Hopelifter

In her newest book, Hopelifter, author and natural encourager Kathe Wunnenberg reaches out to other women to share the value of being an encourager and practical tips on how to become one. The first half of the book focuses on the Biblical imperative of encouragement and the author’s experiences founding the Hopelifters organization; the second half contains single page “recipes for hope”, labeled and sorted by topic for easy reference, designed to provide readers ideas on how to encourage others in difficult circumstances.

The book has some very positive strengths: it reminds women to be realistic about what they are able to do in their current season of life, acknowledges the importance of meeting core roles (wife, mother, etc.) first with our time and energies, provides a solid scriptural basis for encouragement, and teaches readers to saturate all the encouraging efforts in prayer to make sure they’re providing words and actions of life and hope instead of accidentally doing damage through poorly timed/ executed/ uninformed words of actions, however good the intentions behind them.

That said, other portions of the book felt out of place or off topic, such as the author’s experiences founding the Hopelifters organization or the emphasis on leaders establishing prayer teams, etc. The recipes for hope section at the end was also only marginally of interest. I appreciated its intent, and some tidbits of advice were valuable, but it largely felt repetitive and as though much of it should just have been common sense.