Loving Mommahood: Good News for Weary Women by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

It's disheartening to see exactly how much pressure is applied to women in our culture today. In "Good News for Weary Women" by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Elyse explains the multitude of reasons why women are so weary, and what we can do to stop it from happening.

Women are constantly hearing messages about what they should be doing, what they should be wearing, how they should treat their husbands, how they should be a good mom...the list goes on and on. Women have become weary with all of the world's views and sad to say, the church's view on how women should act. It's impossible to live up to everyone's standards. We're ridden with guilt because we don't quite measure up to the other mom's or women we know. Facebook only adds to this problem as we only get to see the positive qualities in our friends. We don't see their failings and shortcomings. This can actually leave us feeling like we are the ones who don't quite measure up.

Tucked into each chapter is a list of answers describing some of the dumbest advice women had ever received on how to be more godly. Some of these answers include "Never say no to a ministry opportunity", "Never let anyone see your true self", and "Be at church every time the doors are open" just to name a few. Elyse explains how ridiculous it is for us to try to compare ourselves with other women, and how God doesn't expect us to be perfect. I think this is a wonderful book that most women could benefit from. I don't know one woman who hasn't experienced weariness at one point or another. Very well written.

I rate this book as 4 stars. I received this book for free from Tyndale Publishers in exchange for my honest unbiased opinion.

For a sneak peek at "Good News for Weary Women", keep reading!

I have a daughter, two daughters-in-law,and two granddaughters, and if there is anything I want them to know, it is this:

There is good news for you. You don’t need to learn

secret steps, try harder and harder, wear yourself out in

an attempt to be beautiful, snag Mr. Perfect, or raise

perfect children. You are already welcomed, loved,

forgiven, and completely okay. You can laugh and rest

and resist all the ways the world lies to you and tells

you you’re not good enough. And you can love God

because He has already loved you. You can be free to

fail, to rest, to love, to be weak, to grow, and to know

that everything is already given to you in Him.

I know that women (and men) have been overwhelmed

by to-dolists, steps, and bad advice since the beginning of

time. Even five hundred years ago, Martin Luther didn’t need

to read his Facebook friends’ posts about their having fun

without him to realize that there was something wanting in

his life. He was aware of his inability to obey God’s law from

the heart, and he knew he didn’t have his own self-approval,

let alone God’s. But I do think there is something a little

more desperate, more frenetic about our present wilderness.

There are so many messages being broadcast at us from every

direction about “How to be perfect in 149 simple steps” or

“How your life will become a self-inflicted Armageddon if

you don’t follow these rules.”

As a woman who loves Christ, the gospel, her family, her

church, and her country, I’m standing up to scream, “Stop this

madness! Be done with the fluff, the bricks, and the despair-breeding, anxiety-multiplying self-righteousness!

It’s time to trust in Christ—and Christ alone! He has already done it

all. Everything you need has already been given to you.” Or

in the words of the writer to the Hebrews, “Whoever has

entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did

from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest” (Hebrews

4:10‑11).

Instead of freeing me to love and serve Christ and my

family, all this “good advice” loaded me down with guilt and

shame over my ongoing sin and piled on more and more

wearisome rules. The very thing I was taking as an antidote

for my failure was making me more and more ill. Instead of

finding freedom, I was a slave to self-justification.

And judging from what I’ve heard from other women, I don’t think

I’m the only one who has ingested this poisonous brew.

The problem comes when women (and men) haven’t

learned how to differentiate between law and gospel—when

we don’t understand how the good news of Jesus’ perfect life,

death, resurrection, ascension, and reign is meant to impact

us. When we don’t see the connection between the righteous

life Jesus lived and our standing before a holy God, we are setting

ourselves up for bondage. Many women don’t understand

the freedom that has been purchased for us, and we often get

tangled up in legalism or moralism. We don’t know what it

would look like for obedience to be motivated by gratitude.

I believe there are specific instructions in Scripture regarding

gender roles, including those in Genesis 2–3, Proverbs

31, Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy 2, Titus 2, and 1 Peter 3. I believe

that these truths remain valid for today and that we ignore

them to our great harm. But I also believe that much of what

has been dished out to women under the guise of “biblical

gender roles” has failed us in at least two ways. It has gone

way beyond Scripture’s bounds, while at the same time closing

off much of the Bible’s message of comfort and hope. In

these ways, much of this teaching resembles Jesus’ description

of the Pharisees’, for it gathers unnecessarily heavy burdens

and lays them on women’s shoulders (see Matthew 23:4).

Meanwhile, those who teach these things effectively “shut the

kingdom of heaven in [their] faces” (verse 13).

When we define gender roles too narrowly, overemphasizing

a limited number of texts while completely ignoring the breadth of Scripture— when we try to make Scripture say more than it actually does or tell any segment of people that only certain parts of the Scripture concern them (whether we

intentionally communicate this message or not)— we do so to the detriment of women and men, and to the detriment of the church and its mission in the world.

and soul crushing to tell a woman that the only worthwhile

activity she can do is to birth children and serve a husband

and a family. This mind-

set

also creates an idol out of the

family structure, making success as a homemaker/mother the

most important vocation in a woman’s life. And although

this is a high calling, it should not trump our first and foremost

calling: to believe in Christ.

In response to the evils of radical feminism, which shamed women who didn’t work outside the home, the radical femininity movement has shamed Christian women who work outside the home (for a variety of reasons) or who are not married or who have been divorced. Many Christian women have been taught that motherhood is not only their highest calling but also that it is the only calling they should aspire

to. It seems a little like the drunk man who falls off his horse on one side and climbs back into the saddle, only to fall off on the other.