For the Love

For the Love:
Fighting For Grace
In A World Of Impossible Standards
Jen Hatmaker
(Thomas Nelson)
ISBN: 978-0718031824
August 2015/224 pages/Hardcover/$22.99
Best-selling author Jen Hatmaker is convinced life can be lovely and fun and courageous and kind. She knows how the squeeze of this life can make us competitive and judgmental, how we can lose love for others and then for ourselves. She reveals how to:

• Break free of guilt and shame by dismantling the unattainable Pinterest life.
• Learn to engage our culture’s controversial issues with a grace-first approach.
• Be liberated to love and release the burden of always being right.
• Identify the tools you already have to develop real-life, all-in, know-my-junk-but-love-me-anyway friendships.
• Escape our impossible standards for parenting and marriage by accepting the standard of “mostly good.”
• Laugh your butt off.

In this raucous ride to freedom for modern women, Jen Hatmaker bares the refreshing wisdom, wry humor, no-nonsense faith, liberating insight, and fearless honesty that have made her beloved by women worldwide.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jen Hatmaker is a mom to five children, a pastor’s wife, sought-after speaker, best-selling author and star of the popular series "My Big Family Renovation" on HGTV. She is best known for her books 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess and Interrupted: When Jesus Wrecks Your Comfortable Christianity. For more information, visit JenHatmaker.com.

MY THOUGHTS

Maybe it's residual from my junior high days of not being part of the cool crowd, but I tend to resist jumping on bandwagons and following the latest popular speaker/blogger/author/you-name-it. I'm also very selective about the non-fiction books that I read. However, I had heard enough about Jen Hatmaker's new release to intrigue me, so I took the opportunity offered by the publisher to review it. I'm so glad I did. Yes, her writing is down-to-earth, authentic, and at times laugh-out-loud funny. But she also is absolutely spot-on about some very important and serious matters and communicates them in an engaging yet convincing manner. As the sister of a former career missionary, I wanted to cheer and highlight the entire twenty-first chapter, Poverty Tourism, about short-term missions. I also loved her "on the beam" and "off the beam" analogy for women to prevent themselves from becoming overloaded with expectations and commitments. And her thoughts on American theology--and testing a belief by asking if it is as true for a poor Christian mom in Haiti as it is for us--made me say amen! ("Theology is either true everywhere or it isn't true anywhere. This helps untangle us from the American God narrative....because sometimes my portrayal of God's ways sounds suspiciously like the American Dream and I had better check myself." ch. 3, pg. 19) For the Love is both a quick read and one to slow down, savor, and ponder. Don't miss it!


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a digital copy of this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”