eventually led on a path that leads to Donald Trump and his run for presidency, and the outcome of this meeting is transformative for him as we can see now, looking back, that perhaps the platform God was speaking of had something to do with voting and the United States and Christianity as a religion in the country during trying times. During a time of “Great Awakening”, a pillow salesman might seem to be the exact opposite of what one might want since sleep is usually the antithesis to awake, but the line becomes quite blurry throughout Mr. Lindell’s book–and world history in the past five years is equally as smeared with vaseline.

Mr. Lindell also has all the pictures to back up his stories which is a plus, since some of them are so crazy sounding one wonders whether or not he is making some parts of it up to make his life stories sound “bigger” than they actually are. One concludes, after awhile, that no, Mr. Lindell is nothing if not genuine. This genuineness is, perhaps, what allows him to sell pillows when other people would be able to sell nothing at all. Mr. Lindell actually cares about his customers, his God, his country, and ultimately, his President. Even when he is a “crackhead” he still cares about people in ways that the “selfish drug” usually does not allow from testimonies of others who have used it. Yes, Mr. Lindell blows through money like a fiend. Yes, Mr. Lindell allows the drug life and business success to take his focus off his family. However, there are plenty of people who have lived through the early beginnings of the 21st century and latter half of the 20th century who were not “crackheads” who were just as bad if not worse when it came to addictions they fed. Whatever anyone wants to say about Mr. Lindell, they can only admit that when he finds something he believes in, he “goes hard”.

The book ends on a to be continued note. The work is interesting enough that one looks forward to the next installment if for no other reason than to see if Mr. Lindell eventually “mellows” or has some other “crazy” adventure. The odds are against any one of the events outlined in this book for any average human being. While it is clear that many average human beings get themselves into such messes, it is unusual they find themselves “back out” of those same messes. I suspect Mr. Lindell’s guardian angels are probably due some serious overtime/hazard pay. What a testimony, though!