Book Review of ‘Enjoy’ by Trillia J. Newbell

Why do we sometimes have a difficult time enjoying the one life we’ve been given? If we’re not working harder, looking elsewhere or planning for what’s next, we’re feeling guilty about the blessings we do have.

These are the essential questions Trillia J. Newbell explores in her book, Enjoy: Finding the Freedom to Delight Daily in God’s God Gifts. In plain and forthright language, she discusses our obligation to enjoy our work, relationships, sex, art, God, possessions, food, and environment. She concludes each chapter with reflection questions and practical assignments, which she calls “The Enjoy Project.”

This book gives permission to relax and receive the good gifts God has given us.

What I Liked

Trillia seamlessly weaves Scripture throughout the book, supporting each point with several examples from the Bible. She seems very familiar with this material and the book often reads like a talk she may have given to a group of women at a conference or retreat. I most appreciated the chapter on sex and the one on work, because I think Christians often do not understand how God wants to use each of these to His glory.

How to Read this Book

Rather than reading this book in isolation, I believe it would be a better book to read with a group. It could be read over a five-week time period, reading two chapters at a time and then discussing the questions at the end of each chapter, doing the suggested activities, and using the discussion questions provided at the end of the book. The book and questions provide a great launching point for women to intentionally go deeper in reflecting on whether or not they are truly enjoying the gifts they’ve been given.

Not My Favorite

Personally, I would give this book three out of five stars. Perhaps it is because I have been a Christian for so long, but I don’t feel like I learned anything new. I also felt like the writing was a bit lackluster and cliché, with an overuse of exclamation marks. But in spite of its simplicity and predictability, I know I would have gotten even more out of it if I had read it with a group.

I recommend reading this as a light book to discuss with a group of women who want to take a break from a more structured Bible study format. I would also recommend it to a new Christian with questions about how we are to feel towards the blessings lavished on us in the west or to someone wrestling with guilt over how their hobbies, interests or artistic leanings fit into God’s plan.

If you like Christian self-help type books or need a reminder that God doesn’t want you to flee the world, but to enjoy the gifts He is extending to you, then Enjoy might be the book for you.

*I received a free copy of Enjoy from Blogging for Books in exchange for this honest review.

**Includes Amazon affiliate links

May 28, 2017May 28, 2017

Love Like a Fool {A Review of Redeeming Ruth}

As a mother, I admit I was nervous to read a book about losing a child. In fact, I confess I skipped ahead to find out what happened to Ruth just so I wouldn’t be anxious the entire book. My mama heart didn’t have the capacity to wait two hundred pages for the details of a tragic death. But in a way, knowing from page one about Ruth’s death helped launch me into this story about a family from Maine who became accidental parents to a disabled girl from Uganda. I had so many questions.

Meadow Rue Merrill, a professional journalist, expertly guides the reader into this compelling tale of love through dynamic dialogue and word wizardry in Redeeming Ruth.

As a memoir, Meadow’s thoughts, feelings and reactions to adopting an African girl with special needs are both authentic and believable. Although this story is not commonplace, it was extremely accessible and did not feel like she was placing her family on a pedestal, like so many Christian memoirs can feel. Instead, Meadow shares with humility how they first met Ruth, questioned whether they had what it took to adopt her, and then revealed all the emotional and physical roadblocks they encountered along the way. This book does not read like a story about a family with super-human strength, but a family that could just as easily be yours or mine. It was a story about a simple family who learned that love could sustain them even through hardship and loss.

“Love like a fool, without considering what such love will cost.” -@MeadowRueWrites

Click To Tweet

If you love memoir, are interested in adoption or Africa, or work with children with special needs, then you will find this story particularly compelling. Meadow dispels many myths about international adoption as she chronicles the sticky details of adopting Ruth from Uganda. I personally loved the vibrant descriptions of people and places in Africa since I spent six months in Uganda during college. Her words helped me to see the buses, feel the dust on my toes and greet my amazing friends there once again.

I also appreciated learning about the hurdles and small victories involved in caring for a child with special needs. Having this window into their world reminded me to offer support to friends and family I have who may be caring for children with additional needs.

If you love a good story where God appears in miraculous ways, then you will find yourself engrossed in this true tale of selfless love. If you—like me—are a mother who is afraid to read a book about losing a child, this will remind you to hug your children tighter and savor every moment you have with them. And though the story is gut-wrenching, their grief is equally weighted with hope.

