This was a frustrating book to try to rate. I found myself agreeing with her in one sentence, and disagreeing in the very next one - and then repeated that throughout the whole book.

Due to the title, I expected the bulk of this book to focus on her wrestling with the Christian faith pre-conversion (similar to how Nabeel Qureshi wrote his memoir [b:Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity|18289396|Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity|Nabeel Qureshi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386802223s/18289396.jpg|25818274]), but she spends just a couple chapters quickly wrapping up this part of her life.

She then jumps into defending her fringy, very Reformed (Calvinistic) denomination, and attacking other Christians who don't believe what she believes, then complains that these Christians are not humble and kind enough to embrace others who disagree with them on issues.

Her writing was drenched in pride masking as humility.

Even though I felt like getting into the adoptions of her children didn't fit with the supposed theme of the book, I'm interested in foster care and adoption, so thought this part would still be worth reading. I was very turned off to hear her not-so-secret thoughts of teenage birth parents:

"[My husband and I] were surprised and horrified to learn that even Christian crisis pregnancy centers encourage teenagers to try to parent their children rather than consider the adoption alternative." (p 119) Butterfield then goes on to essentially say that all these children will end up in foster care because their parents are sinners.

Some of her "Christian" jargon also turned me off a bit. I'm a Christian, but I don't use (and have never before heard used) terms like "covenant homes" when referring to a nuclear family comprised of Christian parents. Other parts of her language were very "intellectual" for lack of a better term. I get that she's a super-smart English professor, but it came across as pretentious.

Having said all that, there was some good here!

Certainly, her call to Christians to treat those in the LGBTQ community with more love is needed! Even her desire to show hospitality to others is something that should be present in the Christian church, but is all too often lacking.

I appreciated her thoughts on sexual sin, and how homosexuality is not "worse" than other sexual sins:

"To a good Christian, sex is God's recreation for you as long as you play in God's playground (marriage). No way, Jose. Not on God's terms. What good Christians don't realize is that sexual sin is not recreational sex gone overboard. Sexual sin is predatory. It won't be "healed" by redeeming the context or the genders. Sexual sin must simply be killed. What is left of your sexuality after this annihilation is up to God. But healing, to the sexual sinner, is death: nothing more and nothing less.... too many Christian fornicators plan that marriage will redeem their sin.... Christian masturbators plan that marriage will redeem their patterns.... Christian internet pornographers think that having legitimate sex will take away the desire to have illicit sex. They're wrong.... Christians act as though marriage redeems sin. Marriage does not redeem sin. Only Jesus himself can do that." p 83 (emphasis mine)

Another thought on marriage:

"I've come to note that normally moderate non-pretentious Christians tend towards extreme emotional excess in the areas of weddings and baby showers. This particular weakness had not been mine to witness until I became the subject of this attention. I found this kind of attention uncomfortable and annoying. It seemed as though people that I thought were my friends saw me as suddenly more legitimate now that I was going to join the club of the married." p 53

I also liked this quote:

"We develop a taste for God's standards only by disciplining our minds, hands, money, and time. In God's economy, what we love we will discipline." p 30

So, there was good and bad here. It is a memoir, and at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that memoirs are by definition one person's thoughts about their own experiences and beliefs, so naturally they are highly subjective.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to others, but I also wouldn't attempt to dissuade anyone from reading it. ( )

I especially enjoyed the first three chapters of this book, and bits and pieces of the final two chapters. Her writing is excellent, skillful, honest, and inspiring.

For me some of the focus in the final two chapters was too much on her denomination’s beliefs and some other things related to adopting, fostering, and homeschooling children. I would’ve loved to hear a bit more of the personal things with her family rather than more informational things in these chapters.

Aside from some nuggets I underlined here and there in those latter chapters, I wasn’t a fan of this because—though it was informative and would be helpful if I wanted to study these subjects—I wanted to read a memoir, not information about her denomination, marriage theology, etc.

TL,DR; I really enjoyed the first three chapters and was even moved to tears a few times and I’m glad to have finally gotten to read this book, but the final two chapters were disappointing. ( )

58141

pretty good. The first half of the book, about her actual conversion, was more interesting to me. The second half felt like the blog of a Christian homeschooling mother in the years after her conversion. Still interesting, but in a different way, and not as interesting (to me) as her conversion story. I enjoyed it, though. I would recommend it. ( )

9/10 ( )