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Book Review: I Am Redeemed

This post was #sponsoredbyfaithwords. I was not required to give a positive review, so my review is my honest take on the book I Am Redeemed: Learning to Live in Grace by Mike Weaver.

I’m so thankful for the opportunity from Faithwords to read this book for free! I’ve enjoyed the other books that they’ve recommended to me as well, such as Pull it Off by Julianna Zobrist, Get Weird by CJ Casciotta, You Are Enough by Mandy Hale, Beyond Blessed: God’s Perfect Plan for No Financial Stress by Robert Morris, Dead Sea Rising by Jerry B. Jenkins, and the God Made Me series by Hannah C. Hall.

“…Story is the language of the human heart. That’s why movies and other kinds of media have such an impact on us. They can climb over or around or under some of the walls we put up so that we can receive a message” (186).

Mike Weaver of Big Daddy Weave, in collaboration with Jim Scherer, shares his story of discovering redemption in Christ.The first song I’ve ever heard from Big Daddy Weave was the song “The Only Name (Yours Will Be),” which goes, “When I wake up in the land of glory/ with the saints, I will tell my story/ there will be one name that I’ll proclaim.” Throughout every page of this book, I see that this song is true for Weaver’s life. All I can see is Jesus written in every word.

Although the book is about the story behind the song “I Am Redeemed,” Weaver includes the story of how he became interested in music in the first place and how the band started, along with his struggles and insecurities and the trials that his family has faced. You’re going to have to read the story yourself, but it is a story that has resonated with me and has inspired me on my own journey.

Truthfully, I could not put the book down until the last page. When I told my husband I had finished the book, he said, “Wow, that was fast!” I know! That night, I was falling asleep reading it. I would have rather found out what happened next than have gone to bed!

I was already a fan of Big Daddy Weave, but now, I feel connected to the band in a whole new way. How God speaks to Mike is similar to how He speaks to me: in pictures and in conversation. So when he talks about his conversations with God, I can totally imagine and understand what that looks like.

Unexpectedly, Mike’s story about his weight loss journey resonated the most with me. Believe it or not, that was my takeaway from this book. For the past couple of years, I’ve struggled with weight loss, more than I ever have before. I’ve been taking care of myself since January, and seeing tremendous results, but ever since reaching my goal weight, I haven’t been eating as well as I should have. Mike’s journey reminds me to celebrate the process and keep going! Since finishing the book, I have decided to detox from sugar and dairy products for this week, and I’m trying out a new workout program.

In addition to that interesting piece of inspiration, I also enjoyed all the people that are sprinkled within the book. If I Am Redeemed was a movie, we’d have cameos from Toby Mac, Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, Caedmon’s Call, Zach Williams, Kari Jobe, and many more. He talks about them as if they were just ordinary people (as in, not famous) when he first met them. We all start at the beginning, and it was so cool to see how God used all of these people in Mike’s life to grow him and his faith.

I Am Redeemed: Learning to Live in Grace seems to have been written in a style that anyone can understand, but I think Christian readers would get more out of it. The book was a good message, that it’s not enough to know about Jesus. We have to have a relationship with Him, and surrender our whole lives to Him. That is how He truly redeems us.

“When I think about painful memories,” Weaver writes, “it no longer hurts to talk about them because they are not the same memories. The Lord changed each memory by showing me where He was in it. He showed me a new and right reality of what hat been there all along. I was just seeing it for the first time” (197).

You can order your own copy of I Am Redeemed here on the FaithWords website. Let me know what you think of it!

Picture taken from the FaithWords website

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Books

A Review of the Dystopian Novels in My Bookshelf

The novel I’m writing has taken an interesting turn. I went to ReNEW again this year, and I met with a literary agent, who read the first six pages of my book and gave me feedback. My takeaway from meeting with him was that my writing style is great, but that my book lacked direction. He asked me what genre it was, and honestly, I had no idea. It was sort of contemporary fiction, but there was a king involved, so was it fantasy?

When I got home from the retreat, I thought more about the direction of my novel. Experts suggest that to improve your writing, you should read. I acquired a free trial of Kindle Unlimited and decided to read whatever Amazon suggested to me.

The #1 book on my Kindle Unlimited suggestion list was A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. After reading it, I wondered why Amazon thought I was twisted enough to enjoy this story! Professors and the like have advertised this book to me as a Christian society gone wrong. However, it was not a Christian book at all. Atwood’s society uses the Bible to manipulate people, but I do not believe the government is Christian. They are so far removed from God that Offred doesn’t even know how to pray! Although it was not my favorite story, this tale encouraged me to explore the idea of what it would be like for God to actually be in this story. In a dystopian society, God is often removed, so is it possible for a dystopian society to exist if God is in control and He is going to redeem us before all of that happens?

