Confident Moms, Confident Daughters , livre ebook

Cover
Endorsements
“I wholeheartedly recommend Confident Moms, Confident Daughters to you. This book is like a life preserver for any mom drowning in the difficulties of raising daughters in an image-obsessed world. These pages will help you and your girls live free from insecurity.”
from the foreword by Jennifer Dukes Lee , mom of two teenage daughters and author of It’ s All Under Control , The Happiness Dare , and Love Idol
“ Confident Moms, Confident Daughters is the book my mom and I needed thirty years ago, as she battled her own body image issues and I was hospitalized for an eating disorder. The Confident Daughter Discussion Questions have sparked such nurturing conversations with my adult daughter, and the Confident Mom Challenges are both fun and healing. Thank you, Maria, for re-mothering the insecure little-girl part of this mom’s heart and for giving hope that it is never too late to live free in Christ!”
Cheri Gregory , coauthor with Amy Carroll of Exhale: Lose Who You’ re Not, Love Who You Are, Live Your One Life Well
“When I was growing up, I never felt confident in how I looked. My mom, bless her heart, would pinch the fat on my back just under my bra, reminding me I wasn’t thin enough. She thought she was helping; she never knew that all it accomplished was to cause me to doubt I would ever be thin enough, pretty enough, or good enough to please her. Thank God mothering has changed since the late ’50s and ’60s! If you’re the mom of a girl, you will appreciate the sound biblical wisdom and practical life applications (not to mention great prayers) in Maria Furlough’s new book, Confident Moms, Confident Daughters . With honesty, clarity, and transparency, Maria shares her journey raising a daughter in today’s world. Social media and all the images young girls face every day can easily cause them to compare themselves to others and lose confidence in who God has created them to be. Let Maria’s sound words help you navigate raising a God-centered girl in a self-centered world.”
Kate Battistelli, author of Growing Great Kids and The God Dare and mom to Grammy Award–winning artist Francesca Battistelli
“This book is a compelling invitation to become the kind of women we dream our daughters will be—confident and content, secure and free. With humility and wisdom, Maria shows us how to surrender our insecurities and take hold of the confidence that is ours in Christ so that our daughters can do the same. Packed with practical tools and powerful application, Confident Moms, Confident Daughters is a lavish gift for any woman who wants to raise a girl who can look in the mirror and smile at what she sees. As a mom of three daughters and a mentor of many more, I’ll be returning to these pages again and again.”
Alicia Bruxvoort , mom of five and member of the Proverbs 31 Ministries writing team
“In Confident Moms, Confident Daughters , Maria Furlough invites women to step into a new story of courage that radically redefines beauty and encourages our next generation of young women to rise up in godly strength, embrace a biblically accurate perspective of self, and pursue Christ-centered confidence.”
Gwen Smith , host of the Graceologie podcast, author of I Want It All and Broken into Beautiful , and cofounder of Girlfriends in God
“In Confident Moms, Confident Daughters , Maria reminds us that moms must live in transparent, healthy, and life-giving ways if we desire to raise girls who lean more on truth than on toxic mindsets and wayward cultural beliefs. I appreciate her honest portrayal of her own life and how she helps set us free from our past and nudges us toward a beautiful future as moms, daughters, and most importantly, daughters of God.”
Amanda Bacon , mom of eight, author of Shiny Things: Mothering on Purpose in a World of Distractions , and cohost of the All the Mom Things podcast
“ Confident Moms, Confident Daughters is a much-needed resource for all of us in our journey to raise confident daughters. How can we lead them if we aren’t living it out ourselves? Maria tackles the issues of self-image, true beauty, and self-talk while we feel as though we are drinking coffee with her in real time. You will laugh, shed some tears, and gain confidence in what true beauty really is—in fact, it’s already yours to have!”
Lori Benham , wife of author and speaker David Benham and mom of four
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2019 by Maria Furlough
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1783-4
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Scripture quotations labeled NKJV are from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Some names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.
Dedication
To my daughter, Faith—
This book was born when you were.
You made Mommy want to find a way to fight for godly confidence.
To every young woman who has come to me through the years with their struggles—
I prayed for you, I cried for you, and I had to write this book for you.
Contents
Cover 1
Endorsements 2
Half Title Page 4
Title Page 5
Copyright Page 6
Dedication 7
Foreword by Jennifer Dukes Lee 11
1. Showing Her Confident 15
2. Naming Your Story 27
3. If We Don’t, Then Who Will? 37
4. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall 57
5. A Moment on the Lips 77
6. Let’s Get Physical 93
7. Sticks and Stones 107
8. On the Cover of a Magazine 123
9. Helping Her Love How She Looks 137
10. Our Jesus and Our Joy 155
11. Beauty from Ashes: My Mom’s Perspective 171
12. Letters from Our Daughters 185
Confident Moms, Confident Daughters Manifesto 197
Acknowledgments 199
Notes 203
Back Ads 206
Back Cover 209
Foreword
I once went forty days without looking in a mirror. Yes, I actually covered all the mirrors in our house. By day two of my forty-day mirror fast, my husband had successfully negotiated small gaps at the sides of mirrors so he could see himself. But I went mirror-free.
I didn’t thoroughly consider the implications of this mirrorless experiment before it began. You see, during those forty days, I had more speaking engagements than I’d ever had before because of the release of my first book. I stepped onto stage after stage without having a clue how awful my hair looked. (I’ve since seen the photographs. Yes, it was bad, and I likely left the audience with the impression that a small, woodland creature had found a new home atop my head.)
I underwent this mirror fast because, as a woman who had struggled through a lifetime of insecurity, I wanted to see myself through only God’s eyes. But there was another, more pressing motivation: I wanted to model confidence for my two daughters. Lessons, as they say, are often caught, not taught.
My mirror fast was a protest against the self-degradation that we engage in as women. We tell ourselves that we’re not enough—or we let our bathroom scales tell us that we’re too much.
I was tired of how we, as girls and women, often see ourselves and each other as a series of parts and “thigh gaps,” or lack thereof. Here’s a heartbreaking fact: girls begin to fret over their curves even before they begin to learn cursive.
I was tired of the photoshopping and the airbrushing, and yet I knew I was guilty. (I have deftly wielded Instagram filters to magically take five years off my face.)
I was tired of being a hypocrite in front of my daughters. They were old enough to know when I was talking a good game and when I was actually living what I believe. I wanted to demonstrate what it means to walk confidently in God’s unconditional love.
So when Maria asked me if I would be willing to write the foreword for a book about raising confident daughters, I couldn’t type my all-caps YES fast enough. This is exactly the kind of resource that moms like you and me need.
I know Maria. She is a friend, a prayer partner, and a woman who writes every word to draw her readers closer to Christ. She is an honest, trustworthy guide, and knowing that, I wholeheartedly recommend Confident Moms, Confident Daughters to you. This book is like a life preserver for any mom drowning in the difficulties of raising daughters in an image-obsessed world. These pages will help you and your girls live free from insecurity.
Think of this book as a way to metaphorically cover your own mirrors so you and your daughters can see yourselves through God’s eyes.
When I participated in my mirror fast, I covered the mirrors with paper. Written on those pieces of paper were words such as beloved , chosen , enough , beautiful , approved . Every morning, as I stood at the bathroom sink, my eyes scanned the words on those papers, and I came face-to-face with God’s truths about my innermost being.
Do you want to know the hardest part of my mirror fast? The hardest part was taking the papers down. You can’t spend forty days with God’s truth staring you in the face and not be changed.
My favorite part of that experiment was the fact that I didn’t do it alone. My youngest daughter, Anna, covered her mirrors too. Like me, she wanted to se