Kate Bowler Book order

Warm and witty blessings found within the struggles of our shared humanity, from the New York Times bestselling authors of Good EnoughBlessed are you, the strange duck.You with the very intense hobbies.Or the collection of movies or mugs or sneakers.You with the hometown or home team that makes you very, very proud.You, my dear, in all your intricacies . . . are a marvel.We live in a world that demands relentless perfection. Happy marriages and easy friendships. Bucket list-level adventures and matching family photos. But what if our actual lives don't feel very #blessed? Might our everyday existence be worthy of a blessing too? Even an average Tuesday?Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie offer creative, faith-based blessings that center gratitude and hope while acknowledging our real, messy lives. Formatted like a prayer book, The Lives We Actually Have is an oasis and a landing spot for weary souls, with blessings that focus on the full range of human moments: garbage days, lovely days, grief-stricken days, and even (especially) completely ordinary days. These heartfelt blessings are a chance to exhale when we feel everything from careworn to restless, devastated to bored. Let's have a reminder that we don't need to wait for perfect lives when we can bless the lives we actually have.

This compassionate and insightful collection of Christian daily reflections addresses living with imperfection in a self-help culture that emphasizes relentless progress. From the New York Times bestselling author and executive producer of the Everything Happens podcast, the work follows the author’s journey through a Stage IV cancer diagnosis, exploring how life can be both challenging and beautiful when we let go of certainty and control. In this devotional, the author and co-author present around 40 short spiritual reflections that encourage readers to understand life not as a quest for endless improvement but as a chronic condition. It serves as a comforting companion for those who feel guilty about not living their best lives. With gentle humor, the authors grant permission to acknowledge that while some aspects of life can be fixed, others cannot—and that it's okay for life not to always be better. Through beautifully crafted reflections, they inspire readers to find truth, beauty, and meaning amidst chaos, celebrating kindness, honesty, and interdependence in a world that often promotes individualism and blind optimism. Ultimately, the book encourages us to strive for what is possible today while appreciating the beauty of our finite lives.

"We all know, intellectually, that our time on earth is limited. What would we change if we knew it viscerally? Kate Bowler was thirty-five when she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. Now that she's responded to immunotherapy Kate has to figure out how to make a new life between CT scans. Before she got sick, she'd accepted the very American idea that life was an endless horizon of possibilities. Now she has to figure out what to do within the limits of the time she has left. In No Cure for Being Human, Kate, hailed by Glennon Doyle as 'the Christian Joan Didion,' looks at the ways she has tried to wring meaning from her remaining time through anecdotes that range from the hilariously absurd--as when she attempts to rid the hospital gift shop of its copies of prosperity gospel guru Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now to the seriously painful. Breaking down time into efficient segments--'gather round and watch how this woman can take a solitary moment and divide it into a million uses!'--trying to live in the moment, weighing the meaning of work, and learning to discover what 'enough' feels like, Kate asks one of the most fundamental questions of all: How do we create meaning in our lives as we race against the clock?"-- Provided by publisher

Although most evangelical traditions bar women from ordained ministry, many women have carved out unofficial positions of power in their husbands' spiritual empires or their own ministries. The biggest stars write bestselling books, grab high ratings on Christian television, and even preach. Bowler offers a sympathetic and revealing portrait of megachurch women celebrities, showing how they must balance the demands of celebrity culture and conservative, male-dominated faiths. And black celebrity preachers' wives carry a special burden of respectability. A compelling account of women's search for spiritual authority in the age of celebrity. -- adapted from jacket

Gospels -- Faith -- Wealth -- Health -- Victory -- American blessing -- Megachurch table -- Naming names.

"Thirty-five year-old Kate Bowler, a professor at the school of divinity at Duke, had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirty pounds, guzzled antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. As Kate navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, she pulls the reader into her life and her history - affectionately filled with a colourful retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, parents, and doctors - and shares her irreverent, laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must cure her habit of `skipping to the end' and planning the next move. Currently the experimental immunology treatment she is undergoing is working, and studies suggest Kate has at least another year to live."--

Kate Bowler, a professor at Duke Divinity School, specializes in the prosperity gospel, which equates fortune with divine favor and misfortune with God's disapproval. At thirty-five, she appears to embody this belief, thriving in her career, happily married to her high school sweetheart, and enjoying life with her newborn son. However, her world is upended when she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. This diagnosis compels Kate to confront her unexamined adherence to the prosperity gospel, which suggests that determination can shape one's life. While this faith celebrates the American spirit, it also implies that those who face illness or hardship are failures. As Kate grapples with her illness, she realizes that no amount of positive thinking can change her reality. She questions the societal notion that everything happens for a reason and finds herself stripped of this certainty. Through her journey, she discovers that life, though challenging, can be profoundly beautiful. With a blend of humor and insight, Kate shares her experiences and reflections on dying, offering readers a candid look at how facing mortality can illuminate the art of living.