In nine years, I’ve never gone into my Catholic Mom’s Bible
Study / Book Club and said, “We need to read this book today,” but I did that
with the latest book by Kate Wicker.
If you are always perfectly fulfilled in your role as a
mother and you have a group of well-behaved children who never try your
patience, feel free to stop reading this review right now. If, on the other hand, you struggle with your
God-given vocation of motherhood and sometimes feel like a total failure, then
you will want to put “Getting Past Perfect: How to Find Joy and Grace in theMessiness of Motherhood” at the top of your reading list.
In the Foreword, Rachel Swenson Balducci tells us that “Motherhood
is not for wimps. . . .Being a mom is the hardest thing you will ever do and
one of the most important. And that’s why, if we start thinking about things
too much, we can get a little carried away.” We all want to be the best moms we
can be, but at the end of the day, we need to accept that we are not perfect.
Only God can make that claim. We need to find our center in “the loving arms of
Jesus.”
Wicker describes motherhood as “the ultimate extreme sport.”
It is, after all, a race with no finish line. Even when our children have
crossed the threshold into adulthood, we are still their mothers. With the
stakes so high, it’s easy to wrap our identity up in being a mom. Wicker wants
to remind us that “motherhood is actually not [our] highest calling. Being a daughter
of God is. . . The highest calling placed upon our lives is to know and love
God with all that we have and all that we are.”
Each chapter begins with two contrasting quotes. One is an “Evil
Earworm” that the world (or the voice inside our head) tells us. The second is
an “Unvarnished Truth” giving us a much-needed dose of reality rooted in God.
Wicker, a mom of five, offers refreshingly honest anecdotes
from her own life to illustrate her points. She freely shares where she has
gone wrong and how she could do better. She doesn’t have all the answers and
describes herself as a “perfectionist in recovery.” She is in the trenches with
the rest of us. Reading “Getting Past Perfect” is like sitting down with one of
you best faith-filled girlfriends to have an honest heart-to-heart about life
and motherhood. A Reading Guide is also included for use by individuals or groups.
CatholicMom.com will be running a Book Club featuring this book. Find out more at: http://catholicmom.com/2017/03/11/announcing-getting-past-perfect-book-club
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