Book Review: The Beauty of Broken...My Story, and Likely Yours Too by Elisa Morgan

Book Review: The Beauty of Broken...My Story, and Likely Yours Too by Elisa Morgan

"I received this book for free from BookSneeze for this review”.

Book Review: Find beauty and hope for the messiness of family life. 

Are you exhausted by the fairy-tale idea that following Jesus will mean our families won't suffer? That a parenting formula can guarantee our children will turn out okay? That our families will be immune from being broken because we love God?

In The Beauty of Broken, Elisa Morgan, one of today's most respected female Christian leaders, shares for the first time her very personal story of brokenness--from her family of origin to her family of creation, represented by her husband and two grown children. Over the years, Elisa's family struggled privately with issues many parents must face, including: alcoholism and drug addiction, infertility and adoption, teen pregnancy and abortion, divorce, homosexuality and death. 

Each story layers onto the next to reveal the brokenness that comes into our lives without invitation. "We've bought into the myth of the perfect family," says Elisa. "Formulaic promises about the family may have originated in well-meaning intentions, but such thinking isn't realistic. It's not helpful. It's not even kind."

Elisa offers hope in the form of "broken family values" that allow parents to grow and thrive with God. Values such as commitment, humility, relinquishment and respect carry us to new places of understanding. Owning our brokenness shapes us into God's best idea for us and enables us to discover the beauty in ourselves and each member of our families. 

 

 My Review: The cover of this book immediately drew me to the book as did the idea of listening to what Elisa Morgan, the leader over all of the MOPS groups, one of which I attended, had to say that would be considered different from what we learned from her every MOPS meeting. I must say that I was actually quite disappointed in this book. It lost me very quickly. There was a little too much Christian talk in between stories and it drug on getting to the point of anything she was trying to tell the readers. Once you got to an individual story, it was a good one, but actually getting from one story to the next seemed like it took forever and came across as being very boring. I almost felt like I had to skip ahead to the actual story and not read what was in between. I wish I could have reviewed this better, but honestly, I only made it to Chapter 6 because there was just not enough of interest in this book. I will let anyone be their own judge, but personally, I would not recommend this book.