book review Archives -

A Book Worthy of Your 2019

January 2, 2019October 9, 2019

"True You" by Michelle DeRusha - helping you uncover your most authentic self in 2019. — “True You” by Michelle DeRusha. Available at all fine booksellers, including Amazon.

It’s early January, and as I sit next to our Christmas tree (which I don’t want to take down!), I’m considering goals for the new year and the wisdom I’ve received in reading “True You” by Michelle DeRusha. If ever there was a book about new beginnings, about starting again, this is it.

While sitting on a bench in a quiet space, a question presented itself in Michelle’s mind: “Why do you have trouble with intimacy?” (p. 45) I read the question she’d heard as an invitation, but one I personally wouldn’t want to accept. “I don’t have trouble with intimacy,” I thought, “I have good relationships.” But then I read this gem of a book, and decided I could use some more spiritual pruning in this area.

By likening the process of spiritual growth and a closer relationship with God to the Japanese gardening technique of “open center pruning,” through which a tree’s most beautiful elements are retained and all that detracts from it are cut away, Michelle takes her readers on a voyage of discovery and reflection. She encourages the routine practice of sitting quietly and listening carefully for God’s voice. Bigger and more powerful than our wildest dreams, God has planned a fullness of life for us, unhindered by our egotistical desires or our inclinations toward idols. These things separate us from the person God created us to be. By allowing ourselves to be “openly pruned” we can find our truest selves.

Each chapter features thoughtful reflection questions to help us uncover the myths we tell ourselves, and to move our souls toward deeper friendship with God, who wants only the best for us. As we honestly consider our values and motivations (both good and bad), we participate in our own journey of healing. Michelle understands this discovery process is hard, and shares her own anecdotes and observations to confirm our experiences as we go. “[I]n spiritual transformation, as in gardening,” she writes, “there is no fast and easy remedy. There is only patience, perseverance, and faith in the process” (p. 164). Our efforts and willingness to open ourselves to God’s love and mercy is rewarded by God’s revelation of our gifts, and the life-changing realization of our real identity.

“Your identity comes not from what you do, but from who you are in God,” she affirms (p. 194). Figuring out who we are in God is life’s most worthwhile endeavor, and I encourage you to start on this process of discovery for yourself with the help of this enchanting, approachable book as a guide. Michelle DeRusha found a richer, more meaningful life, and I believe you will, too.

*I received an Advance Reader Copy from Baker Books in return for my honest review. Pick up your copy of “True You” here on Amazon.

One Fun Book – One Beautiful Dream

October 4, 2018October 9, 2019

The burnt chicken on the cover speaks to me. Maybe because it sums up my current mojo…My mojo for like, the last 15 years.

When this book was released in the spring of 2018, it was the week of my youngest son’s First Communion, and despite the fact that family were coming in from 4 states to celebrate, I made a little time to read it – late at night, curled up in my bed, laughing out loud – because I just couldn’t put down this page-turner, Jennifer Fulwiler’s, One Beautiful Dream.

Having recently ‘met’ Jen through podcasts of her daily Sirius XM radio show and our shared connection in #hopewriters, I knew I couldn’t miss out on this book. I too am caught up trying to navigate the treacherous terrain where family life meets personal passions, and I desperately wanted to know how to say yes to them both.

Jennifer is a master storyteller with a coach’s spirit, and this book did not disappoint. Through this memoir, she has lifted me up – painting a raw and honest portrait of motherhood, faith, and a desire for something more.

After describing a harrowing supermarket experience in Chapter 1 (achieved while pregnant with 2 toddlers in tow) she writes, “On the average day I found myself exhausted, my brain running in the red zone like a car about to overheat….All of my personal goals had been buried for so long that I was starting to forget what they were.”

Amen to that. I have been there and you probably have too. This friends, is a woman I get. She is unflinchingly real.

Life with a young family feels – more often than not – like only partially controlled chaos, but there is deep and meaningful beauty in it, and Jennifer Fulwiler has found it. As a fellow Catholic convert, mother, writer, and survivor of disastrous supermarket visits and pointed (i.e. ‘unsolicited’) advice from “Green Bean Ladies,” at the supermarket, I salute Jen in this achievement. I love it.

