Reviewer's Bookshelf: For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards by Jen Hatmaker

Book Summary (from Goodreads): 

The popular writer, blogger, and television personality reveals with humor and style how Jesus' extravagant grace is the key to dealing with life's biggest challenge: people.

The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning first with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, live for, go to church with, don't like, don't understand, fear, struggle with, compare ourselves to, and judge. People are the best and worst thing about the human life.

Jen Hatmaker knows this all too well, and so she reveals how to practice kindness, grace, truthfulness, vision, and love to ourselves and those around us. By doing this, For the Love leads our generation to reimagine Jesus' grace as a way of life, and it does it in a funny yet profound manner that Christian readers will love. Along the way, Hatmaker shows readers how to reclaim their prophetic voices and become Good News again to a hurting, polarized world. 

My thoughts....

This might sound kinda bad, but I honestly don't read a lot of Christian non-fiction.  There are some amazing authors out there, pouring out some profound truth....but reading is typically my escape into another time, place, and with fictional heros and heroines. But I am SO glad I was able to get my hands on a copy of this book!

I've followed Jen Hatmaker's Facebook posts for a little while, so I was developing a love for her humor and honesty.  I gravitate towards a public figure who can relate to the struggle of being a wife, mom, and Christian woman in this world.  Jen has become like a sanity-whisperer in the otherwise insane days of my pastor-wife, three "spicy" kids, stay-at-home mom life. Not that I always agreed on every stance she's taken or comment she's made.  But I could appreciate her heart and her desire to love God and others.  So...I wanted to read her book and see a little deeper into her heart.

I was not disappointed ; ).  This book not only held my attention (I can tend to fade out when my book choice is a little too heavy), but she had me laughing, crying, and thinking.  I loved that she balanced out the chapters of deeper thought and challenge with laugh out loud humor in the next chapter.  I have SO many things highlighted in this book.  Here's a little taste:

                                                                                            "You don't need to wait another day to figure out your calling.  You're living it, dear one. Your gifts have a place right now, in the job you have, in your stage of life, with the people who surround you. Calling is virtually never big or famous work; that is rarely the way the kingdom comes.

It shows up quietly, subversively, almost invisibly. Half the time, it is unplanned--just the stuff of life in which a precious human steps in, the good news personified."

So relevant to me right now, as were so many of the words in this book. 

 It spoke to me in ways that touch on notes of longing and loneliness.  I want to have a supper club!  And supper club friends that I can share lots of private jokes with and go on family vacations with (people actually do that?!).  But as I read and wished I were part of Jen and company's group, I wasn't left with just longing.  I was left with a challenge that if I want change, then I need to be an instrument of change.  Hmmm....supper club anyone ; )?

I would definitely say this is geared towards the female reader.  Ladies...it's a great read.  It covers yoga pants and building your marriage. It includes recipes and food for the soul.  I always offer this disclaimer, and I believe Jen would, too.  Don't just take her words as the ultimate truth.  Always seek God and His Word as the bottom line.

Happy reading!

**I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, which I gave.**