Out of the Spin Cycle: Devotions to Lighten Your Mother Load

Jen Hatmaker has hit the presses again with her new book Out of the Spin Cycle: Devotions to lighten your mother load. This new book brings a light and humorous look at mothering while focusing us on Christ Jesus.

Hatmaker is the mother of three (ages 8, 10 and 12), and it is her parenting experiences that she shows to us. If anyone can seem genuine and humble in their parenting it is she. Some of the topics she addresses are:

• Parenting and Spiritual health

• Serving our children

• Relationship with children vs. with God

• Instilling independence in children

• Disciplining children

• Raising children in an unsaved world

• Keeping a strong marriage

• Keeping up friendships

• Asking for help

• Struggles new moms face

• Mom-comparison trap

As you read through the devotionals you will quickly notice that you are not reading something from your mother’s era. All of these devotions have a life and vitality all of their own. It reads as if you were sitting on the couch surrounded by a bunch of girlfriends gabbing about your life and your kids. Maybe this is because Hatmaker feels it is essential to have girlfriends she even goes far enough to say, “You’ll die without girlfriends.” She states, “We need out friends. We need their counsel and companionship; they need our compassion and comic relief.” I believe with that said, I now have a new friend – Jen Hatmaker.

She focuses her comic relief on teaching the need for a strong support system in our parenting. This support system includes God, His Word, our husbands and our friends. Through each devotion she graciously portrays examples of leading her children and family towards God. Now before you think she sounds too perfect to pay attention to, you’ll need to read a few of the devotionals. She is the first to say she has screwed up in times of her parenting. She has noticed that those are times where she is short on patience, sleep, time, reading the Bible and praying. It was this real look into the Hatmaker household that kept me reading through the book.

I know that I am an imperfect mom and that it is okay to be who I am. Too often though I don’t consciously remember that. The devotions kept me grounded on the fact that I don’t need to be perfect because Jesus is. All I need to be is the best that I can and if I am not one day, then I can try again the next. This is a book that I will read again and again. It is one of those books that when you read it once you will get one thing from it. Then when you read it again you will get something else. It will constantly provoke new thought and deeper insight into who you are and how you want to be.

Available June 2010 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group