Praying for your addicted Love ones Book review, blog tour, and giveaway by Sharron K. Cosby

I read Praying for Your Addicted Loved One: 90 in 90, in exchange for honest review from Litfuse. The book was written by Sharron K. Cosby and published by Recovery. I received a paperback copy of the book. This post contains an Amazon Affiliate link.

About the book: (from media kit)

Watching someone you love self-destruct hurts. Praying for Your Addicted Loved One: 90 in 90 tugs at the reader's heart in 90 days of candid devotions aimed at offering strength, hope, and encouragement to families in the throes of living with an addicted family member. Families get left behind in the recovery process, but their support is crucial. Realizing you are not alone in your family's struggles brings comfort and confidence to face day-by-day challenges. Reflection prompts and spaces for journaling encourage the reader to pen their thoughts on the verses and devotions. Each day's entry ends with a prayer.

The Cosbys, a middle-class family, lived the nightmare of addiction with their son for 18 years. Their lives were turned inside out and upside down as his dependence on painkillers escalated. The descent into a living hell challenged their faith as the addiction claimed more and more control. Sharron's middle-of-the-night reading of Jeremiah 30 and 31 changed the course of their lives and restoration became a reality.

The overall message of Praying for Your Addicted Loved Oneconveys hope to families caught in the addiction cycle. The various stages of the disease: abuse, recovery, and relapse, take their toll. Hopelessness grabs a family's heart and wrings it out with each slip of clean or sober time. The verses in Jeremiah 30 and 31, the foundation of the book, offer the promise of restoration and redemption.

90 in 90 reflects the 12 Step model of an addict attending 90 meetings in 90 days. While your loved one attends meetings, you will read a daily devotional to lend spiritual support to your addict.

"Today I pray for other lost addicts to find the hope of recovery. I pray the families reading this book will continue to have hope that an addict---any addict---can stop using drugs and find a new way to live. If there is one thing I can say to family members it is, never quit fighting. There is always hope. With hope, I---a once hopeless dope addict---am now a dope-less hope addict." ~Josh Cosby

About the Author: (From media kit)

Sharron Cosby is married to Dan, a Certified Addiction Professional, and together they have three adult children and five grandchildren. She works for an international charity by day and writes by night. Her passion is to share God's message of hope, strength, and encouragement with families living in the shadow of addiction.

My Review:

I chose this book because my family has dealt with addiction. From drug addiction, pain pill addiction, sex addiction, and alcohol addiction. I personally have dealt with pain pill and sex addiction. I do have an addictive personality--from books to online games to phone apps. I can go overboard until I get bored and move on to something else. 

The book provides spiritual support to help someone going through addiction. The book is a 90 day devotional, based on a Christian perspective. The chapters are also short (3 pages long). Each chapter has a bible verse, story, prayer and reflection. The reflection poses a question and has space to respond to the question. One of the first reflections, which stood out was What is the difference between discipline and punishment?(p. 39). 

The book teaches people how to deal with the pain, redirect behavior, incorporating accountability, not giving up, and having a good spiritual foundation. Chapter 3, Release your fears, stood out first. The author said she handled fear by bottling it up. I hold it close like a security blanket. It's tattered and worn, but it's comfortable....I learned that fear will eat me alive if if unchecked. Most of what I feared never came to past. (p. 24).  This describes me very well. I hold on to things. I bottle things up. I don't want people knowing what's really going on. I don't want to let people in. I don't trust too many people. Sometimes I feel that if I let them in, then they will share my thoughts, issues, and secrets, with everyone else. How would people feel if I was more open and honest? I have things I have been through and thought of that no one still knows about because I don't know how they will react or think or do. 

Anyway, the book is a good, great read. Check out the social media link and the giveaway below. 

Social Media:

Website

Giveaway:

 

Watching someone you love self-destruct hurts. Sharron Cosby's Praying for Your Addicted Loved One: 90 in 90 provides ninety devotions of strength, hope, and encouragement to families coping with addiction. Realizing you’re not alone in your struggles brings comfort and confidence to face day-to-day challenges.



