Summary: A book of wisdom.
I am a fan of memoirs, especially memoirs written toward the end of life that evaluate life and what is important. This isn’t a memoir, but it has the feel of a memoir. Why Everything that Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much is a series of essays. Some of this retrods ground that has been trod before. I love Charlie’s thoughts on music and art and what it means to be an artist as a Christian, but I have heard those parts before.
What I haven’t heard is anything from Andi, Charlie Peacock’s wife. From the book it is clear that I just haven’t been paying attention, because she is the better writer. It is not that Charlie is a bad writer. I think he has important things to say and I think that his role as musical mentor and sage is important, but she has grappled with life and her thoughts in a way that I think shine brighter.
Part of what is important here is that they are both showing the struggle of the Christian life even as relatively successful people. Part of what she ends the book with is a discussion of success. They emphasize that their view of success isn’t money or records sold or influence, but the deeper things of life. And I appreciate that they share vulnerably and appropriately about struggles with health and marriage and vocation and trauma.
Charlie clearly says he was not the husband and father he should have been. Andi held things together while Charlie toured and made records and dreamed dreams. Dreams are important, but as Charlie says at one point, there is no possible way to fulfill every dream. Good dreams get passed by all the time because we just can’t do it all. Especially because we can’t do it all, we need to prioritize the people around us not just how much good we can do.
It is very clear that Charlie has done a lot of soul searching and emotional and relational work over the past decade and beyond. A chapter talks about his health and how his body revolted about a decade ago because he has subjected it to abuse and trauma without attention. And that forced him to grapple with many areas of his life that he had been reluctant to grapple with. Part of what I think is important in that discussion is that he and she both said that things got much worse before they started to get any better. Grappling with trauma and our limitations and weaknesses and the harm we have done to others often causes pain. But the options are to work through the pain and suffering toward healing or to resist that invitation to a more abundant life.
I do think that Christians have a lot of magical thinkings. “If you believe in Jesus everything will work out” is magical thinking. We need more stories like this where everything is not magically better. I can read between the lines and see where growth has happened; and where there is still more room for growth.
Personally, I was drawn to Andi’s chapters on hospitality, self care, vocation and marriage. These are people who have lived through struggle and who do not have it all together in all areas, but they have live through difficult times and are continuing on. I thought the book probably could have been trimmed a bit, but it is always hard to know what needs to be trimmed and what just wasn’t what I needed to hear, but was good to have in it for others.
This is a book of essays and I treated it like a books of essays. I dipped in and out in the midst of other reading. Most chapters were in the 15-20 page range. There were a few that were significantly longer. I think I read almost all of the chapters in a single sitting so that I would not have the ideas split up. But this is more a book about wisdom than a book about ideas. And that is part of what I loved about it.
Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt By Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook