The Return by Lacey Sturm

Reflections on Loving God Back

I'm going to be honest here. When I got this book in my hand to read, I read the back cover author bio and my heart sank. I realized that Lacey was a musician. I had just read a book by another musician and I did not enjoy it. And I immediately put this book in the same category, but when you get books for free to review, then read them you must. So I resolved to endure it. And boy was I in for a surprise.

Lacey's book challenged me in so many ways.  The essence of the book is returning to God. Returning to God my plans, my thoughts, my opportunities, my body, my works, and so on. It's giving everything up for God and letting Him lead and direct every single area of life. That's a big challenge.

The book is set up kind of fun too. Most of the chapters have a reflection, a journal entry, a song, and a page with some meditation questions, a recipe, a to-do list/random acts of kindness list, a song idea, a prayer and some Scripture reference to read. It keeps the book from getting boring by hopping around to all these different things.


"All life is a gift.
What would happen if we honored the gift of life all around us?
What does it look like to take care of, or steward, this gift of life in us and all around us? When you are loved so deeply, the natural response is to love back, to be thankful. What does it look like to love back? To be thankful?"

To me that sums up the theme of the book: we give back to God by taking care of the things around us.  She tries to be quite careful of her environment, eats mostly vegan, cloth diapers etc. but she also extends a great amount of grace to other who don't see things like she does.

There was one part of the book where she was talking about sinning and how she felt it was so sad that we often think it's impossible to overcome certain sins. Someone joined in the conversation and attempted to say we are all living on grace and need forgiveness. He went on to say that he's a porn addict, but God knows and understands how men are wired, so he doesn't beat himself up over it, he just trusts that Jesus is his savior and understands.  I think this helped clinch the book for me because Lacey didn't have the time of day for this viewpoint: "As he said this, I could feel my skin begin to crawl. His little speech threatened to discount the courage I'd found in believing that God's love for me, and my love for him in return, was enough to keep me from being a slave to sin. The freedom I had felt in the moment of restoration with God was being challenged....But how could I ever forget the grieving of God that I had experienced? How could I ever willingly do something that break God' heart, with the heart-wrenching truth that 'he will understand' as my excuse." She continues how she finally left the conversation and begged God to not let her forget the real nature of sin.

And one final piece from the book that really challenged me was in marriage. She went to help her new husband on a project and he switched her jobs once and then right after she had swept the floor, he dumped a whole bunch of dirt back on it. She felt God whispering to her each time. "Did you come here to sweep the floor, or did you come here to love Josh?  Upon this second correction, I began to realize something. It's hard to tell the difference between working and loving sometimes. They can look exactly the same, but my heart posture is the only thing that can tell me the difference." That challenged me. Do I try to just get my work done so I can do the next thing or am I doing my work out of love for the people I am working for and with and therefore I am more flexible and willing to accomodate.

I really liked this book. I received a copy from Baker Books and was not required to write a positive review.