Book Review: No More Perfect Moms

No More Perfect Moms by Jill Savage is a simple enough read, with great insights and challenges to fight the “perfection infection”.

With quotable passages, made up words, and real-life imperfection, Jill inspires and dares readers to get off the comparison carousel. The overall theme is: “Do not compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.”

“It’s easy to look at other moms and assume their days go better than ours do. We’re hard on ourselves because we are most familiar with our weaknesses. When we’re critical of ourselves, we can easily make false assumptions about other moms and how they handle their days. That’s why our honesty is important for the moms we interact with.”

The chapter “No More Perfect Bodies” really hit me. I’ve been struggling with weight for several years now. I love food, especially sweets. I do not like exercise. However, this chapter caused me to look at the problem differently. Jill says, “taking care of our bodies is a stewardship issue,” then later in the chapter writes,

“Our desire to eat healthier doesn’t tick because we use food to comfort us instead of simply providing us nutrition… So we often try to change our outward behavior when we really need to focus on the issues in our hearts that produce these behaviors.”

OUCH! I have a lot of work to do tending to my heart in order to be a better steward of God’s temple.

The first of Jill’s new words is “unhumanable” – when we step aside and let God work through us when a situation is too much for our humanity to deal with and we choose to show God’s love and grace when we feel neither loving nor gracious. Where we can be fickle, God remains unchanging. That truth gives us the joy and peace to get through the worst of circumstances.

The other “Jill word” I like is “God-fidence” which is all about defining ourselves as God sees us. She later devotes an entire chapter to “One
Perfect God” and expands on how God alone defines our identity.