Grammy Award winner, Laura Story made good use of her time during the pandemic. She wrote the book So Long, Normal–Living and Loving the Free Fall of Faith. As she dealt with cancelled concerts and speaking engagements, helping her daughter with remote learning with younger children under foot, and everything else 2020 brought our way; God gave her insight into “normal” and she wrote a book about it.
About So Long, Normal
Building on Laura’s previous two titles, When God Doesn’t Fix It and I Give Up, So Long, Normal guides us to leave behind the idols of comfort, caution, and routine so we can live strong and well, even when life takes an unwelcome turn.
She says, “Jesus doesn’t just save us from hell in the next life; He saves us from our addiction to ‘normal’ lives this side of eternity. Our preference for cautious, ordinary lives is really rooted in a lack of faith and a failure to understand how much better His plan is than ours.”
In her confessional, conversational style, Laura weaves her own personal stories with examples from Scripture of characters whose lives were upended by unexpected (and undesired) change. Leaving, loving, or losing our “normal” is not the end of the world but the beginning of a new adventure with God who will change us forever.
MomMaven’s Thoughts
While I am a woman who loves her schedules and routines, I let go of “normal” years ago. For 16 years we homeschooled our boys from preschool through high school graduation. For the first 9 years of Aaron’s life and 7 years of Jordan’s life they played, did school, and even worked at our family’s music store. The next 10 years were spent doing those things at church. We homeschooled, but weren’t home much. Ron has been self-employed for the last 19 years, running his musical instrument and audio-visual repair business out of our garage. I have had many jobs, usually 3-5 at a time. Most of them are seasonal subcontractor positions. We aren’t “normal”.
Thanks to our not normal, never have a regular paycheck lifestyle of the last 19 years, we learned long ago that the most important thing we can do is love our unwavering Creator God with all our hearts and lean on Him always. Our faith in Jesus Christ is number one. We live by faith daily, trusting God to direct our paths and meet our needs. He has never failed us and He never will.
I enjoyed this book, and a younger me would have loved it. I enjoyed the stories from Laura’s life, and the lives of some of her friends. These stories showed how faithful God is. She also brings out amazing true stories from the Bible that exhibit the faithfulness of the One True God.
If you are wanting more from God and more from your life, if you feel like you’re in a rut and need some direction and courage to maybe make a change or go in a whole new direction, I recommend getting yourself a copy of this book here. You can also enter a giveaway to win a copy here. Happy reading!
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