Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

beauty

What women need to hear about beauty: Review of Enough Already by Barbara Roose

Enough-Already-252x378I will be the first to admit that I don’t really care for books about beauty or modesty or self-image. But this new book by Barbara Roose grabbed me with its title, Enough Already, a clever play-on-words that says to me “stop the beauty madness!” and “you don’t have to do anything else to be beautiful; you already are.” (Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book through Litfuse Publicity Group in exchange for my review.)

And Roose delivers on those two statements with candid and compassionate truth about our “ugly struggle with beauty.”

Roose is honest about her own struggles with beauty and what she sees as her own imperfections. I immediately connected with her writing voice and think she’d be a fun person to know. When talking about beauty and image struggles, I need someone who has been there and gets it. And she does. She writes:

One of the reasons I share my stories is to give you permission to drag your stories and your beauty narratives out into the open so that you can stop struggling alone. (p. 27) BRoose-292

Even the women we think are the most beautiful have a beauty narrative that defines their self-image. I’m a fan of sharing those stories and working through them together, instead of seeing beauty as a competition. Roose devotes a chapter to relationships with other women at various levels, from friends to mentors, and gives guidelines for how those relationships can develop.

One of the most valuable parts of the book for me was the acronym C.A.R.E.S.–clothing, appetite, rest, exercise and smile. None of these areas felt like impossible goals. I could see in each area something I could do to take better care of myself. One of the things I love about the book is that it doesn’t separate the physical from the emotional or spiritual. Roose does not focus only on inner beauty and ignore outward care of our bodies. Hers is a holistic approach, and that’s why her book stands out for me.

Enough Already contains questions for personal reflection and group discussion at the end of each chapter, and all of them are thought-provoking. Check this one out if you’ve had enough of the beauty battles waging in your mind or in the media!

And read on for a giveaway opportunity! There’s still a few more days to enter!

Learn how to recognize your own outer and inner beauty as defined by God, not the media or others, in Barbara Roose‘s new book, Enough Already. What would it take for you to believe you are enough already? Most women know God loves them, but might he love them more if they finally lost that last ten pounds, or got their hair to lay right, or finally found a pair of jeans that looked good and let them breathe? Well, maybe God doesn’t care about jeans, but women do, and all the talk about inner beauty hasn’t kept all of us from staring into a mirror and taking an inventory that never quite measures up.

Barbara is celebrating the release with a giveaway! One reader will receive a cash card and writing supplies for her own inner-beauty weekend getaway!

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One grand prize winner will receive:
  • A $100 cash card for your own inner-beauty weekend getaway
  • A notepad/pencil set for your inner-beauty quiet time
  • A copy of Enough Already

Enter today by clicking the icon below. But hurry, the giveaway ends on April 12th. Winner will be announced April 13th on Barbara’s blog.

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{NOT ON FACEBOOK? ENTER HERE.} 

Things I cannot change| #hardestpeace {a link up}

I don’t know much about Kara Tippetts except that she’s fighting cancer and fighting for life every day. Maybe you’ve heard of her. She recently wrote a public letter to a woman who has scheduled her death. And she’s written a book called The Hardest Peace. I haven’t read the book, but in promoting her book, she’s asking for stories. Stories of others’ hardest peace–where we’ve learned to expect grace in the midst of life’s hard (the subtitle of her book).

I’m not fighting her battle, but we all fight our own battles, and grace is for all of the battles, for all of the fighters in all the arenas.

And the battle I fight is against the things I cannot change.

Namely, the past.

Sure, it’s the past, but I blame it for my present and worry that my future will be radically different because of things that happened then. Things I cannot change.

So peace for today eludes me because I haven’t made peace with the past.

I’m not sure what that looks like anymore.

I used to think it meant surviving it. And survive it, I did.

Surviving the hard times used to seem impossible. There were days I was certain I wouldn’t come through it alive or anything looking like human.

But it’s four years later. And I’m still alive.

I wonder, though: Am I living?

We got through a hard time in our marriage, and we’re so much better for it. But now that life has settled back down, now that the crisis has passed and urgency worn off, I find myself drifting into seas of bitterness, oceans of regret. If I’m not careful, I’ll drown in them.

Peace, then, is what could keep me afloat.

And peace, in part, comes from letting go.

I learned this to a point last year when I released some things, big and small.

But I don’t think I really let the past go.

And that doesn’t mean that I have to forget it, exactly, or pretend it never happened.

Maybe it has more to do with this thought Tippetts shares in her book:

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Finding peace means recognizing that I don’t get to control all the things that happen to me. That maybe–certainly–there’s a larger story being written. One that doesn’t include a perfectly planned out (by my standards) life. As a writer, I can relate to these words. There are scenes in my stories that are hard to write because they wreck someone’s world, but it’s for the greater good.

I need to trust that the same is true in the story of my life.

The hardest peace. What a challenging thought. That peace doesn’t always come easy. But that it still comes.

Do you a have a story about finding the hardest peace? Share yours, too, and link to it here. Then head over to the contest for the book release here and enter to win prizes, including copies of the book.