Reviewer Conny Withay:Operating her own business in office management since 1991, Conny is an avid reader and volunteers with the elderly playing her designed The Write Word Game. A cum laude graduate with a degree in art living in the Pacific Northwest, she is married with two sons, two daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren.
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ISBN: 978-1-938499-76-0
Author: Kathy Collard Miller
Publisher:
Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas
ISBN: 978-1-938499-76-0
“Praying is a choice. It is a conscious decision to turn our minds from worry onto God’s abilities to deliver us, help us, or guide us. It’s a hard choice because we can easily believe lies like: worry feels good, it works, or it is necessary,” Kathy Collard Miller writes in her book, Partly Cloudy with Scattered Worries.
At one hundred and ninety-three pages, this paperback book targets mainly women who want to worry less or at least be able to control the bad habit better. After a foreword by Pam Farrel, nine chapters dissect the topic, ending with an epilogue, group leaders’ suggestions, endnotes, and the author’s biography. With versions of the Bible used being the NIRv, NASB, Amplified, TLB, Message, and Authorized King James, God is the focal point.
Miller compares worrying to nine different types or themes regarding weather conditions we all face throughout a year: fog, storms, the sunshine, the rainbow, umbrellas, a snowstorm, spring showers, ice storms, rain clouds, and tornadoes.
Each chapter contains a discussion about the topic that usually correlates to a Biblical character, ten to twelve discussion questions, and a letter written to the reader as if from God.
Often mentioning the author’s own struggles and experiences with worry such as her teenage daughter’s attitude, her husband’s melanoma skin cancer, moving, retirement, or being a perfectionist, worry can be applied to myriad of daily-living issues. However, she hones in that God brings good out of all things, allowing them to happen for a reason.
Mentioning stories of Jochebed, Rebekah, Hannah, Michal, Naomi, Abigail, Salome, Miriam, and Esther from the Bible, tools for the excessive worrier suggest using counseling, reading about panic attacks, getting a good night’s sleep, exercising, resting, and eating healthily. Although we are important, it is truly all about God, not us, our stature, clothing, or what happens tomorrow.
Through personal and others’ examples, the writer reiterates that worry does not communicate love and cannot change or control others. To stop worrying about the past, one can remember it, but do not regret it; instead forgive and move forward.
Keeping in mind the Almighty can do whatever He wants whenever and for any reason He chooses, Miller gives good pointers to overcoming worrying obsessively by praying, seeking His guidance, and trusting in Him.
This book was furnished by The Book Club Network, Inc. in exchange for a review based on the reader’s honest opinion.
