When Beauty Pursues You by Elora Ramirez

Summary: A brief, poetic look at the pain and redemption of growing up as a girl seeking to be cherished.

For someone that reads as much as I do, and someone that has so many books on my To Read list, I find it odd that I don’t always know why I start reading the books that I read.

Tonight I read this very short little book because I said I would (the author contacted me to ask me to review it.)  I did not have anything else I wanted to read, so I picked it up.  It was  finished in less than a hour.  And it was very good.

I am not the target audience, it is primarily written to women, especially women that feel broken.  But I appreciate the writing.  I am a nanny for my two nieces.  I love caring for these two precious girls. For all of the stress and bother and calls to ‘be a lion’ or ‘no, stand like this’, I want to be a figure that encourages and strengthens them.  Reading about women that have not been cherished and cared for helps give me encouragement to keep going.

My nieces are young, 3 and 4, but it is when we are young that so many impressions of ourselves are made.  Elora Ramirez spends the first half of the short book talking about early impressions that she heard.  That she was too fat, that she was not worth much, that she was something that was to be used and not cherished.  Many of these impressions were from before she was 10.

I know far too many women that embrace those messages and never hear the redemptive messages about them being a child of God, created in his image, and loved.

Elora speaks of depending on God even when she feels she is not worthy.  She is doing the hard work of speaking truth into the lives of broken people.  She is going first, becoming whole, so that she can be what is needed for others.  Part of what I identified with was this quote, “Because only when I’m able to recognize and fight the lies inside will I be able to fight the lies spoken to others – including my daughter.”  There is real power in this motivation.  It is part of our calling as Christians to do what it takes to be healthy, whole people.

Pick this book up.  It is not expensive, it is not long, but it is encouraging and speaks to the real wold that ‘nice Evangelicals’ sometime pretend does not exist.

When Beauty Pursues You Purchase Links: Kindle Edition