Anything?

I almost deleted the email.
But then–the part about:
“mom to four children, one recently adopted from Rwanda” caught my eye.

Jennie Allen’s digital publicist asked me to consider reading and reviewing Jennie’s new book anything. I’m hesitant when it comes to book reviews, because I already have a stack of books that I want to read and also because the people-pleaser-in-me dreads a possible scenario where I’ve agreed to a review and I end up not liking the book.

But this was a while back, when I wasn’t seeing Jennie’s name pop up all across the web, so I at least decided to visit her website where this photo grabbed my heart.

And then the middle-schooler-in-me noticed that Lauren Chandler, wife of one of our favorite ipod pastors, endorsed Jennie’s book. Not that we’re founders of the Matt-Chandler-fan-club or anything (okay… so maybe we are members), but when our daughter Selah died, several of Matt’s sermons were huge as far as getting us through those next couple of years.

So I dug in…

And wrestled my way through this book.

And loved it and dreaded it.

But when a book is good, I usually have lots of underlining and earmarked pages.

This is what my copy of anything looks like–

Jennie starts by sharing bits and pieces of her own past and the journey and the process of God seeking her out and pulling her to Him. Even though she was raised in a family where God was honored and as a child, she was surrounded by Bible stories and Sunday school…

Jennie remembers, “God feeling a little plastic” (anything pg. 4).

But then she shares about a specific moment when God became real to her:

“In one moment I was free and safe forever.

God moves.

God saves.

In that moment God flipped something dead to life.”

~anything pg. 11

She goes on to explain how she was still stuck…free in Christ…but stuck in a place of fear and wanting to please people and how God needed to destroy the mental scrapbook of expectations she had created–expectations of marriage and children and safety and friendships and travel and family and the way “it should go” in her life…

It was the process of slowly uncurling a closed fist of fingers and offering her outstretched hands up to Him, to a place where she could finally pray–

“God we will do anything. Anything.”

“The very thought of doing anything

demands everything.

We have to face our fears.”

~anything pg. 53

“In America, we’ve learned the art of being verbally passionate

but highly unresponsive Christ followers.

Christ says over and over again,

there is no such thing.

So we are inadequate.

We had better feel that.

On the edge, you always feel it.”

~anything pg.111

But anything is not a a call to radical acts.

Jennie explains that “radical acts were not the goal; we were truly moved by a person, in love with him, with Christ. And out of that love came a willingness to trust and hand over our lives” (anything pg. 119).

And anything will be different for every person. Jennie and her husband share that they are “watching so many people around (them) go from consumers to full-on missionaries without changing professions or addresses” (anything pg. 122).

And she is real and raw in this book. I saw myself in her words…

“Even as I write these words today,

I wonder if I honestly care.

I can barely obey God without thinking,

What will is cost me?

I don’t want to think that way.

Left to myself, I am just that selfish.

I want things. I want comfort and fun.

I don’t want to suffer.

I want things to feel in control.

Today I don’t want to be typing and studying about God’s glory–

I’d rather be at Target or on Facebook.”

~anything pg. 131

Every time I wanted to throw an argument in the face of her call to anything, she went there…

In one chapter she describes the doubts and concerns expressed by close, godly, loving friends and family, those with wisdom who questioned their increasingly reckless prayer to follow God into anything. I sit on both sides of that conversation. When we were starting our second adoption, just months after our fourth child had died, I had this mental argument with myself over and over. But her words were convicting:

“We have become such a pragmatic society

with our pros and cons and schedules

that when we get to matters of radical obedience,

it’s easy for us to talk ourselves out of it.

We rationalize that if the cost outweighs the benefit,

then we shouldn’t do it.”

~anything pg. 152

I wanted to say to her–

What if the cost of anything is your child?

We have waded through grief before…

That part of anything.

What will you say then?

But she voiced those questions right along with me:

“I tremble as I write this,

but if he allows one of my children

or my husband to die,

or if I get cancer,