Winners Never Quit?

Sometimes the quitters are the winners. So says Geri Scazzero in her book I Quit!- Stop Pretending Everything is Fine and Change Your Life I found this a fascinating, encouraging, practical book on how to become truly at peace with oneself, listening to God and not to others when it comes to expectations and perceived obligations.

I seem to gravitate towards  books written by people who do the hard thing and sometimes push against expectations or limitations. Who do what it takes to get what they want.  Not that that is a reflection of my life, but I suppose it’s what I aspire to. To be more real, to face fears, to be more authentic (a slightly overused word, but a good one nonetheless), to go where I have not gone before!  And I do realize it takes baby steps, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. I love personal growth books, especially where people have overcome considerable challenges and can look back and say the journey was worth every painful step. Because God met them in this journey and He has changed them because of it.

I think I Quit! is a book like this. Scazzero is the wife of a pastor in a huge inner city multi-racial church in New York City. She and her husband began this church plant about 23 years ago. Overwhelmed by expectations, lack of family time, people pleasing, and a host of other factors, after the first eight years, she tells her  husband that she, the pastor’s wife (!) is quitting their church and attending somewhere else, because she can’t carry on doing what she is doing. As the saying goes: If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.

This is really where her spiritual growth begins. When honesty and courage enter the picture, God steps in and teaches her what she really needs to ‘quit’ in order to have genuine faith.

The “I Quits” include:

Quit Being Afraid of What Others Think

Quit Lying

Quit Dying to the Wrong Things

Quit Denying Anger, Sadness, and Fear

Quit Blaming

Quit Overfunctioning

Quit Faulty Thinking

Quit Living Someone Else’s Life

This is a book to be read, reread, marked, to take notes on, and to be acted upon. Highly recommended.