Beautiful Nate by Dennis Mansfield

Honest.  Challenging.  Painful.  Full of grief.  These are just a few of my thoughts that I had when I read through this book.  It is a great book that was hard to read at times because my heart broke for Nate.  As a mom, this would be one of my worst nightmares...something happening to my child, especially something they did to themselves.

As parents, we know we make lots of mistakes and no parenting book will ever match your children perfectly.  No two children are a like.  Yet we still read them and at times, we beat ourselves up for not matching their advice or for perhaps failing at some of their plans.  However, I like that this book isn't a parenting book.  It's a book about life lessons learned from a son and two parents looking back and seeing where mistakes were made.  I see it as a mentoring thing, where they are sharing with those younger the things they have learned.

Addiction is a painful thing to deal with, especially when it affects a Christian family whose parents have tried their best to instill Christian values and the love of Christ in their homes.  I appreciate their honesty about drug addiction and their family.  It has to be a hard thing to discuss, but I really appreciate that they didn't try to hide behind being the "perfect Christian family" and dared to show the realness of their situation so others who are going through this can be encouraged.

I did cry in this book, but I expected to.  My mommy heart just couldn't help it!  This book will be a great encouragement to many walking this road with their children and will be a great guiding book for those who are just now parenting younger children.

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I received this book free from Howard Publishers in exchange for my honest opinion of this book.