From Hot Mess to Blessed

May 8, 2017
Gillies (Prayers for a Woman’s Soul) shares in homespun style how desperate she was to go from being a “hot mess” to simply being “normal.” Gillies was abused by her neglectful parents and only found occasional solace at her grandmother’s home. In adulthood, aided by her husband, she learned to live selflessly and overcome her scarred childhood through a growing faith in Christ. She offers Christian women 12 topics of study with generous citations of biblical characters and their responses to hardship and suffering, as well as sharing her own ongoing struggles in marriage. Readers will feel for Gillies’s sad recollection of inviting friends over to her home, only to discover through her friends’ eyes that she was living in filth. She discusses the pain of being rejected by her mother, who threw groceries, wasting each item as it was catapulted across the room, because she was outraged that Gillies asked for food after going two days without eating. This harrowing yet encouraging book also includes questions for further personal or group study to help readers move forward from painful events.