While on Goodreads, I searched “Christian dystopian” to find an answer to my question. There’s not much of it out there, but after doing some research and asking my bookworm friends, there definitely is a hunger for it. One book from that genre was Counted Worthy by Leah E. Good. I was able to see the opposite of what I struggled with: The story was captivating in and of itself, but she does silly things like explain her jokes and include a preachy character (preachy characters are the ultimate downfall of Christian fiction). Reading this book confirmed that this genre would be a challenge, but it would be fun and appropriate for me to write.

After reading A Handmaid’s Tale and Counted Worthy, I realized that the only book that I enjoyed reading in high school was 1984 by George Orwell. I still had my copy from when I had read it in high school. Through this book, I thought again about what would happen if Winston was a Christian. I’m actually exploring the scene in Room 101 for my main character, who is a Christian and has just been charged by God to stand up for the truth no matter what. Would she still stand if they tortured her with her worst fear or her deepest grief? 1984 also taught me that a dystopia looks different for every generation. For the people who would have read 1984, which was written during World War II, a dystopian society looked a lot like socialism. For the people who would have read A Handmaid’s Tale, which was written in the 1980s, a dystopian society looked like women losing the rights they just fought for in the Feminist movement of the 1960s. What type of dystopian society would scare the masses today?

An obvious dystopian fiction series that I would read next was The Hunger Games. I learned a lot from this series about the structure that I’m supposed to use in the dystopian fiction genre, and how to craft a society that is purely evil but thinks everything is okay. I love how The Hunger Games ends, but the rest of the books sort of fall apart. Even though I didn’t enjoy the other two books in the series, I learned not to cut corners when writing dystopian fiction. You have to have a strong plot, and you have to carry it through until the end. You have to write what makes sense given the situation. Spoiler alert: They do not need to have a happy ending, and as a matter of fact, most of the time, they don’t.

I’m currently reading a novel that I consider Christian dystopian but is actually more SciFi because it involves human cyborgs and nanotechnology. I cannot wait to write about it next week! But until then, please send me recommendations so that I can continue to improve my craft. On my “to-read” list is the Divergent series, Brave New World, Animal Farm, and the Left Behind series.

Do you enjoy dystopian fiction? Why or why not? What is your favorite dystopian novel and why?

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

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Onward

I met Alicia Yost through a mutual friend from ReNEW (Retreat for New England Writers and Speakers). When Alicia came to ReNEW this year, we connected right away. I enjoyed hearing her stories and her heart behind her writing. As I learned during that weekend, people don’t care about what your book is about; they care about your heart.

Based on that alone, I believe Alicia’s new book is a must-read for all, since she is such a joy to know! The full title of her book is Onward: A Funny, Heartbreaking and Insightful Collection of Faith Lessons. The book definitely goes along with the title. In the introduction, she explains the meaning behind the title of her book. I love the analogies and word pictures that Alicia uses, especially the dinner party in chapter 1 and God molding us like clay through prayer in chapter 3. She’s honest, real, and vulnerable, and there are good transitions. Her stories are emotionally compelling. Plus, she’s not kidding; some of them are funny!

It reminded me of Blue Like Jazz or Love Does, where the stories sort of tie together but they don’t follow a linear pattern. But I believe that’s Alicia’s point. Life isn’t meant to be a straight path that we all follow, but a journey full of twists and turns. We don’t all go through the same life experiences, even if we are Christian. Our only starting point is that God saved us, and we came to know Christ. With that being said, Alicia starts with her testimony in the first chapter, and everything beyond that is in no particular order. I believe a passage from the final paragraph summarizes it perfectly: “Life isn’t really about getting anywhere; it’s about going somewhere. Life is about motion. We must keep moving. And while we are on our journey, perhaps we see someone walking along the same road and we wave” (96).

Although I haven’t shared the same life experiences as her, I feel like I’m right there with her, reading the letter about her sponsor child or getting frustrated when her husband doesn’t bring her home flowers. She struggles with faith, wrestles with temptation, and submits to God’s will even when it doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t that sound like the rest of us? She says the words that none of us are comfortable saying out loud, but we all feel. As she writes, we’re new creations, not improved creations, so we have to let God do the work in our lives (chapter six).

