Grow Review: Grace for the Good Girl

(this review is adapted from my more personal review at www.tiffanymalloy.com)

I read a book recently that I just must share with you. (If you are a dad reading this, I'm not sure if you will connect, but perhaps you know a woman who would benefit from this book...so keep reading).

Emily Freeman, owner (is that even the right word? I don't know) of www.chattingatthesky.com, recently released a book called Grace for the Good Girl, which is all about “letting go of the try-hard life.” Before I started the book, I wasn’t sure if I would entirely connect with the book. I knew that I was a "good girl" growing up, but I wondered if it would still apply to me today.

After reading the four page introduction, I wondered if I was going to end up underlining the whole book. What she described as the “good girl” was unmistakeably me.

Experience guilt and don’t know why? check.

Feel the heavy weight of impossible expectations. check.

Have an insatiable desires to explain every mistake. check.

Always obey the rules, and if there are no rules, obey rules that you think there might be. check. (Funny story- the other day Jake and the kids tagged along with me while I grocery shopped. They always get bored so this time around Jake decided to push the kids up and down the grocery aisles...quickly. I was convinced that we would get kicked out and never be able to grocery shop their again. I kept telling him to stop; he didn't. I got him to at least move to another aisle to do it so that I could finish getting groceries in case they got kicked out).

Emily writes that “good girls” tend to hide behind masks of good reputation, good performance, strength, responsibility, spiritual disciplines, acts of service, her comfort zone, and/or indifference. Emily takes each of these masks and helps women recognize the mask in themselves as well as how it affects their relationship with God and others. But, friends, this is not a self-help book. She doesn’t give us five ways to take off these masks. Instead, she talks about the journey, reminds us of the truth, and recognizes that this process is a wrestling.

It is evident that Emily is a student of the Scriptures. She is gifted at helping us see how Jesus saving us has everything to do with how we live our day-to-day life, and that our salvation doesn’t stop at “now I’m going to heaven.” Jesus is saving us from all of these masks as well.

I think this book would be a great one to go through with a small group of women that are committed to one another. It provides questions at the end of each chapter (as well as a small group guide at the end of the book) that encourages the reader to make the material their own. This is one that you will want to read through first yourself, and then read again with a good friend to process more out loud.
So, if you think you may identify with the “good girl” label, grab a friend and a copy of this book, and get reading.

Thank you, Baker Books (specifically the Revell division) for a complimentary copy of this great book! They encouraged me to give an honest review, and so I did .