• Author: Jason Ingram & Matt Hammitt
• Publisher: Tyndal House Publishers (2012)
• Category:Fiction, Inspiriation, Gift Book
  Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I Couldn’t Love You More, by Matt Hammitt and Jason Ingram. Is a book that expresses a parent’s desire to share Christ’s unconditional love with his child. Hammitt wrote the song soon after his son, Bowen, was diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a rare congenital defect.

About:

In the same manner as touching picture books like bestsellers Let Me Hold You Longer and Love You Forever, I Couldn’t Love You More tells a sweet, loving, yet powerful message: I couldn’t love you more, but there is someone who does. Through the unique relationship of adorable animals, the book shares that Christ is always with you and he loves you more than you can imagine. This engaging picture book combines lovable and irresistible images with the lyrics from the song (co-written by Jason Ingram and Matt Hammitt). Matt is lead vocalist for Sanctus Real, a Grammy-nominated Christian rock band. The song is on Hammitt’s latest album, Every Fallen Tear. When Matt and his wife, Sarah, were halfway through her pregnancy, they discovered their son would be born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), a rare congenital defect. Matt and Sarah’s son, Bowen, was born on 9/9/10 and received a huge following through the Hammitt’s blog (bowensheart.com), K-LOVE, and ABC News. A portion of the proceeds from the book goes to the foundation the Hammitts’ have started to help parents with children who have this heart condition.

Review:

This book made me cry. It is not only for parents to read to their young children, but I am thinking of reading this book to my son who is graduating from high school. This book shares timeless truths of God’s love. The line, “When I’m not here He is with you” are words that caught in my throat. As parents we can not always be there, we can not always chase away the pain, or shield them from hurt, but God can. This is a book that can be read to them when they are babies all the way to adulthood. This is a great keepsake book!

I Couldn’t Love You More by Jason Ingram & Matt Hammittt can be purchased here.

Matt Hammitt is the lead singer and a founding member of the band Sanctus Real. Over the past decade, the Grammy nominated, Dove Award–winning group has released five albums and has topped the Christian radio charts with fourteen No. 1 and Top 5 radio hits. In 2010, Matt and his wife, Sarah, found out they were expecting their third child. Already the parents of two young daughters, Emmerson and Claire, they were looking forward to an ultrasound that would reveal whether they were having a boy or a girl. “We found out it was a boy, and we were all celebrating,” Matt recalls. “But only a few minutes later the doctor came in and told us that things weren’t right, that half of the baby’s heart wasn’t developed. At that time, they didn’t think he would survive.” Diagnosed with Hypoplastic left heart syndrome, little Bowen, whose name means “small, victorious one,” defied the odds and survived. But it hasn’t been an easy road for Matt and his family. Following Bowen’s birth, Matt and Sarah watched their newborn son endure two open-heart surgeries, and they spent more than three months by his bedside at Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Matt and Sarah have shared the pain, as well as the joy, of their journey with others through their blog, Bowensheart.com, which has received more than one million hits to date. Sarah says, “God clearly has His hand in all of this. Our family has been called to walk through this, and we will do our best, even though it’s going to be really rough at times.” “Everything I’ve watched happen in the hospital—all the pain I’ve felt—is deepening my faith, strengthening my marriage, and molding my character,” Matt says. “Out of what appeared to be a well of emptiness has flowed a fountain of purpose.” Matt’s album Every Falling Tear, released in 2011, was born out of the heart of a father wrestling with his pain but buoyed by his faith and his love for his family. I Couldn’t Love You More is one of the songs on the album. It expresses a parent’s desire to share Christ’s unconditional love with his child. A portion of the proceeds from both Matt’s album and this book will be given to support the Whole Hearts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by the Hammitts that is dedicated to helping families with children suffering from congenital heart defects. Matt says, “We’ve met so many families like us whose children are suffering, and they are looking for hope. It has become our mission to help them find it.”

AND … do enter the contest for a chance to win a beautiful hand crafted pearl necklace. To enter, just {CLICK THIS LINK} and fill out the short form. Contest runs 5/6-5/13 and the winner will on 5/14. Contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.

If you are unfamiliar with Pearl Girls™, please visit www.pearlgirls.info and see what we’re all about. In short, we exist to support the work of charities that help women and children in the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy of Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace or one of the Pearl Girls™ products (all GREAT Mother’s Day gifts!) to help support Pearl Girls.

And to all you MOMS out there, Happy Mother’s Day!


What I Didn’t Know by Rhonda Shrock

I always knew I wanted to be a mother.  As a girl, I played house with my dollies, shushing them when they cried and kissing their plastic heads.

