4.7 Stars Out Of 5
4.7 out of 5
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  1. Francne Phillips
    San Diego, CA
    Age: 55-65
    Gender: female
    5 Stars Out Of 5
    December 16, 2013
    Francne Phillips
    San Diego, CA
    Age: 55-65
    Gender: female
    Quality: 5
    Value: 5
    Meets Expectations: 5
    When I was eight years-old, my mother took me to a luncheon at the local Baptist Church. I was dressed up in taffeta, wore little white gloves, and black patent leather shoes. At the end of the meal, our speaker stepped up to the stage.

    She was beautiful, with smooth short hair and red lipstick. A blue silk suit fit her slim figure, shiny nylon stockings and beige heels — a color mother preferred to call "bone" — completed the outfit. She sang with the voice of an angel — high and clear like a Disney princess — and gave an encouraging talk about God's faithfulness to those who obey him. Then and there I decided I wanted to be her — a Christian speaker and writer — beautiful, kind and likeable. Perfect.

    Well Joyce Landorf later on in life became divorced, depressed, and after My Blue Blanket, a washout as a writer and leader. I read that book in college and wept for her, her lost ministry, her forgotten beauty.

    The myth of the pretty and perfect Christian woman persisted into the 1980's, when my mother suggested that I join Campus Crusade for Christ because "they have grooming classes and teach you how to wear nice clothes." In some areas of the country that value persists to this day.

    Elisa Morgan lived up to that external image for decades as the president of Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) helping young mothers cope with the overwhelming task of raising tiny children in a world with expectations of perfection. She provided guidance, wrote books, spoke to hundreds of women each year and brought understanding and reality to millions of women in this country and in several additional countries around the globe.

    Her latest book, The Beauty of Broken: My Story and Likely Yours Too, (Thomas Nelson, 2013) reveals a deep crack in such a porcelain-doll façade. For the first time, Morgan lets loose with the truth about her broken family, biological and adoptive, her drive to fix them, and her need to create the perfect family of her own, hand-picked adopted children. Little by little, she shows how God drove home the truth that he loves the broken, including her pregnant teen daughter and her son's struggle with addiction, her alcoholic mother, and her father who abandoned them all. God loves sinners. We all know that, but it's so much easier to think of sinners as someone else. The realization that his love includes you because of your identity as a sinner can come as a shock.

    "I wasn't "enough" after all. I was never intended to be enough: good enough, all-powerful enouht, special enough. "Enoughness" wasn't within my grasp, nor was it God's goal for my life. God so desires that we embrace and accept our not-enoughness–because then we see our need for him."

    Chapter by chapter, Morgan describes God showing up and intervening at the same time he reveals his plan of brokenness and reconciliation. Don't expect a neatly packaged "how-to" book or a simple 1-2-3 formula for getting through brokenness. The shared pain is real, the shards cannot be repaired or smoothed over. Bit by bit, Elisa goes over the details of her life again and then again until the full extent of the damage is laid bare. We see her reality — powerless to fix any of it and surrendered to the plan of her father.

    Maybe you know some women who think they are supposed to be "perfect" Christian women. Maybe you're still trying to hide the cracks and keep the pieces intact. Maybe some of your Christian friends expect you to try harder. Don't. Stop trying at all.

    Let go, let the pieces scatter in fragments across the floor. Elisa Morgan did and shared the path to authenticity in this remarkable and moving book. Let the doll break and let God put the pieces back together in the order that he wants them to fit. The result may not be perfect, but it will be beautiful.
  2. cathye
    5 Stars Out Of 5
    Yes, this is my story too.
    January 16, 2015
    cathye
    Quality: 5
    Value: 5
    Meets Expectations: 5
    This book is salve to my broken heart. Thank you, Elisa Morgan, for your brutal honesty and your transparency in telling your story and mine. But, thank you even more for helping me understand that "training up my children in the ways of the Lord..." was not a guarantee that they would live perfectly and untouched by sin's stain. Just like me, they needed to experience God's grace, even though I would like to have spared them the hardships of bad choices. My love and protection would have crippled them, made them useless to God and unable to understand and help others. And, instead of being a humbled, grace seeking parent, I would be an arrogant, finger pointing stone thrower.
  3. mojo
    Texas
    Age: 35-44
    Gender: male
    5 Stars Out Of 5
    from the CEO of MOPS
    September 3, 2013
    mojo
    Texas
    Age: 35-44
    Gender: male
    Quality: 5
    Value: 5
    Meets Expectations: 5
    Elisa Morgan was named by Christianity Today as one of the top 50 women influencing today's church and is one of today's most sought-after speakers, leaders, and authors. For twenty years, Elisa Morgan served as the CEO of MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers). And under her leadership, MOPS grew from 350 to over 4,000 groups throughout the United States. Morgan has authored over fifteen books on mothering, spiritual formation, and evangelism, including her latest book; The Beauty of Broken; my story and likely yours to.