Quote for chapter 1: “It was like my whole life, God and I had been at a dinner party and I was nervous to meet Him so I mingled with other people and gave Him uneasy side glances. Then I ran to the bathroom to hide and after emerging found everyone gone. It was just me and God, and I couldn’t avoid Him any longer. He smiled and looked deep into my eyes. I felt fully seen and expected to feel the weight of my shame, to see Him furrow His brow in disappointment. But instead, I felt fully loved” (8).

One of my favorite stories is the story about her son. “It was then I realized that this joy would not have been possible without the struggles. It was the struggles themselves that magnified the joy in ways that “normalcy” never could.” (chapter four). This book came at an opportune time for me for me to check my heart about how I feel about the church, how I feel about waiting, and how I feel about serving.

Alicia writes with emotionally-compelling words and analogies. Serving is messy. Parenting is messy. Marriage is messy. But each time, Alicia talks about the mess, but then brings glory to God through it. Her chapters each end with the phrase “Onward I go,” as a reminder that we may not know where we’re going, but we know that God is calling us to move forward. Put one foot in front of the other and keep going. You’ll get where you need to go eventually.

This book is perfect for women who are struggling in their faith, just like the rest of us. Alicia does talk about being a wife and raising kids, but even if you’re not married or don’t have kids, you can relate to being a daughter or having a step parent or even simply understanding how to be a Christian. You can purchase this book on Amazon today.

Photo taken from Amazon website.

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“Plot & Structure”: A Game Changer and Life Saver

I have been working on my book for four years now, and it pains me to say that I have begun my FOURTH rewrite. A book by me will be published eventually, I promise. I’d rather have a well-polished book published in five years than a thrown-together book published in five months.

Every time I think I’m done with writing this novel, I find out new information that changes everything. For some reason, I can’t just make little changes here and there. If something is wrong with my book, the whole book needs to be changed.

James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure was what inspired this fourth round of edits. I’d love to show you all a time lapse of how my book has changed. It started as a bunch of random ideas in my journal, and then became edited random ideas from my journal typed into a Google Docs file, and then became edited random ideas that now had a plot in a Google Docs file, and is now finally (hopefully) a story put together by random ideas that now make sense because the book has, you guessed it, plot and structure.

I’ve learned through this book that I am not a structure type when it comes to writing. With everything else, I’m a type A personality, from being ten minutes early to everything, to organizing my work space every day. When I’m writing, all I want to do is start a timer and let the words fly from my brain to my fingers. I’ll often meet writers who have their characters’ back stories on post-it notes, stuck together on vision boards with strings connecting each character with each idea, setting, theme, symbol, and scene. That kind of planning makes my brain hurt, and makes writing (for me) incredibly painful.

I prefer to meet my characters midway through the book, after I’ve created a preliminary personality about them. After all, we don’t ever know everything about people when we first meet them, right? It takes time to grow a relationship and learn details about them as time progresses. That’s how my characters are formed, and that’s how I develop a story. You meet them the same time that I do, because I love to be surprised while I’m writing!

Although I learned a lot more than this simple point from the book, my one takeaway is that I can be both the outline person and the non-outline person. I can be the free spirit writer and the structured writer. A little bit of structure may help me save time on rewriting my book a million times (guilty as charged!) but a little bit of spontaneity can help the structured people be more creative in their writing.

During this fourth rewrite, I have brainstormed how I want my book to go through bullet points, rough ideas. Then, as those points come up in the story, I cross them off my list. Usually, the bullet point works for each part of the story, but if it doesn’t, I don’t use it! I’m free to create, while also free to provide structure for my book. It’s like I’m cruising on the highway, but there are guardrails on the road so I don’t drive off a cliff.

I believe this point is most helpful for those who are writing academic papers as well. You might not know where to start, but you can create an outline to give you a general idea of the direction of your paper. When you have that guideline, you can cruise through the rest of the paper; by that point, you’ll know enough about the rules to write freely!

By the time you read this, I’ll be at a writer’s conference, getting feedback for my book from wise people who have blazed the trail before me. Please keep me in your prayers as my beautiful work of art is being perfected piece by piece. I am confident that God is forming this story into one that will heal, transform, and bring hope to those who need it. Thank you for your continued support!

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“We are the Dreamers” – Book Review of “Get Weird”

#Sponsored by FaithWords

Once I saw the description of the author, which began with the words “Armed with the wit of a native New Yorker,” I knew this was going to be a fantastic book. As a native New Yorker, sarcasm is my native language! Nice to see a fellow New Yorker writing a book. He’s even from Long Island!

