If anyone can talk about the vital importance of HOME and family, surely it is a former foster child.
Maybe that’s why I enjoyed this book by Jim Daly so very much.
It touched me to learn that the president and CEO of such an influential Christian ministry as Focus on the Family came from such a broken background. How ironic, (and, really, how utterly perfect!) that a ministry devoted to strengthening families should be headed up by a man who knew mostly loss and dysfunction in his own childhood. I have to believe the insight of someone like Daly brings such perspective and compassion to the efforts at Focus.
Finding Home is Jim Daly’s personal story. And let me be honest: It isn’t pretty.
But Finding Home was a blessing to me because it reminded me, first of all, of the amazing power we have to influence the lives of others. But I also saw in Daly’s testimony example after example of the way God’s pursues man. Daly himself shows how the events of his life, even the most negative ones, ultimately led him to his acceptance of Christ, and eventually put him in a place where he could take the helm at a large Christian ministry devoted to serving families.
Be warned: This book may be loaded with emotional triggers. I cried my way through Daly’s telling of the death of his mother, perhaps because I, too, lost my mother to cancer at a young age. Maybe I was working through some personal issues as I read, but though my other circumstances were never as dark as Jim’s, I could relate so well to so many of his feelings and struggles he experienced in the illness and death of his mother. I’m pretty sure reading through it was therapeutic for me.
I enjoyed reading a story that proves that people can rise above negative circumstances to do very positive things, but I also believe Finding Home could be such an encouragement to those who come from brokenness, who struggle with the fear they can never rise above the troubles of their past to have a strong family of their own.
Psalm 68:6 tells us, “God settles the solitary in a home.” This book shares the story of how he did it for Jim Daly. I think Finding Home is a good reminder for us all how He can do it for others as well.
