Alongside: A Practical Guide for Loving Your Neighbor in their Time of Trial by Sarah Beckman

About the book: (from the publisher) Whether it’s cancer, death of a loved one, long-term illness or another significant challenge, we all know someone facing trial.

We wonder: “What can I do to help?”

Filled with practical tools, personal experience and insights from those who’ve faced hardship, Sarah Beckman delicately weaves together action and inspiration to create this comprehensive resource. Alongside will become your trusted guidebook so you’ll know exactly how to bring life-giving help, hope and encouragement to people you care about in their greatest time of need.

Alongside will help you:

• Overcome the insecurity of doing the wrong thing
• Gain confidence to love well with tangible actions
• Discern between helpful and unhelpful words to say
• Identify personalized ways to serve more effectively
• Live out the Biblical command to love your neighbor

About the author: Sarah Beckman graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism/Advertising.   While staying home with her kids, she was also  a “professional volunteer” at her church for over 15 years.  She’s led Women’s and Evangelism Ministries, Marriage classes, Bible studies, and church-wide programs.

Since 2007, Sarah has been pursuing her calling as a professional speaker.  She speaks to audiences across the country sharing her passion for loving people well. Her topics including: loving your neighbor, sharing your faith, safeguarding your marriage and digging up your talents. Sarah is also Certified Communications Coach at the SCORRE Conference, where she relishes in continually improving her craft and teaching others to more powerful and focused communicators.

Married to Craig over 24 years and a mother to 3 teenagers, Sarah currently resides in Albuquerque, NM.  Her life is made richer with family, friends, coffee, sailing, hiking and travel.

Connect: Website | Twitter | Facebook 

Genre: Non-fiction/Christian Life/Relationships

[Tweet “Alongside=must-have handbook loaded w/ practical advice for helping in times of need @sarahbeckman14”]

My take: Sarah Beckman speaks my language. She not only has a message I wish to hear but communicates it in a way in which I wish to hear it.

In Alongside, she addresses head-on an important issue: What holds us back from stepping out to help a friend/neighbor/acquaintance in her time of need? It’s probably not lack of concern but rather fear of doing the wrong thing: making a bad thing worse. We’ve heard the horror stories, or been there ourselves.

Thank goodness for Alongside, which is all about reducing that uncertainty, perhaps even eliminating it, so that we can joyfully — with compassion and confidence — step through the doors God opens for us, which enables us to care for those around us when they’re facing a trial. As Sarah writes,

“It is my prayer that you will see your loved one’s times of trial as a new opportunity for you to love and serve — not as a crisis of personal ability.”

My heart felt happy when I sat down to read more of this book (aided an appealing cover, which never hurts). When I opened its pages, I knew I was about to uncover practical tips to guide me in what I already want to do.

Alongside reminded me of Just Show Up: The Dance of Walking Through Suffering Together by Kara Tippetts and Jill Lynn Buteyn {which I reviewed here}. But where Just Show Up provides an insider’s look at this particular dance, Alongside puts hands and feet to it with its offering of tactical advice and practical examples to choose from. {For the record, I highly recommend them as companion books.}

After reading Alongside, I feel far more equipped to stepping out and stepping up in my loved ones’ times of need. In this handbook of practical advice, I am guided both in what not to do and what to do instead.

I doubt you need much encouragement along these lines, but I will end with what Sarah Beckman writes toward the beginning of her book because I found it so powerful and so true:

“Vulnerability brings with it an open door — one that often remains closed in the normal busyness of our lives. God intends for us to push open that door and step boldly into a person’s life when they need it most.

We are meant to be part of the physical, human illustration of God’s power. … in the midst of brokenness, there’s no better time to love our neighbor than the present.”

Alongside provides its readers a detailed roadmap for living that out.

Thanks to BlogAbout Blogger Network and Morgan James for providing me this book free of charge. All opinions are mine.

After words: When has someone meaningfully come alongside you in time of trial?

Giveaway: Enter to win a print copy of Alongside! Winner will be chosen at random and notified in about a week. Must be 18 or older to enter. U.S. entries only, please.

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