Faithwords describes the book this way: “CJ Casciotta will help you identify your God-given uniqueness and teach you how to use your individuality to impact the world.” As a society, we’ve been taught that weird is a bad thing. Casciotta actually challenges us to think about how often we use the word “weird.” When we say that word, it usually implies something is not easily explained. Even though for us we consider that a negative thing, according to Casciotta, being “weird” isn’t necessarily wrong.

The book serves as a challenge for those who are sick of living complacent lives. They are sick of the Same. As a matter of fact, Casciotta wants us to challenge the Same (which he capitalizes throughout the book). He wants us to pursue the Sacred Weird, the other-wordliness that humans were created to possess.

Get Weird is split into three parts, which go by different names in the book but are described as the following: “It’s OK to be weird,” “We need your weird,” and “Go be weird.” The first part of the book illustrates our individual need to express ourselves in our own creative weirdness. The second part demonstrates how society needs weird people, highlighting specific people who were weird and yet changed the world through it. The third part encourages the reader to make a difference in her own unique way, embracing her weird, and fulfilling God’s calling on her life.

The word “weird” grabbed my attention when I first looked at the cover. However, as I’m reading the book, there is still a connotation that “weird” invokes in my brain. It’s different, but it’s strange. It’s awkward. It doesn’t make me comfortable. As much as I don’t like those feelings, Casciotta claims that those feelings change the course of history. Martin Luther King rubbed people the wrong way with his talks of diversity and acceptance of other people. Mister Rogers was unlike his contemporaries who hit each other with pies on television. Even Jesus, the hero and foundation of our faith, refused to be like the culture in which he was raised, teaching His disciples to live holy lives, “other” lives. I don’t like the look, the smells, the taste that “weird” invokes, but the story that God is writing in all of us is that the people who are least expected to succeed will transform our cultures and lead us into victory.

While I read the book, I unexpectedly received some free parenting advice. Children have this innate desire to be creative. Their minds are forming, and their imagination takes them on wild rides on a minute-by-minute basis. There is no limit to what their minds can accomplish, because they haven’t been taught that their ideas are “weird” (the bad connotation of weird). My one take-away from this book is to encourage creativity in my future children and the children that I oversee in our church’s girls ministry.

There is a cute viral video of a two-year-old baking a cake with her mom. When I first watched the video, I had my skeptic thoughts, the most prominent being, “She’s making a mess!” But after I read this book, I watched the video again. As the little girl poured an two entire containers of sprinkles on a tiny cake, I realized that she was using her creativity. She wanted a cake with lots of sprinkles on it, so she made a mess to make that happen, but she did it. I applaud her mother for letting her do that, and I applaud any parent that encourages creativity in their children. We’re so afraid of children making messes that we squash their creativity in the process. I’m choosing now to allow my children and the girls entrusted to me to be freely creative and freely weird.

CJ Casciotta has a ton of resources on his website. You can also get his book, which will be released September 11th, on the FaithWords website.

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“You Don’t Have to Like it; You Just Need to Appreciate It”-Book Review of “Pull it Off”

#Sponsored by FaithWords

I read Pull it Off by Julianna Zobrist in approximately one day (give or take a couple of hours). I was hungry for what this book had to tell me. I mean, listen to the tagline: “Removing Your Fears and Putting on Confidence.” BAM! Who wouldn’t use a little extra dose of confidence in their lives? Here is how it is summed up by FaithWords: “Singer of the hit song ‘Shatterproof,’ Julianna Zobrist digs deep into her own life to reveal how we can maximize our true identities and lean into our unique gifts.” The cover design displays how fun and creative the author is, and how she has used her platform to speak a message that any woman who breathes in fear and breathes out Jesus needs to hear.

For those who don’t know, Julianna Zobrist is a writer, music artist, fashion muse, and social media influencer, among other things. She’s got this Color Kids thing going on that you should check out. You baseball fans might know her as Ben Zobrist’s wife. How does she pull it off? Julianna confesses that she gets this question a lot. She wears funky outfits, writes great music, shows up to her husband’s baseball games, and raises three kids. How does she pull it off? Well, she’s asking herself the same thing, because there are days when she didn’t feel like she was good enough. As you’ll see when you read this book, Zobrist has learned to put fear in the backseat and rely on God to provide her strength and confidence.

Throughout the pages of Pull it Off, you will find Julianna’s vulnerability and courage within every page. She doesn’t have it all figured out, but she wants to help you anyway. She doesn’t want to share her vulnerability, but she fights beyond her comfort zone to bring us a fantastic testimony. There’s even science and psychology in this book! I’m so excited!

