The
Donna Partow File:
Becoming The Woman God Wants Me To Be : A 90 Day Guide
to Living the Proverbs 31 Life by Donna Partow
Reviewed by Melissa J.
Carswell
"...a relevant and practical resource for the academic world as well as leaders in the church."
Becoming the Woman
God Wants Me to Be captured me, heart and mind, in
the first few pages.
Typically one to stand in a Christian bookstore flipping aimlessly through
women's Bible studies and coming away feeling as if none of them either
pertain to my life or will take me deep enough, I had the delightful opposite
reaction just in reading the intro to Donna's study.
Donna spoke to me directly as she shared that every time she read Proverbs
31 she had the thought that "the Proverbs 31 woman was a mythological
creature or worse---I thought she was a weapon spiritual leaders use to
make all of us ordinary Christian women feel bad about ourselves."
"Now here is a fellow Christian sister who is refreshingly real when it
comes to the model Proverbs 31 woman", was my first thought. "I
can read a Bible study like this!" Donna then went on to introduce
me to a real-life Proverbs 31 woman that she had met in her travels. By
the end of the written introduction, I had been inspired and captured by
the thought of, "I sure wish I could become a woman like that someday!"
Donna assures me, as well as the rest of her readers, that this is possible. "The
process will not happen overnight", she cautions, "but instead
will be a result of a deliberate application of God's Word and daily surrender
to Him. The Proverbs 31 life is within our grasp as women."
The program overview of Donna's 90 day study, as given in the introduction,
includes every aspect that could possibly make up a woman's life. Just
two weeks into the study, with a quick speed-reading through the rest of
the book, and it is apparent that Donna tackles each issue with down to
earth counsel and godly advice, as well as a practical hands-on approach
for her readers.
Throughout the course of the 90 day study a woman will work through the
following areas of her life: faith, family, fitness, personal appearance
and fashion, finances and retirement planning, household management, ministry,
business, and self-management.
Micro-categories within these main categories include such things as memorizing
the entire passage of Proverbs 31:10-31 and establishing a routine of spiritual
disciplines, beginning the daily habit of a prayer walk, following a simple
cleansing diet, developing a well-balanced approach to personal appearance
and learning the keys to appropriate dress.
Donna also includes helpful tidbits in her daily devotionals such as implementing
a debt-reduction strategy and creating a retirement plan, getting your
home in order by de-junking, de-cluttering, and creating a routine, turning
your home into a center of life and ministry, studying what the Bible stays
about self-employment, and restoring strength and stability to your soul.
Donna walks along side her readers and helps them meet each of these goals
by encouraging each one to start a personal notebook. In the notebook,
sections are gradually created for each of these goals as the study progresses.
While this exercise may seem daunting to certain personalities, other personalities
will thrive on such an approach. Whether her approach fits the reader's
way of doing things or not, the truth remains, it brings each lesson home
in a practical fashion that should not be quickly disregarded.
Not only was I thrilled with the general overview of the entire study,
I benefitted particularly from the first day exercise in which Donna encourages
her reader to develop their own Personal Vision Statement. She does this
through a series of exercises and I was excited to see what the end result
was. Two weeks out from doing this and I am still finding that creating
my Personal Vision Statement is having a great deal of impact on my daily
life.
Each day's study follows the same format Monday through Friday---a Scripture
to memorize and a passage to read. These are then followed up with a written
prayer and a personal application. Donna's person applications are not
just shallow, "this is what you should do paragraphs" but instead,
are dig-deep and hit-hard readings. She follows up each of these heart-searching
and thought-provoking devotionals with a daily affirmation to meditate
on and then a practical way to implement everything into the reader's personal
life.
Saturdays and Sundays are reserved for a review of everything that was
addressed during the week.
Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be is refreshingly deep and spiritually
motivating. Put another way, the study is absolutely brilliant! The study
may last for a mere 90 days but the results, if truly worked through and
personally applied, will last a woman's lifetime!
Melissa
J. Carswell: Melissa
is a Board Certified Christian Counselor. However, due to the appearance of a
little bundle of Miracle in the past year, the counseling practice is now on
indefinite hold. Instead, Melissa has entered the world of freelance writing
from home. She is currently one of the content writers for TotallyHer.com (to
be launched in September of 2008). Melissa has a passion for mentoring teen girls
and young women and does so whenever possible. Her heart longing, along with
her husband, is
to use her
education and credentials someday to have a home full of abandoned, abused,
and terminally ill childen. They are still waiting for God's hand to unfold
that particular chapter of their lives. When Melissa isn't changing diapers,
doing laundry, cooking meals, mentoring the afore-mentioned young women, tending
to her garden, being her husband's
biggest fan, and soaking in every cuddly moment with her daughter, she reads
and she writes. It is not unusual to see 2-3 books laying around the house
at any given time and the hard drive to her computer houses several partially-written
manuscripts to the secret dreamed-of-published books Melissa hopes for in the
future. You can check out A Weak Rose here.