Sharron is celebrating the release of her book with a Kindle Fire giveaway.


Enter today. One winner will receive:

• A Kindle Fire
• Praying for Your Addicted Loved One by Sharron Cosby

Enter today by using the widget below. But hurry, the giveaway ends on October 31st. Winner will be announced at the Litfuse blog on November 1st. Don't miss a moment of the fun; enter today and be sure to stop by the Litfuse blog on the 1st to see if you won. (Or, better yet, subscribe to their blog {enter your email in the blog sidebar} and have the winner announcement delivered to your inbox)!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pearl Girls Day 4 Waterspot Watering by Cynthia Ruchti

Welcome to Pearl Girls™ Mother of Pearl Mother’s Day blog series—a nine-day celebration of moms and mothering. Each day will feature a new post by some of today’s best writers (Tricia Goyer, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, Beth Vogt, Lesli Westfall, and more). I hope you’ll join us each day for another unique perspective on Mother’s Day.
AND . . . do enter the contest for a chance to win a beautiful handcrafted pearl necklace and a JOYN India bag. Enter at the bottom of this post. The contest runs 5/4-5/13, and the winner will be announced on 5/14. Contest is only open to U.S. residents.
If you are unfamiliar with Pearl Girls™, please visit www.pearlgirls.info, subscribe to our blog, and see what we’re all about. In short, we exist to support the work of charities that help women and children in the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy of Mother of Pearl: Luminous Lessons and Iridescent Faith to help support Pearl Girls™.

And to all you MOMS out there, Happy Mother’s Day!

~

Water Spot Mothering by Cynthia Ruchti

For years, a friend and I met weekly for prayer and Bible study. More than twenty years older, Jackie often prayed for her high school children while I prayed for my toddler children who were supposed to be napping.
As any mother will attest, when we get serious about praying for our children, we can find plenty to pray about.
Jackie and I often laid our Bibles in front of us, open on the table. The day I learned the meaning of water spot mothering, Jackie and I had prayed intensely for our children and their wide variety of crises—large and small. We prayed about their uncertain futures and the certainty that God loved them even more than we did. Tears formed, unbidden, as we poured our hearts out to God.
A series of whispers from the stairway told me my children had found dozens of ways to bypass their naps. But they’d grown to respect the time I prayed with my friend. Even at their young ages, they waited patiently for the “Amen” before interrupting.
When Jackie left and life pulled me into other things, my Bible remained open on the dining room table. I walked through the room a short time later to find my four-year-old daughter Amy kneeling on a chair, tenderly flipping through the pages of my Bible. I knew she was unable to read more than the simplest words on the page, so I asked, “Amy, what are you doing, honey?”
Her answer resonates now, decades later. She said, “I’m looking for the tears.”

She knew I’d prayed for her. Finding the water spots, the tear stains, meant something to her young heart. She wanted to see evidence that my prayers for her had moved me to tears.
How triple true that would be through her teen years! We were just getting started on the water spot mothering concept.
I’ve relived that scene many times since that afternoon. My daughter bent over my Bible, her tiny hands turning the pages reverently, her eyes searching for a wrinkle in the page, looking for the assurance that I cared so deeply, prayed so fervently, and wasn’t afraid to let the tears fall on the sustaining resource for parenting and all of life—God’s Word.
Water spot mothering. Praying with the Bible open. Letting the tears fall on the pages.
I wear the picture of my daughter kneeling on the chair, bent over my Bible, close to my heart, like a silver locket I click open to remind me of my primary responsibility as her mom…even now.

###

Cynthia Ruchti tells stories of Hope-that-glows-in-the-dark through her fiction, nonfiction, and speaking events for women or for writers. Her recent release—the novel, When the Morning Glory Blooms, observes the heart-and-faith journeys of three eras of unwed moms. Her July release—the nonfiction book Ragged Hope: Surviving the Fallout of Other People’s Choices—touches on life circumstances that send us to tear-hemmed prayer for those we love. Connect with her at www.cynthiaruchti.com, Facebook, Twitter, or other network spots.
a Rafflecopter giveaway