    Personally I think the church is making a shift towards openness and transparency and I think Elisa Morgan would agree. In her book she shares the raw deep personal "seasons" of her life and her families lives. Through reading Beauty of the Broken I think the reader will see that in a lot of ways, our stories are more connected than we first might think. We are all striving for "perfect" but perfect is always out of reach. The wonderful thing about God is - He doesn't ask us to be perfect, or to come with our act "all together" rather God takes our beautiful mess and "makes us perfect."

    Elisa's book is a bare and open memoir of how we're all in need of some repair. But that God uses as we are to fulfill his Kingdom work. I think that it's this kind of open and courageous story that the world is needing right now. I think this book will help others who perhaps are in this same (or similar) situation to take courage that they're not in this alone.

    Thank you to Thomas Nelson for a free review copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.
  4. cnorth
    5 Stars Out Of 5
    Such a real and honest book
    September 1, 2013
    cnorth
    Quality: 5
    Value: 5
    Meets Expectations: 5
    am so excited that this years MOPS theme is A Beautiful Mess. I feel like this book would be a great supplement to the MOPS theme book this year. This book is one of the best and most honest christian books I've read it in a while. In fact I barely put it down when I was reading it. This book explores the fact that no matter how perfect that we want our family to be there is no perfect family and that everybody is broken. God actually prefers broken people because he take our mess and turn it into something beautiful, even if we think we are a broken ugly mess. We strive to be perfect and not a mess but everyone is even if we don't realize this. This book is so incredibly honest and so eye opening that a CEO of a Christian organization isn't perfect either.

    I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com® book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 : "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."
  5. Floyd Johnson
    Upstate NY
    Age: 55-65
    Gender: male
    5 Stars Out Of 5
    Broken People Influence Broken Families
    June 13, 2013
    Floyd Johnson
    Upstate NY
    Age: 55-65
    Gender: male
    Quality: 5
    Value: 5
    Meets Expectations: 5
    A few years ago, I was privileged to be part of a church that sponsored a MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) group. At the time, the CEO of the international organization was Elisa Morgan - the author of the current book. She, like many others, brought with her the unrecognized baggage of a dysfunctional family. Also, like many others, she came to faith believing all that baggage would dissolve as she lived a life of faith. The Beauty of Broken tells us what she learned about this truth as her children grew and how she learned it.

    Some believers appear to live under the misguided assumption that if you apply the Biblical principles of parenting as defined by the church, children will miss all the major catastrophes seen in the lives of those who choose not to follow Christ - illegitimate children, drug abuse, runaways, etc. Sadly, as many can testify, one does not follow from the other. Families are composed of broken people; even God's family is composed of broken people. When broken people come together, the result is a broken institution. This is Elisa Morgan's story.

    It is clear that the author intends on telling her story - yet in telling her story, she also must include parts of her children's stories, her husband's story, her marriage's story, and her family's story. A number of years ago, I heard of a helpful picture of a family system, where the family is pictured as a mobile hanging from the ceiling. As long as nothing touched or moved any piece of the mobile, it held steady by the thread by which it was attached to the ceiling. However, the minute one of the pieces which form the mobile is touched or moved, every other piece is also forced to take a new position to define a new stasis point for the mobile. Thus, though the author is telling her personal story, it is touched, defined, altered, by the stories of those closest to her.

    Elisa's story, as she suggests, is also my story. As I read The Beauty of Broken, I was amazed at how much of what Elisa Morgan described paralleled the life that my wife and I have experienced over the last 40 to 60 years, individually and corporately. My family worked through many of the issues addressed in this current book some 20 years ago; but as I read, I was reminded of how God used that season of our life (to uses Elisa Morgan's term) to allow us to grow closer to Him and to each other. Though the specific were different, the time spent understanding how our family of origin impacted the family I chose to be part of saved our marriage. The review offered by Elisa Morgan made me aware of just how far my wife and I have come.

    The issues covered by the book are not uncommon to families begun in the late 20th or early 21st centuries. Control, abuse, alcohol or drugs, premarital sex, children born out of wedlock were not unique to either Mrs. Morgan or to your family or to my family. Whether it be this set of issues or others, Christian families are broken and need to experience and demonstrate God's grace in the midst of that brokenness. As we experience that grace individually, we will find that it also gets lived out in our families.

    The book will be a welcome addition to the libraries of many different audiences - those who come from broken families, those counseling broken families or living in a broken family, and pastors - who, by their very nature, serve broken families.

    ______________

    This review is based on a free electronic copy of this book provided by the publisher for the purpose of creating this review. The opinions expressed are mine alone.
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