The book is split into three parts that each address the root of our insecurities: authority, identity, and security. The underlying theme is challenging how we should think, feel, and behave. She attacks the shoulds of parenting, marriage, and being a woman. In a way, she exposes the false shoulds and replaces them with authentic shoulds, the shoulds that God says about us.

In a nutshell, I would summarize her story with this: Love my own style while appreciating others. We don’t have to conform. We don’t have to perform. All we need is to shine, because we are made in God’s image. There’s no better person to say that than a woman who wears outfits that contain every color of the rainbow! She has a style that works for her, and it’s awesome.

What she said about fashion and confidence actually hit me square in the face. I judge people all the time, and I want them to conform to my standards. On the other hand, I get upset when people judge how I dress or how I act. My takeaway from this book is to figure out what I love and learn to appreciate the style of others.

Typically, when I read a book, I usually forget most of what I read. I don’t know how Zobrist “pulled this off,” but having read the book yesterday, I can give you almost every detail of what I read. She did such a good job explaining the scientific stuff, and although it sounded repetitive at first, what she said is stuck in my brain. I’m thankful for the repetition. That will be helpful when I have to face my fears and live a confident life. Each moment we live is another opportunity to grow our courage just a little bit more.

I do not agree with everything I theologically in this book, but if you are looking for a book that isn’t preachy, I believe Zobrist did a good job of keeping it simple and easy to understand.

This book, published by FaithWords, will be on sale September 18th of this year. You can see it first on the FaithWords website.

*I put pink post-its in the book to remember parts of the book that I like, but look how nicely it matches the book?

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Review of “Business Boutique” by Christy Wright

My husband gave me this book when we decided it was time for me to start working from home as a freelance writer and editor. The smell of the new book energized me to want to read it and start my business. He gave it to me the day I put in my two weeks, so I made it a priority to read the nineteen chapters of the book before I officially stopped working at the office.

This gift from my husband was affirmation to me that he believed in me and he knew I could do it. As I would read Christy Wright’s (or Dave Ramsey’s in the Foreword) words, I imagined my husband saying, “You can do this, honey. You made the right decision.” Ultimately, through this transition, God’s approval has been the most evident of all! Thank God for His blessings.

Christy Wright’s Business Boutique is specifically geared for women who want to start a business doing what they love. She discusses all types of female-led businesses, from side-hustles (a job you do aside from your full-time job), full-time jobs, to businesses run by “mompreneurs” (women who work from home while taking care of young children). Her entrepreneurial innovation was deeply ingrained into her by her mother, who risked all the money she had to make a living for her family doing what she loved: making cakes. Wright takes her mother’s work tactics, as well as what worked in her own career, and created a four-tier business plan that is easily adaptable for anyone. The plan includes finding your motivation, deciding what to charge, establishing policies and “terms and conditions,” sorting through tax information, and promoting your business to make a profit.

Business Boutique is a fun, easy read that makes the idea of starting and running a business digestible. Since she crafts this book for women, Wright includes topics that target the struggles of female business owners, including balancing life and work, creating a schedule, having boundaries, raising kids, and comparison. The best part is that Wright doesn’t leave us hanging; at the end of each chapter, she provides action steps to help us process what we just read and put your business plan into action immediately.

Christy’s book has been helpful as I begin my writing and editing career. Publishing a book in and of itself is like a business (we writers tend to forget that!), but I also have a vision for helping women like me develop a confidence to tell their own stories. You can check out the editing and consulting services I offer on my “services” page.

Although this book was about starting a business, I received some personal affirmation that really gave me confidence not only in my freelance career, but also in my identity as a Christian woman. This quote affirms my passion for writing fiction, to not only to inform but also inspire: “…People don’t need more information, they need inspiration. They need to believe and have buy-in, and the best way to accomplish that is through story” (226).

Her chapter on balancing life and work also speaks to me about establishing healthy boundaries. The following quotes are my favorite from this chapter:

“‘No’ is a complete sentence” (291).

“If you don’t protect what matters to you, no one else will” (292).

“It’s the difference between looking through the front windshield to see where you’re going instead of looking in the rearview mirror to see what you’re momentarily leaving behind” (293).

If these quotes inspire you, or you’re looking to start your own business, you can buy Christy Wright’s book on her website www.businessboutique.com. In preparation for this post, I discovered that her website has blog posts, podcasts, and other resources to help you even further in your business. Whether you want to make money from a hobby that you enjoy, you want to pay off some debt, or you want a fun way to support your family, Christy Wright’s book Business Boutique will help you make those initial steps, as well as every step along the way.