Book Review (and Giveaway!): Life Ready Woman by Shaunti Felhahn

Now for something completely different. Not only am I reviewing this amazing book, but I'm also hosting my first giveaway! Amy Lathrop at LitFuse has provided not only the book I read, but another to give to one of my readers. I'm also including information about another giveaway. This review is being cross-posted on The Very Latest Thing, so if you go there and enter the book giveaway, you'll get two entries. First, the review:

About The Life Ready Woman:

Are you a ‘Doing it all’ or ‘Do what matters’ woman?

Whether a stay at home; or working mom, an airplane-hopping executive, an empty-nester caring for multiple generations or a single juggling high demands of career and personal life, today's fast-paced modern world leaves women gasping for balance. We as modern Christian women want to look to the Bible for guidance on how to manage our lives -- but because the world of women looks so different today than it did when the Bible was written, it is hard to find chapter and verse that seems to apply to our situation today.

Thankfully, God has given us exactly that timeless, unchanging guidance for how to find peace, clarity, and God's best for our lives once we know where to look! The Life Ready Woman: Thriving in a Do-It-All World, reveals a profound biblical roadmap for how each of us can find the abundant life we are longing for, rather than the stressful, torn, how-do-I-balance-it-all life we often feel like we are trying to keep up with today. Actually being a LifeReady Woman means that you are clear about your life, bold in your faith, and able to find God’s best for you, and the end result will be that you not only survive but thrive in our do-it-all world.

God has given every wonderfully unique woman different skills and abilities, different desires, and different temperaments -- and every woman around the planet and through the ages is certainly living in different circumstances. But no matter what a woman’s life looks like, the Bible says that God has an individual mission and plan that He’s carefully designed for each of us. And He wants us to find it. Starting January 2011, The Life Ready Woman and the Life Ready Woman Video Series will help every wonderfully unique woman to thrive as she identifies and courageously pursues God's unique design and callings for her. LifeReady Woman puts you on a roadmap to make decisions that will lead to relief, delight, and fulfillment instead of regret.

Contents: 

Introduction: Being Life Ready
Part 1: God’s Plan and Purposes for All of Us
Chapter 1: I Am Woman
Chapter 2: A Satisfied Life
Chapter 3: What the Issues Actually Are
Chapter 4: A Biblical Definition of Womanhood, Marriage, and Family
Chapter 5: Where It All Comes Together: Discovering Our Design and Callings

Part 2: Getting to God’s Best for You
Chapter 6: Live from the Inside Out
Chapter 7: Embrace a Big-Picture Understanding of Life, Part One
Chapter 8: Embrace a Big-Picture Understanding of Life, Part Two
Chapter 9: Use Wisdom with a Man
Chapter 10: Steward Your Gifts from an Eternal Perspective
Chapter 11: Believe God, Not Your Fear
Chapter 12: Being God’s Servant
Notes

Copyright © 2011 by Shaunti Feldhahn and Robert Lewis. All rights reserved.



About Shaunti Feldhahn:

Shaunti Feldhahn is a former Wall Street analyst, best-selling author of the book For Women Only, national speaker, and regular commentator in the media. She has been featured on The Today Show, PBS, TNT and Fox News- to name a few. You can learn more about her many activities by visiting her website Shaunti.com or get some great mom advice from her at MomLifeToday.com. She and her husband live with their two young children in Atlanta, Georgia and enjoy every minute of living at warp speed.



In celebration of Shaunti Feldhahn’s Life Ready Woman, MomLife Today is giving away 2 Weekend To Remember Gift Packs and much more!

Not only, is MomLife Today helping promote Life Ready Woman, but they are thrilled to announce that Shaunti will be joining MomLife Today as a regular contributor!!!

Weekend To Remember Get-Aways offer marriage-changing principles that you can take home and apply to your daily lives to strengthen your marriage. Whether you are newly engaged or have been married for 50 years, you will find value in the tools provided at the getaway.

Don’t miss this opportunity to receive a conference registration for you and your spouse … and more! MomLife Today will be randomly selecting NINE lucky recipients to receive one of these great gifts:

1. 2 Weekend To Remember Get Away conference registrations for two. $259 value each pair (Two couples will receive this.)
2. 2 Life Ready Woman DVD packs. $149 value each (Two different people will receive this gift.)
3. 5 The Life Ready Woman books. (Book will go to 5 people.)

To enter click one of the icons below then tell your friends. Winner will be announced on March 2nd on the MomLife Today website.

MomLife Today provides encouragement, advice and resources to help YOU with your daily Momlife! Because…every MOMent counts!

 My Take:

To tell you the truth I was a little concerned when I started to read the book. I thought it was going to be one of those so-called "Christian feminist" books that tell you that women can and should do and have it all. I couldn't have been more wrong. Shaunti won a firm place in my heart when she said "You can have it all, but not at the same time." Women today have been sold a bill of goods that they can climb the corporate ladder, raise and nurture their family, keep an immaculate home, cook gourmet meals every night and still look and feel ravishing for our husbands after the kids are in bed. No wonder we're disillusioned! Ask almost any woman how she feels and 9 times out of 10 she'll say "tired".

We can be and do so much and God has an incredible plan for our lives that utilizes the gifts He gave us. We just have to work within His calling, His timing, and His strength. This book would have saved me a lot of tears if I would have had it years ago. The Life Ready Woman was encouraging and affirming enough that I'm planning to have all my older daughters read it. There is much out there that heads into one ditch or the other, but I loved the balanced approach. I won't say I 100% agreed with every point, but, again, it was enough that I'm buying them for others.

About the book giveaway:
Leave a comment on this blog and/or The Very Latest Thing and tell me why you think you'd like to read this book. I will pick one winner from the entries on the two blogs combined and post the winner February 28th. Please leave me some way to contact you or you'll have to come back here to see if you won. If the book isn't claimed in 7 days, I'll pick someone new.