Girl Meets Change

One of the great pleasures I've had in my post-station life has been the opportunity to read books. I simply did not have time to read for pleasure while working in radio, and it has been such a joy to get back into this love of mine.

An additional pleasure has been the opportunity to tell YOU about books, and today...oh my goodness. I've got a good one for you. It's been a delight to be part of a book launch team for the first time ever, which means I had the opportunity to read this book before it officially released {OH! That is happening today!!!}. I'm joining the celebration of a beautiful book birth by telling you about it today.

If you have known me for any length of time, you will know that for the better part of my life, I hated change. {Lois, can I get an amen??} I cannot even put into words the ferocity with which I dug in my heels and gripped with both hands while jutting out my chin and saying a stubborn, emphatic NO!!! to change.

Change scared me to death. I hated the vulnerability, the uncertainty, the learning curve...the upending that came with change of any kind. {Other than my underwear. I did change that.} I felt like any measure of change would rock everything in such ways that I couldn't even recognize my own life or hang onto the control I erroneously believed I had over it.

The passing of time and the growth in understanding I control nothing and God controls everything have helped me loosen my grip on change, and some of it I actually {gulp!!} like now. But there are still moments when God calls for change, and that familiar gripping and digging kicks in.

So you can see why I wanted to read Kristen Strong's brand-spanking-new, releasing-today book Girl Meets Change. Here's what I love about Kristen: she's normal. She's a wife. She's a mom. She's a girl. She's a Christian. She's lived a military life for many years. She gets it. She doesn't write this book from some big life-altering, tabloid-attention-grabbing seat that no one else will ever sit in. She's just just like us. Just a girl livin' life.

But as you might imagine, with credentials like wife, mom, military...human being, she's no stranger to change. And she's resisted it from time to time in ways identical to my own stubborn resistance. Through those moments, she's allowed God to teach her to not just survive the change, but to meet it. To embrace it.To allow the best change of all: His change in her heart, regardless of how much she likes or dislikes the physical change in front of her.

Gasp.

In fact, she has learned to say {and mean!} "change is an absolute provision of God's grace." Oh, my goodness, how true it is.

Good news? She doesn't take away the truth that change can hurt. That it can bring grief. That it can be a loss. But she also offers the equal truth that it can be a beautiful gift when cradled in the Hands of God.

This book is saturated in brilliant quotes that I would highly recommend scribbling on note cards and scattering around your house if you are in a season of hard change right now. It's saturated with stories of her own run-ins with change, how she coped, and what she learned. She's a girlfriend having coffee with you, smiling and offering hope and hugs when you want to lay your head on the table and sob.

And the additional brilliance of this book is that it really doesn't matter what change you're facing, you'll find something to aid you in these pages. I say that because being on this book launch team meant I had the chance to see notes from other people on the team as they read through the book. I saw notes from women facing health changes, death, birth, kids going to college, kids going to kindergarten, starting jobs, losing jobs, moving, not moving...changes of all kinds for women of all ages. And each one found hope in the pages. That's a God-breathed miracle...that He can bless a human being's words to bring HIS hope to people in all life stages.

So if you're facing a change you didn't ask to face...if you're facing a change you saw coming...if you're facing a change that is good and you know it, but hard at the same time...if you're watching a friend face a change that seems to be her unraveling, I have three words for you: Girl Meets Change.