Thursday 16 April 2020

Book Review: Stay

From the Back:

What do we do with everyday aches, disappointment, and pain?
We can run. Or we can stay.
It may sound counterintuitive to stay with our aches and disappointment. We prefer comfort, so our default response is to withdraw, avoid, numb, and neurotically fix. But what if Jesus is pulling out a chair and whispering, Stay?

Anjuli Paschall invites you to stop running from your pain and to discover that the deep end of your story is the way to intimacy with Christ. She extends a daring invitation to stay with your everyday aches, your guilt, your loneliness, your anger, your anxiety, your longings, and even your apathy. True power and transformation are found in the very places we resist the most.

It's here, in the staying, where we move from merely knowing in our heads that God loves us to believing it in our hearts.

Stay is an invitation to sit with God at the table of your soul--and be free.

My Reflections: 
Stay, I love how God works in our lives! Most people can't do much else than stay at home right now. I never expected COVID 19 to even reach this type of impact, yet God knows our hearts our needs, those deep painful ones that you don't share with anyone for fear that your intense emotional state will become a reality. This book by Anjuli Paschall is a breath of clean fresh cleansing air. My soul does feel parched and dry as the sierra desert, however, God knows. This book was such a gentle nudge to steep in those feeling, let them come and accept them for what they are. So ironic because that's the exact advice I am getting from professionals. 

This book will really make you examine how you react to the stressors around you, be it the kids home from school, having no job to go to or working from home. Paschall reminds us that isolation doesn't have to be a frightening process. Feelings my friends are just that, they change like the wind. Being present and engaged in the day you are living, connecting to God in deep and meaningful ways brings what our hearts desire, He fills the empty and dry. 

I loved this quote" Anxiety is the Lighthouse in the storm leading me back to my tender need for God" Anxiety, fear all these things are opportunities to run to our saviour. I admit I'm kind of not doing a great job of applying these beautiful words to my life, but little step by little step, perhaps I will get there. Grace is oh so good, God knows, this book exemplifies our need to feel that pain, the loneliness and use it for growth. God's got our back babe. (Family joke, but such truth!)

You won't regret online ordering this book, or perhaps put it on your kindle. The writing is soft, loving and oh so encouraging, so I think in these uncertain times this book was launched divinely at the perfect timing.  
Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.

Anjuli Paschall

Anjuli Paschall is the founder of The Moms We Love Club and writes regularly for (in)courage, a widely followed online community of Christian women. She grew up encircled by an orange grove in San Diego. After graduating from Point Loma Nazarene University,...
Continue reading about Anjuli Paschall

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