Praying Mom: Making Prayer The First And Best Response To Motherhood, by Brooke McGlothlin

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Bethany House Publishing in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

If this book was certainly not written for me and I cannot exactly empathize with the author’s position, given that she is writing for other busy mothers struggling to deal with a lot of pressures, this is a book that is certainly easy to sympathize with. This author’s candid and somewhat vulnerable discussion of friends and their stories as well as her own struggles to have a family that looked good and was put together at the same time are certainly going to resonate with a lot of people. My own feelings about this book and its approach are somewhat mixed. I am glad that this book is around to give encouragement to mothers not to neglect prayer and a relationship with God just because they are not very good mothers like the author, but at the same time, I look books to be from people who do better than this author does. There are many millions of memoirs and related books from people who write from the perspective of brokenness (I have even contributed my own quota, and perhaps beyond, to such materials), but what we need are books that can encourage us on doing and being better than we would otherwise be, and this book does not really do that.

This book is about 200 pages and is divided into two parts. After a foreword and an introduction to the presumed audience of mothers, the first part of the book looks at seven challenges for the praying mom (I), including understanding God’s plans (1), not knowing what to pray for (2), being exhausted (3), struggling with belief that God hears one’s prayers (4), not feeling one should pray until one’s life is together (5), struggling with the demands of needy small children (6), and oppressive busyness (7). The second part of the book then discusses ten Bible-inspired prayers (II) when one needs hope (8), when one’s child needs help (9), when one needs joy (10), when one is angry (11), when one is worn-out and weary (12), when one is afraid (13), when one needs God’s help (14), when one needs strength (15), when one is sad (16), and when one needs peace (17). After that comes appendices on the wake-up prayer (i) and the usual altar call (ii), as well as a look at contributors, acknowledgements, and endnotes.