Book Recommendation

If anyone out there reads this blog at all, you may have noticed on my “Currently Reading” list that I have been reading (gasp!) a NON-FICTION title. (Well, two, actually, but we’ll get to the other when I finish it—all 600ish pages.)

You may not be a first generation Christian, but chances are you know someone who is. Whether you realize it or not, they very likely struggle with issues of insecurity in their parenting—insecurity over their past, their unsaved relatives, their fear of not “doing it right.”

Building the Christian Family You Never Had by Mary DeMuth was released January 24th of this year. Mary, a fiction writer at heart, does not claim to be a parenting expert. In fact, this book is less about the nuts and bolts of parenting than it is about allowing the Lord to redeem your past and then moving forward in light of your relationship with Him.

A first-generation Christian herself, Mary speaks specifically to those who were raised in homes where Christ was not revered, glorified, or sometimes even acknowledged. With her own story woven into the words of encouragement, the conversational style reads like having coffee with a friend who has and is walking the obstacle-filled road of trying to raise Christian children without any practical understanding of what that looks like. The picture she paints within these pages are of a woman who parents from weakness and humility, running to Jesus with her hurts and insecurities and failures.

Mary’s exhortations are backed up by scripture as well as experience. And even though this book is geared toward “pioneer parents,” that is, first generation Christians who are now parents themselves, the truths she tells can apply to anyone on the journey of parenting.