Reading Redeeming Ruth was a gift. I felt honored to be invited into such a beautiful journey of surprising joy in the midst of struggle and sadness. It was a welcome reminder of how one little life can impact so many.

Meadow challenges her readers at the end of Redeeming Ruth:

“Love like a fool, without considering what such love will cost. You won’t have to look far to find someone who is hurting, someone without a voice, someone waiting to know that they are loved” (p. 204).

I felt honored to be invited into such a beautiful journey of surprising joy in the midst of struggle and sadness.

Click To Tweet

You can buy Redeeming Ruth here.

**Includes Amazon affiliate links

May 12, 2017May 12, 2017

Motherhood as Spiritual Practice? {A Review of Long Days of Small Things}

“With all its joys, trials, and demands, motherhood is packed full of spiritual practices.” –Catherine McNeil, Long Days of Small Things

If you are a mother looking for a book that throws open the windows and invites pure, fresh, breathable air into the room of your soul, then you need to read Long Days of Small Things: Motherhood as a Spiritual Discipline. When I was pregnant with my first child, I read books on motherhood like I was cramming for a test. I was determined to do it right. Now that I’m five years in, I’m realizing I don’t need to read books that add more for me to do, but books that validate me for what I’m already doing.

What This Book Will NOT Do

This book will not add to your to do list. It will not heap on guilt about all the ways you are not doing enough, teaching enough, or being enough of a godly woman for your children. It will not tell you how to discipline, potty train or feed your child in ten easy steps. Instead, this book will prove to you that you are already living a holy life through simply being a mother. That perhaps God intended all along to intersect with you in these small, seemingly insignificant moments in time that make up the life of a mother.

Who Should Read this Book?

This book was perfect for me right now as a mother to three little ones, four and under. I don’t think it would impact a brand new mom as much since she hasn’t yet experienced the frustration of a Target tantrum or spent a year without sleep. But it might still make a great gift for a new mama who will find it on her shelf one day when she’s desperate for encouragement while nursing her third baby in the middle of the night (ahem). Although McNeil attempts to include women who adopt, I think it would be difficult for a mother who did not give birth biologically to read the parts about pregnancy and childbirth.

This book is ideal for the weary mom who is a few years in, wondering what happened to her life, and needs a fresh look at her world. Every once in a while I need a book to spiritualize the ordinary. When I first got married, the book The Mystery of Marriage, by Mike Mason did that for me. Now, five years in to motherhood, this book was exactly what I needed to remind me who I am and why I’m doing this.

What I Loved

The book cycles through the different aspects of motherhood, illuminating the sacred beauty in sex, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and even in menstruation. It reads like a love poem to our female bodies and all they were created to do; our days validated as holy even in their monotony. Each chapter begins and ends with scripture. Throughout the book, McNeil weaves in stories of mothers from the Bible and draws out verses and stories that focus on the parental heart of God.

It reads like a love poem to our female bodies and all they were created to do

Click To Tweet

But along with the gorgeous imagery, McNeil also provides simple practices to increase awareness of the divine through breathing, walking, being fully present in the moment, eating, night vigils, drinking and cooking. She offers suggestions for turning even the most unlikely circumstances into spiritual practices. Daily rituals of motherhood such as changing diapers, feeding children, driving kids around and dealing with clutter become opportunities to connect with God.

I have never read a book about motherhood that made me feel so validated and empowered as a woman as Long Days of Small Things (and I’ve read a lot). Far from feeling like a second-class citizen who is missing out on so much of life because I spend my days with little ones, McNeil made me feel like I am privileged to have the mystical experience of creating, sustaining, supporting and caring for another soul.

What I most appreciated about this book was that it reminded me that motherhood is a beautiful, sacred gift to cherish. Though we can feel we are wandering in the wilderness during this season with little ones, McNeil assures us we are exactly where God means us to be. She writes,

“In motherhood we are not furthest from the practices of faith as it seems, but at the center. In this spiritual desert we touch the very pinnacle of spiritual practice.” –Catherine McNeil, Long Days of Small Things

In motherhood we are not furthest from the practices of faith as it seems, but at the center. @CatherineMcNiel

Click To Tweet

You can buy Long Days of Small Things here or the audio book on Audible here! (my hubs is an audio book narrator, so I gotta give a shout-out to the audio version!)

Check out Catherine’s post this week at SheLoves.

