Life's Healing Choices
Life's Healing Choices, by John Baker, 10th Anniversary Edition, Howard 2017
When Rick Warren writes a Foreword to a new title, it usually means the book has value and will be extremely well and simply organized. Despite the book's Christian overtones, readers will find the subtitle really delivers - "Freedom from Your Hurts, Hang-ups, and Habits." Plus the book is labeled as an official Celebrate Recovery resource, and we know that's a long-standing life aid.
Life's Healing Choices offers us eight choices, along with real-life testimonies of men and women whose lives, according to the author, have been transformed by living out the eight choices in this book. There are practical, encouraging biblical lessons accompanying each chapter. The phrase "living out" tells us that the book is intended to facilitate permanent behavior change, but we know that since we are human, we might have to repeat the permanent part more than a few times!
What are the eight choices?
1. Admitting NEED, the Reality choice
2. Getting HELP - the Hope choice
3. Letting GO, the Commitment choice
4. Coming CLEAN, the Housecleaning choice
5. Making CHANGES, the Transformation choice
6. Repairing RELATIONSHIPS, the Relationship choice
7 Maintaining MOMENTUM, The Growth choice
8. Recycling PAIN, the Sharing choice.
Happy are those who are merciful.
Happy are those who work for peace.
"Finding Freedom from your hurts, hang-ups and habits, the Introduction," is a refreshing eye-opener. Imagine finally, finally being able to admit that we are basically flawed creatures with a tendency to imitate God - that is, to think that we can control and drive our lives, our time here. Hah.
And what about pain? Isn't pain what gets us stuck, long after we've forgotten the exact details of the event or the other human who hurt us? And don't we self-medicate or overwork to level that pain and feel better? Each one of these challenges has an answer in this book, but the additional learning benefit is that the author advises us to never try this alone! He says we need a village or at least another good friend, and daily prayer and meditation, to rise up.
Mill Girl Verdict: Despite the fact that I ignored the previous books, I now feel, three recoveries later (knee, hip and bc), that this is a well-intended, valuable resource. So there.
Patricia E. Moody
FORTUNE magazine "Pioneering Woman in Mfg"
IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert
A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,
