Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full

Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full, Gloria Furman (Crossway, 2014)

“I feel like I could lift a bus to protect my offspring, but if you ask me to hand over my peanut butter banana smoothie to one of them, then I have to really think about it” (35).

It’s lines like this that remind me why I love Gloria. But there’s a better reason than the author’s humor that strikes all too close to my own, and that is that she is persistent about presenting the good news. Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full is a gospel-salve for moms. The words mundane and ordinary have been given new light and vigor in evangelical writing lately. Motherhood may be a vocation that epitomizes these terms. And yet, you don’t feel like it’s ordinary when you’re pushed to the limit because your child just won't sleep, or they hand you a booger at the dinner table, or your washing machine decides to croak on laundry day and you lose it on the family. During these finer moments you aren’t feeling like a “mundane” mom, but rather like a failure. (And just for the record, I don’t think it is a mom-fail to keep every drop of that PB shake for yourself.) How can such adorable blessings from God bring out the worst in us? Our hearts are revealed in both the mundane and the not-so-mundane moments of motherhood. Treasuring Christ is a small book with short chapters that encourage and equip moms with gospel applications to our everyday struggles. It is just what it’s subtitle claims to be: Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms. Are you a busy mom, or do you know a busy mom that could use a periodical sanity-check? This book may do the trick. As Gloria addresses the issues that every mom deals with such as pride, weariness, mere survival, idolatry, maternal instinct, and bad circumstances, she gives the reader an eternal perspective. “The long view of motherhood sees far beyond the third trimester, potty training, and even high-school graduation. The long view of motherhood scans the horizon of eternity” (153). The best part of this book is that it isn’t about motherhood. This book is about God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ. “Yes, mother, your hands are full, literally. And your hands are filled to overflowing with grace by the one who stretched his hands out for you on the cross” (33).   *Thanks to Gloria Furman and Crossway for an advance copy of Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full in exchange for an honest review.