MOPS Blog Tour - "Intimate Conversations: Devotions to Nurture a Woman's Soul"

So MOPS sent me another book to read - "Intimate Conversations: Devotions to Nurture a Woman's Soul" by Alicia Britt Chole. This time it's this year's theme devotional book. I'm not really sure how it goes with the theme exactly (Together on Planet Mom), but it was a great devotional book - I just wish I'd had more time to read it so that I could do just one a day instead of having to power through all of them to get done in time to post my review. (Disclaimer: they give me the books for free, but they want an honest review of them...it's just that so far all the books have been really good!)

The book contains 52 different devotions, divided into 12 different categories. When I was counting them initially to see how many I needed to do per day, I thought - "huh...52...so I guess you could do one a week for a year...wonder why some are groups of 4 and some are groups of 5." It wasn't until just now that I counted the sections. Duh...12 months...52 weeks...

I'm a rocket scientist.

Anyway...the devotions are pretty short - usually 1.5-2 pgs, plus a little discussion or reflective journaling section of questions to think about and/or respond to. The sections don't really match up to the Planet Mom theme book sections, but you might be able to pick one per meeting that matched that month's meeting theme. Alternately, if you've got a women's Sunday School class or small group, this would be a great way to open your time together. They're not _BAD_ devotionals for mixed company, it's just all written from a woman's perspective using women as the examples.

As with all devotionals, some of the entries struck me more than others, but my favorite section (or rather the section that spoke to me the most) was one entitled "Dear God...why do I feel so unproductive?" The devotions in that section spoke of women who have chosen family over career (which I sort of have...the job is only part-time and isn't exactly way up there on the priority list, especially now that we're that much closer to being able to get by just on VNB's salary), and women who have gone through times of spiritual "winter."

It's not that I feel like God was ever far away or anything, but the first two years of marriage (which include AJ's pregnancy and the first year or so of his life) are a bit of a blur to me. And I'd stepped back from so many things at church that it's taken a while to really feel like myself again. Lately I seem to have found my footing again in terms of my "place" and it really seems like things are bearing fruit and expanding (for lack of a better term). So to have the analogy of a winter season where you just lie low for a while...well, it really made sense to me, especially given this new "spring" that I seem to be encountering.

Anyway, I plan on keeping these in my pump bag and reading one every time I pump, giving myself ample time to really think through the devotion and the reflection questions. I'm also looking forward to the next book MOPS sends me!

And the required stuff:
Available September 2009 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.