Get Your Life Back

Get Your Life Back

I love books whose title and subtitle tell you just what you need to know before you proffer your credit card. Or the discovery of books that friends and family have enjoyed and praised but you have neglected.

That’s what happened to me over the recent Christmas holidays when others’ gleaming eyes led me to John Eldredge’s “Get Your Life Back”: Everyday practices for a world gone mad (Nelson Books, 2020).

Everyone who spent time with us wanted to talk about the blistering pace of life which, for Eldredge, is taking our lives hostage. Or as he puts it in his introduction: “There’s a madness to our moment, and we need to name it for the lunacy it is.”

“If we had more of God,” he continues, “that would really help. We could draw upon his love and strength, his wisdom and resilience.”

“If we had more of God’s [fountain of life] bubbling up in us, it would be a rescue in this soul-scorching hour (Psalm 36:9).”

The book was written in 2019, when Eldredge was most concerned about “the beleaguered condition of the human soul in the world at that time,” and released just days before the COVID 19 pandemic rolled across the globe.

He deeply felt people’s mental fragmentation, weariness, irritability, and lingering anxiety. He sensed that their souls needed some “serious, loving care,” and was moved, as a spiritual leader and writer, to guide them toward healing.      

Not only do Eldredge’s title and subtitle point us in his  chosen direction, but his chapter headings make it even clearer:

The One Minute Pause; Benevolent Detachment: Simple Unplugging; Kindness toward Ourselves; Remembering Who You Love; Allowing for Transitions; and, Daily Prayer.

Within those fields of exploration, Eldredge offers Bible-based conversations—or what I would call “fireside chats” drawn from his life experience as a husband, father, spiritual counselor, sports enthusiast, and president of Wild at Heart, a ministry in Colorado Springs “devoted to helping people discover the heart of God and recover their own hearts in God’s love.”

The only revelation in the entire book that I would disagree with is his attachment to the English Premier League soccer club Liverpool. Has he not heard of Chelsea and Manchester United?

For the rest, I can’t wait to applaud his refreshingly simple guide to recovering our souls from the roller coaster ride that we all seem to be on. Do you know anyone who isn’t overwhelmed by the torrent of information coming at us 24-7? 

How often, asks Eldredge, do we take even a one-minute pause to delight in a sunset or (my choice) watch a full moon reach through the arms of an eighty-foot oak tree?

The restorative power of natural beauty, he says, is one of the many graces we should never overlook.

This is one of my favorites among the eighteen everyday practices he reflects on in the 215-page paperback version I picked up at my Mystic independent bookstore.

Another is allowing for transitions. Technology and the resulting assault on our attention, he writes, has robbed us of ordinary transition spaces and opportunities. As soon as there is a down moment, everyone is back on their phones!

Our souls need transition time especially in this world, Eldredge adds. There is a sweetness in the downtime, even if it’s brief. We can find more of God there. We find God in the transitions—sometimes simply by leaving our laptop to “get outside.”  After all, “the whole earth is filled with his glory” (Isaiah 6:3, NLT).

That’s where we find refreshment, renewal, and restoration. “Nature heals, teaches, strengthens, soothes; it brings us the presence of God.”

And in my view, Eldredge couldn’t have chosen better than a blessing from 12th Century English philosopher and theologian Isaac of Stella to open and close his reflections on the way for us to get our life back:

May the Son of God, who is already formed in you, grow in you, so that for you he will become immeasurable, and that in you he will become laughter, exultation, the fullness of joy which no one can take from you.