Oh – and Jennifer? – if I were ever to come to your home, I would devour your burnt chicken and bless the hands that prepared it, too.

How I Made My Little Boy Cry and How I’m Mending His Heart

March 23, 2018October 9, 2018

I made my little boy cry last night, and I am not proud of it.

It was a typical Thursday. We live in Annapolis and my daughter had Irish dance class in Columbia, which is about 40 minutes away. (Yes, for this particular style of dance, her experience level, and the coaching, the drive is worth it.) So – I was bringing her and another dancer home, when she announced that she was hungry. Understandable at 6 pm after an intense workout. I put my plans for reheating the leftover Mexican casserole on the back burner, so to speak.

We stopped at Chick Fil A. There was another passenger in the car: my 8-year old son. He’d been with us for the entire trip up to dance and back (as he often is) and I was fairly sure he was hungry too. So I fed everyone.

The other dancer’s mother picked her up and we headed home, but not before making yet one more stop to drop off some paperwork for my oldest child’s Boy Scout troop that was due before the coming weekend.

We got home at 7:45. I told my little guy that his dad would be late, and to get a shower. He obeyed me. Then I sat down with my oldest son (age 15, who himself had just arrived home from school and crew practice) to discuss his day while we ate the aforementioned casserole.

At 8:15 my youngest walked into the kitchen and propped his skinny arms up on the far side of the island. I turned around from the sink, hung up the towel, and faced him.

“Ok. So you’ve got 15 minutes before bed. Want to go read a bit before lights out?”

Surprise, bewilderment, and sadness crossed his face all at once.

“Aren’t we going to have dinner?”

I was taken aback.

“You ate at Chick Fil A. Are you still hungry?”

His eyes began to flood. He nodded slightly.

I handed him a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter between us.

“Oh, bud. Come sit down.”

We walked over to the table, and as he slid into a chair and opened his banana, his welling eyes spilled over and he began a full-on cry.

“What’s wrong?” I stammered. But even as I said it, I knew.

“Is it about having dinner? Or just being together…at dinner?”

“Being together,” he managed to say.

I was convicted in where I’d wronged him, and also deeply thankful that all the sacrifices my husband and I make to force as many family dinners a week as we can are paying off. Dinner is often late and preceded by many “appetizers” – plates of cheese and crackers or apples meant to “hold you over” until everyone is home and able to sit down. But our kids love to be together. We are bonding a family, and this little boy’s crying heart was proof.

I coaxed him into my lap, grateful that he’s still small enough to kind-of, almost, fit there, and snuggled with him.

We talked it through. I apologized for all the running around, for failing to explain the day’s turn of events better to him as they were happening, and for not paying closer attention to how he was feeling along the way. And I told him that being together was important to ALL of us.

As a down payment on my renewed promise to reconnect with him, I let him stay up an extra 15 minutes, and we read together. Actually, he read to me, which is what he wanted, and I tell you, after all that driving, it was sort of nice to lie on his carpet and hear a story about a brave mouse going on an adventure.

I’m reading a great book right now called Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx. Marx is a journalist who spends a year with football coach Joe Ehrmann, a former Baltimore Colt, and his team at Gilman High School. The book was published back in 2004, but the lessons for raising kids – especially boys – are timeless and perhaps more important today than ever. Ehrmann argues that our lives are to be other-centered rather than self-centered, and that we find purpose when we choose this path.

When we focus on building and sustaining meaningful relationships over success by any other measure, our lives are more fulfilling and we find the satisfaction that we crave. Empathy is the key. We must develop empathy for one another – the ability to be touched by the pain and plight of others.

I looked at my son and wanted him to know that he was understood. Known. Heard. And cared for.

All it took was a couple moments and a renewed commitment to pay attention to the things that he values. Time with his family. Hugs and laughter at dinner every night.

I could do that. Just BE with him.

And you can do it too.

There is someone you know who has a silent crying heart right now. And your empathy is the key to changing things just a tiny bit for him or her.

Will you stop your endless driving, and sit and listen today?