Unglued by Lysa TerKeurst
Book Review By Erin Shelby
"I’m not good enough. I keep messing up. I should speak more kindly. I really blew it. I should be more patient. I should be more loving. I can’t believe I did that."
If you’ve ever felt this way, Lysa TerKeurst gets you.
TerKeurst's Unglued reveals her journey of trying to rein in emotional responses and reflects a belief that other women also struggle with this. This struggle, TerKeurst believes, is what can lead women from feeling – or appearing - fine one moment and frazzled the next. TerKeurst presents personal anecdotes in a vulnerable way without a posture of superiority. She is, like many women, incredibly hard on herself. She tells of how an experience with a declined credit card brought feelings of shame. Another experience, serving in a ministry on drug-infested Skid Row, led her to feel condemned for not being grateful enough about her own life.
Like many books in the genre of Christian self-help, there is a lot that can be skipped to get to the more substantial material. The first forty pages of Unglued could be skimmed without missing the heart of the message.
TerKeurst brings some practical tools that readers can use to understand their emotions. While she works in a faith-based organization – and most readers won’t be in a position to share their faith on the job the way she does– her response template in chapter five can inspire appropriate responses in a business context to customer complaints. Chapter nine makes a valuable contribution to inspecting jealousy. Chapter five can provide a great deal of self-awareness to reveal the true causes of “unglued” moments.
© 2013 erinshelby