Book Review for the Homemaking-Challenged: Graced & Gifted by Kimberly Hahn

From the wife half of the Hahn Dynasty has come a new Bible study series for Catholic wives and mothers. Graced & Gifted: Biblical Wisdom for the Homemaker's Heart is Hahn's book tackling the arts of homemaking. She handles topics from laundry to cooking and everything in between, interspersed with chapters on the sacraments.

For "homemakers" like myself who find the whole "homemaking" part of life shall we say rather hum drum, this book is a nice shot in the arm. Hahn reminds (or instructs, for those of you like me who never heard this before) her reader that there's a purpose in all of this seemingly endless grind. An anecdote I have retained finds Hahn climbing the stairs of her house, lugging an eighty or so pound basket of laundry. She looks down at The Little Shirt. She sighs. How many times is she going to have to wash this thing?? She prays for God's perspective and it dawns on her that she's been able to love a whole passel of her kids through this one stinkin' shirt. All of sudden the basket seems weightless and she lightheartedly continues on her way upstairs.

This may not sound like rocket science, but for me it was amazingly helpful to have a new perspective on these repetitive tasks. Before reading this book, I felt like my life was to be the revolving door: endlessly and meaninglessly spinning around doing these chores only to do them again and again and... For comparison, I should post a rather testy email I wrote to my sister in law about this, except it would singe the cables of my computer.

So where to go from here? I now see a purpose in my life as a homemaker. While FAR from perfect, I have gone from detesting homemaking where it was truly making me insane, to the point of enjoying it. I laugh out loud at this. This is hysterical. Can I actually have written that I enjoy homemaking??!! Yet it's true! Disenchanted homemakers, this is a book that will help drag you from the doldrums of endlessly cleaning toilets to the heights of giddiness!

A second huge boon of this book is a chapter on how to prioritize your life so you do the most important things first. Again, not exactly CNN news, but if you actually DO it, as my husband and I have begun to do, it makes an immense difference in the peace you gain. Since carrying out Hahn's priority plan, I have learned to actually pray every day (yes, yes, I know...) and actually take care of myself in such basic things as brushing my teeth every day (mm-hmm, you needn't tell me). This sounds so simple, but I wasn't doing these things before. I was so stuck on taking care of Other Lovely People, (a/k/a my kids) that I actually put all of them before God, myself, and my husband. No wonder I was going insane. Thank GOD (and I do mean that!) my dear husband gave me this book and helped straighten me out! I actually love life now!!!!!

I give this book 3 out of 5. Weird that my rating is somewhat low, considering it has changed my life. I can't give it anything higher, however, because the style bugged me. I think the book could have stood with stiffer editing. I found the additions of the chapters on the sacraments somewhat forced. And I would have appreciated the book more if Hahn had left out the obligatory Scripture references to "back up" her points. Not that I have anything against Scripture. I love a book that delves deeply into a portion of Scripture and shows me what I never knew was in there. However, I dislike books (sadly, this one is in this category) where it seems like the author looked up, say, "garden" in her concordance and then tacked on a Scripture passage at the end of a paragraph to "prove" her points. Maybe it seems kind of tough to knock off two points for that, but even getting a 4 is pretty hard from me. So I'll stick with my 3. But don't let that stop you from buying it! The content is gold.