Looking back at that girl, I realize now that there was a lot she didn’t know.  This morning over my fresh-ground coffee, this mother of 22-1/2 years scratched out a list of 10 things she didn’t know then that she knows now.

1.  I didn’t know – how could I? - just how completely a tiny, helpless scrap of humanity can capture the heart and hold it forever.  From that first whooshing heartbeat and the first butterfly brushes, a mother’s heart is never again her own.  For all eternity, it enlarges, walking and pulsing and moving outside of her body; in my case, in the shape of a blue-eyed boy with rooster tails.  Times four.

2.  I didn’t know that the size of a mother’s heart is always changing, stretching to embrace each new baby that comes, then growing again to love their friends and then their own families.

3.  I never knew, as I changed my dolly’s dress, how many reasons there are to worry when you’re a mama.   Didn’t know about the nighttime vigils.  Didn’t know the anxiety of separation, the terror that floods when you turn around in the grocery store and they’re gone.  Didn’t know about the fear of the pond next door or the concern that pays for swimming lessons.  Didn’t know the thousand-and-one reasons that keep a mother awake, whispering prayers on her pillow in the dark.

4.  No one told me that loving so much means that you will hurt hard and keen;  that what pains your child hurts you even worse.  I didn’t know then that a playground taunt travels through that smaller heart and lands square in yours, stinging and burning like fire.  I didn’t know that motherhood makes lionesses of us all and that there’d be days I’d have to bite my tongue and pray to not sin.

5.  I didn’t know how exhausting it is, being a mother.  I didn’t know that it takes everything you’ve got and then some.  Didn’t know the bone-deep exhaustion; how it strips you bare and shows how selfish you can be, but, too, that you have more strength than you know.

6.  I didn’t know, playing house, how much joy mothers feel; joy so big that it makes up for the pain.  Just looking at those eyes and the curve of the cheek can make you so happy it hurts.  Watching them grow and find their talent and win at something…all the money in the world can never buy that kind of happiness.

7.  I didn’t know how making babies and raising them, how it binds you to their father.  I didn’t know the intimacy you feel when your eyes meet above those tousled heads, and your smiles say, “Just look at what we’ve done.”

8.  That girl in the homemade dress, she didn’t know that letting go is one of the hardest things a grown-up mama will ever do.  Rocking those babies in that small rocking chair, she didn’t really know that babies grow up and walk away and there goes your heart, out into the big, wide world.  No one told her that part.

9.  I had no idea how rewarding it is, being a mother.  How the happiness that comes from boy kisses and awkward hugs can’t be bought or sold.  How proud you feel when you see what they’re growing up to be and that all the planting and pruning and watering and feeding is finally making fruit!

10.  I didn’t know how much my babies would enrich my spiritual life or how they would change the way I pray.  I didn’t realize they would lead me to a deeper dependence on the Heavenly Father or how I much I would need His wisdom to raise them aright.

These are things I didn’t know before I was a mother.  But I know them now.  Oh, how I know them now!  And I’d do it all again.

Exciting News – the latest Pearl Girls book, Mother of Pearl: Luminous Legacies and Iridescent Faith will be released this month! Please visit the Pearl Girls Facebook Page (and LIKE us!) for more information! Thanks so much for your support!

• Author: Julie Cantrell
• Publisher: David C Cook (2012)
• Category:Fiction,
  Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It is rare that a book grabs you by the heart and does not let you go until the last page is turned, it is even MORE rare that it would be the author’s debut novel!

Millie Reynolds knows firsthand the shame of family secrets. With an abusive father and a “nothing mama,” she craves a place of true belonging. Over time, the Gypsies that travel through town each spring offer acceptance. Then tragedy strikes and Millie leaves her world of poverty to join a prominent family on the other side of town. There, with the help of unlikely sources, Millie uncovers painful truths about her family’s past as she struggles to face a God she believes has abandoned her. When unconditional love is offered, Millie learns the power of forgiveness and finally discovers where she belongs.

Cantrell has a gift of creating real characters, will real life problems and showing God’s love and faithfulness shining through it all. Readers will enter young womanhood with Millie Reynolds and feel like they have made a wonderful, spirited friend. This is Cantrell’s debut novel and she has the gift of weaving words into a beautiful tapestry.

If you are looking for a great book to read on vacation or lying by the beach—which I did—run, don’t walk, to purchase Into the Free by Julie Cantrell.

FTC Disclosure: Special thanks to David C. Cook Publishing Group for sending me a review copy of Into the Free by Julie Cantrell.