Too Blessed to Be Stressed by Debra Coty -Review

About the book:

Do your to do lists have footnotes? Has your fam suggested a rabies shot because your bite has surpassed Rover’s?

Maybe it’s time for a healthy dose of truth gift-wrapped in humor. With her own offbeat brand of wit and near-wisdom, inspirational humorist Debora Coty addresses the heart-needs of desperate women drowning in the churning everyday stress-pool of busyness.

In Too Blessed to Be Stressed, you’ll find simple, practical steps for attaining the peace that you crave as you struggle with the stresses of finances, health, career, relationships, self-image and family. You’ll discover healing, refreshment, and revitalization for your own spirit, body and mind through heart-changing real life stories, biblically based insights, and short chapters for on-the-run convenience.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed reading Too Blessed to Be Stressed and I think I will be looking back at some of the chapters and questions in the future.  As I was reading this for a Litfuse Blog tour I felt like I needed to read it in its entirety to be able to give a review I would be pleased with.  I liked how it was broken down into four sections focusing on different areas we could all use help.  The book is broken down into time management, developing a sense of humor, relationships and faith.  Within each of those the topics are broken down into ten manageable chunks.  Each of the idea is sprinkled with humor and faith.  Funny quotes are interspersed throughout and each smaller section is ended with three reflection questions that go back to faith.

A lot of how we view life come from our own attitudes and the way we shape our reality.  If we are always bemoaning how hard things are and how they will never be better, then that is what we get, but if you turn the same situation around and look at it from a different perspective attitude can be changed and we can move forewords.  Children are a blessing from God, but they also try our patience in new and varied ways on a daily, hourly or even more often basis.  It is so hard to keep in perspective that they will only be little once.  One of the women Cory uses as an example is a mother of 11, with seven currently still living at home while the others have grown up and now reside on their own.  It takes so much more management to coordinate more people.  There are times when I admit that I envy friends who have only one or two children.  It is summer and I am blessed to be home with all four of my children until they return to school and I return to work in the fall, but when I have a chance to go somewhere with just one of two of them it is like a vacation.  Meanwhile I hear people with one or two complaining about how hard it is to go places and do things.  It is all perspective.  I'm sure the mom of eleven would think my four were a walk in the part compared to her outings with seven.

A quote that really stuck home with me was, "I'm not saying we should wallow in pigsties, but when we are shackled by perfectionism and controlled by pride, we become slaves to our homes.  They own us instead of us owning them.  Not good.  Not wise.  Not pleasing to God."  I struggle so much to keep my house in order, think four small kids and a lack of the organization gene, and it can feel like chaos.  It is hard to accept less than perfection, but if we waste too much time trying to attain it we are missing out on the purpose of life.

There are so many nuggets of wisdom in this book that I really don't feel like I am doing it justice.  My plan is to put this on my nightstand and go back to the beginning and do one section at a time and really reflect and try to put some of it to work in my own life.  I can't remember where I read this phrase, I think in a book I reviewed somewhere in the past, but each day one of my aims is to start with an attitude of gratitude and look for why God put a certain situation there.  Maybe the disagreeable person is to teach you patience, or the four yer old who is dragging his feet is to show me to slow down and stop rushing and enjoy each minute of the day, if there is a purpose to the traffic jam and the rainbow, the opportunity and the disappointment, then we can continue to grow and change and find our faith.

Link to buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Too-Blessed-Stressed-Inspiration-Stress-Pool/dp/1616263466?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969

Litfuse and Debora Coty are holding some giveaways that are listed in the post right after this one.

Blog tour schedule:  http://litfusegroup.com/blogtours/text/13418047