Our family has had a rough couple of weeks. My mother-in-law died, just when we thought she was getting better. The assisted living facility where she lived with my father-in-law informed me that the next morning I had to totally clean out their apartment and prepare my-father-in-law to move to the memory care unit or be prepared to pay an extra $150 a day. My grieving husband was trying to work out the details of an out-of-state funeral, while trying to keep up with unexpected assignments at work.
Did I mention that week our daughter had to go to a local high school to take a competitive test, but on the day of the test, we had no hot water and no electricity? Or that the water main break that caused the electrical outage sent several hundred elementary students to that same high school for emergency shelter?
We managed to survive the week, but life is just like that sometimes. With me it happens usually right after I have taken on a new challenge or just when I am about to catch my breath from the last one. It seems like sometimes we can barely survive, much less think about living an active Christian life or parenting our children pro-actively towards God.
It was during this crazy time that I had an opportunity to read and review the book You’re Going to Be Okay by Holley Gerth. Ms. Gerth wrote this book to encourage any of us who are going through a difficult time, or in other words all of us at some point! Perhaps my favorite part of the entire book was the idea that just because we are going through troubles doesn’t mean we have to “live” there.
A book like this has to be difficult to write. You are trying to help people who whine when their coffee gets cold as if the world were against them, as well as people whose entire world is collapsing around them due to one or more tragedies. Gerth seems to be able to strike a good balance of providing guidance to help both ends of the spectrum.
The book has advice for re-thinking your circumstances to practical suggestions for getting through tough times to changing your heart and attitudes. Throughout, she relies heavily on scripture in addition to presenting medical evidence and psychological studies.
As I began reading, I caught myself thinking that much of what she suggested was familiar. Yet, as I continued, I realized we often don’t do what we know we should do. In the end, that’s what I appreciated the most about this book. Gerth gently encourages you to get unstuck in your tough patch and do what needs to be done to get you to where God would want you to be. She manages to do so with a sense of humor and humility. You trust her, because it is obvious she has been down the same road herself.
If you feel stuck in a tough season of life or stressed about what may be around the corner, I think you will appreciate this book. You will find new things to ponder, new ways of doing things and encouragement to move through the tough season from a godly place.
I also just have to share this interesting fact from the book. A study was done comparing the mental states of people who had just won a large lottery prize and people who had just been paralyzed. Within a short amount of time, the study found the people went back to the same state of mind they had before the life changing event. Those who had been happy before returned to a happy state even if they were paralyzed. Those who were miserable, returned to their state of misery, even if they had won the lottery. Gerth’s book tries to help her readers develop godly joy as our base to which we can return no matter the circumstance.
This book was provided to me for free in exchange for my honest review.