This memoir details the life journey of Beth Moore, An established writer of many acclaimed books and Bible studies for women on spiritual growth and personal development. She digs deep in great details her time growing up in the rural Arkansas, moving to Texas and the calling that brought her to starting and maintaining her Ministries.
Being a self-written book, there are of course a lot of initimate details, comedy and tragedy but within the stories also contain a lot of important life lessons that resonate with me, namely:
- We need to build resiliency and have clarity of purpose to deal with criticism and backlash. She faced enough of that by following her authentic style which rubbed a lot of conservative people wrong who started to attack her.
- Importance of belonging to a group. Human needs connection and we all want to belong. When the author was ostracized from her group, the impact was really felt and it’s not pretty.
- Importance of support system (partner and mentors) you through life. We all go through ups and downs. It’s important that we have mentors to guide and signal us the way and trusted partner that we can lean on during the lows
- Accept people with different views/experiences (calling). She felt that when she discussed her calling with her pastors, she could’ve been shunned and ridiculed, which would have changed all her life trajectory. That acceptance allowed her to explore her calling and became who she is.
- Impact of a broken family on one’s life. She had a relatively tough childhood growing up and that left quite a trauma that took her a long time to overcome. Us parents need to really pay attention to what we pass down to our kids, even inadvertently
I had no idea who she was when I started reading the book (I chose it because it’s well-rated). I imagine this would resonate quite a lot with those who are familiar with her teachings and good works. Even for those not in the know (like myself), I definitely got interesting learnings about living life from this book and it’s a fascinating memoir that you can bite into.