For the Love Book Review

Book Description

The popular writer, blogger, and television personality reveals with humor and style how Jesus’ extravagant grace is the key to dealing with life’s biggest challenge: people.

The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning first with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, live for, go to church with, don’t like, don’t understand, fear, struggle with, compare ourselves to, and judge. People are the best and worst thing about the human life.

Jen Hatmaker knows this all too well, and so she reveals how to practice kindness, grace, truthfulness, vision, and love to ourselves and those around us. By doing this, For the Love leads our generation to reimagine Jesus’ grace as a way of life, and it does it in a funny yet profound manner that Christian readers will love. Along the way, Hatmaker shows readers how to reclaim their prophetic voices and become Good News again to a hurting, polarized world.

My thoughts

I am not a non-fiction reader, but I stumbled upon this book at a local Little Free Library. After taking a quick glance at the back cover and seeing the word “Pinterest,” I knew I had to read a couple of chapters. I’ve yet to meet a single female person that doesn’t love Pinterest, and we all wish that our houses, kitchens, and kid’s activities mirrored that website.

Well, I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did! Jen Hatmaker has a quirky and fun sense of humor that was not lost on me. I think at the time she wrote this book, her age was pretty close to my current age, and I had no trouble relating to almost everything. She talks about motherhood, her church family, her girlfriends, and what sounds like a now-famous Supper Club. And sprinkled through all that real life are some honest, truthful, and soul searching chapters that came into my life when I needed them most.

I just had a dear friend pass away, and the last year of her life was not a pleasant one. During that time, I lost touch with her because her lifestyle had changed so drastically. When I learned of her death, I felt such guilt that I had not been more proactive in reaching out to her. I don’t know if I could have made any difference, but her decisions ended up costing her everything. When I got to Chapter 18 in this book, I felt like it was written just for me. Jen talks about how some individuals in our lives make decisions that we don’t necessarily agree with, and not to feel guilty when we say to ourselves, “Ok, it’s time to let this person go because they are having a negative effect on me, my family, or others.” By no means did I feel she was saying to completely give up on these people, but after so many chances, we should be gracious enough to ourselves to cut ties when and if it’s appropriate.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this book 5 stars were her personal thoughts about making sure to have a home cooked meal on the table for your kids/family every night. Believe me, that is always a goal of mine, but for my life and the lives of lots of other moms, it’s not always possible! For a book that’s supposed to be showing women how we don’t have to live up to the impossible standards of Pinterest and to extend grace to ourselves, this segment of the book felt a bit holier-than-thou. Sometimes a home cooked meal at my house is boxed macaroni and chicken nuggets. Do I wish I had time to do more some nights? Yes. Am I happy my kids are fed and happy? 100% yes.

I’m still on the fence if I’ll read anything further by Jen Hatmaker. While this book came along at just the right time in my life, I’ve read several things personally about Jen that I don’t agree with, and that may be enough to keep me from reading any her books in the future.

My favorite segment

All of chapter 18 – exactly what I needed to read at that moment.

Jewelry inspired by this book

I wanted to make something that reminded me of the grace that we should give ourselves, but also, the grace that God extends to us daily. This bracelet is a sweet, gentle reminder that we can bask in that grace and freely give it to others.

Find on Amazon here.

Find on Goodreads here.