**Contains Amazon affiliate links

February 7, 2017

No Longer Heaven’s Hero {review of ‘Dangerous Territory’ + Book Giveaway}

Who wouldn’t want to be heaven’s hero? Why would anyone willingly choose the “white picket fence” life over an exotic life guaranteed to be exciting and eternally meaningful? And if giving up everything to move across the world is clearly more holy, why would anyone claiming to love Jesus choose anything less?

That’s what I used to think, so I was delighted to find I wasn’t alone.

Amy Peterson’s debut book, Dangerous Territory: My Misguided Quest to Save the World, is a memoir about the two years she lived in Southeast Asia and the fallout she experienced after sharing her faith in a country closed to evangelism. With clarity, poetry and engaging story-telling, Amy chronicles the deconstruction and reconstruction of her faith after her idealism is obliterated.

With an academic background in intercultural studies, Amy weaves the history of missions and cultural analysis throughout the book, occasionally interrupting her narrative with fascinating essays about missions. Zooming out from her story during these brief interludes allows the reader to position Amy’s personal narrative into the larger picture puzzle of missions, past and present.

As a writer over fifteen years later, Amy regards her younger, idealistic self with the mercy of a wise mentor, neither criticizing nor judging, but sharing her thoughts as she remembers them. She gently offers her reader a glimpse into some fallacies young Jesus-followers can fall prey to. She also challenges many assumptions about Christian life, ministry and missions made by the church at large. Amy transparently shares her personal grief, loss, hope and doubt in hopes the reader will take her hand on the road and learn right along with her.

***

Though I was sent to China instead of Southeast Asia, reading Amy’s book was like viewing a stranger through a window and mistaking her for myself. Our stories bear so much resemblance, Amy saved me hours I might have spent writing a very similar book.

I was with the same organization, lived in a very remote area with one teammate, completed the same masters program, spent time at the same places in Thailand during our yearly conference and had crushes on boys in my program (though not the same ones). I also walked away from my time overseas with more questions than answers. After five years in China, I—a goer with no intention of staying in the states–returned home to get married and give up my status as Church Darling. The missionary invitations, inquiries and special treatment stopped abruptly and—like Amy—I wondered, “What if God didn’t want me to be useful? Could I surrender to that? Was I willing to be useless for God?” (182).

It’s humbling to give up our “heaven’s hero” status when we feel we’re stepping into the status quo.

But I have come to similar conclusions in my quest for a special calling, purpose and meaningful life. Namely, that our calling begins and ends with love. Our first call isn’t to China, Africa, Southeast Asia, missions, marriage or motherhood. Our primary calling is to intimacy with Jesus Christ. All other callings will fade, shift, surge and grow through the seasons of our life, but that calling will sustain us for our entire lives and even beyond.

***

If you or someone you know is interested in spending any amount of time overseas, I would highly recommend this book as a vulnerable account of a modern day twenty-something (not an overly-romanticized missionary biography), who left home with good intentions and returned with a greater awareness of the fact that she wasn’t loved more because she was willing to go, but began and ended as an adored child of God.

Or perhaps you feel that going abroad is only for the holy? Although Amy clearly had a strong faith, her story reveals that God doesn’t send heroes, he sends the ordinary. He sends the willing. And He sends them not to change the world, but to catch a glimpse of His love for the world first-hand. In her conclusion, Amy admonishes missionary-hopefuls: “Don’t go because you want to save the world—go because you want to learn to love it. Go because you know that you are loved” (217).

***

I have an extra copy of Amy’s book that I would love to share with you! Leave a thoughtful comment on this post sometime between 2/7/17 and 2/14/17 (by midnight, U.S. Mountain Time) and I’ll enter you to win a free copy of Dangerous Territory. I’ll announce the winner on 2/15/17 and get it in the mail to you ASAP!

Have you ever been on a quest to save the world? How did that work out for you?

~Leslie

BUY THE BOOK HERE. (Right now it is only available on Kindle, but print copies should be available soon.)

Tag: book review

Book Review of ‘Enjoy’ by Trillia J. Newbell

What I Liked

How to Read this Book

Not My Favorite

Love Like a Fool {A Review of Redeeming Ruth}

Motherhood as Spiritual Practice? {A Review of Long Days of Small Things}

What This Book Will NOT Do

Who Should Read this Book?

What I Loved

No Longer Heaven’s Hero {review of ‘Dangerous Territory’ + Book Giveaway}

Welcome to Scraping Raisins!