‘The Me I want to Be’ – Book Review

  Today I picked this book up and started reading it again for the 4th time! There are only a few books that are that good.

I bought it originally as an audio book and listened to it twice while walking the dog. (Over a couple of weeks, you understand, after seven hours of walking and listening poor Bob would have been one pooped puppy!). Occasionally it did make me look like the village idiot, standing in the field appearing to be laughing out loud at nothing in particular, whilst listening through my headphones.  Read by the author, the audio version  really brings out the humour. Eventually though, because it contains so much good stuff, I  eventually caved in and bought  a hard copy so I could underline pithy quotations and fold down  the corners. If a mark of a good book is how many pages are folded down at the corner – then this is a very good book. I’ve even photocopied pages and sent them to my kids whose reactions to Christian books verge on the allergic but even they claim to have enjoyed the bits I sent.

Have I convinced you it’s good? Great.

Haven’t told you what it’s about though. That might help.

The sub title is ‘Becoming God’s best version of You’ but this is not another self-help/self-improvement book. It starts from the premise that there is a ‘me’ I want to be but I so  often feel myself to be a long way from where I’d like to be. However ‘Your life is not your project’, says Ortberg ‘your life is God’s project’. He points to the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit and the book is an exploration of every way we can stay in the flow of the Holy Spirit’s work in our life or as Paul put it ‘keep in step with the Spirit’.  There is a ‘you’ God made you to be and a ‘you’ that currently exists and there is gap between the two. This book is about closing that gap. It deals with our thought life (excellent chapter on worry) with the things that block our way from staying in the flow and talks about treasuring and deepening relationships. There are some really memorable illustrations as well as funny stories which makes it all very readable.  The chapter about getting to know yourself was particularly useful and I also particularly enjoyed the one about dealing with difficult people.

A lot of insights worth pondering, I warmly recommended it.