Beautiful Freedom
How the Bible Shapes Your View of Appearance, Food, and Fitness
Endorsements
To be a modern woman is to struggle with how we look. We’re confronted with images of beauty, ideas about what to eat, and our own internal struggles with our bodies. In Beautiful Freedom, Stacy Reaoch diagnoses and gives the solution to our ever-compounding struggles with body image. If you think you’re immune to this, Stacy shows how it impacts everyone. But even more helpfully, she points to the path towards freedom—where we see everything we have as a gift from God to be stewarded for his glory.
— Courtney Reissig
Author of Teach Me to Feel and Glory in the Ordinary
A heartening and fundamental guide for anyone battling the relentless pressures of modern beauty and health ideals. Beautiful Freedom is bursting with Bible-centered wisdom and highlights Christ’s love for us. More than insightful information, this book is a soothing balm, offering real hope and freedom that is only found in Jesus Christ. I pray that God will use this book to remind the church that true beauty and freedom are ultimately found in him and not the fleeting standards of the world.
— Portia Collins
Host, Grounded podcast
Young or old, thick or thin, mostly satisfied or perpetually frustrated by what you see when you look in the mirror: whoever you are, you need an embodied theology, a grid for thinking about your body and beauty that is more than skin-deep. In her thought-provoking book, Beautiful Freedom, Stacy Reaoch will help you see yourself through the lens of God’s unchanging word. In seeing his heart rightly, you’ll finally be able to see yourself and your body choices with hope and freedom. You’ll want to share this book with every woman you know.
— Erin Davis
Revive Our Hearts; author of Fasting and Feasting and Beyond Bath Time
I felt like Stacy was writing directly to me. I see myself in the stories she shares about herself and other women trying to balance attitudes and actions around food, exercise, and aging. Discipled by the world, I find myself falling into deep snares in each of these areas. But Stacy’s wisdom, shaped by the word of God, provides a clarion call back to what’s genuinely good, beautiful, and true. This is a book I will be sharing with my friends at the gym and at church, and my own four daughters. How I long for us all to view our bodies rightly! Beautiful Freedom will help us get there.
— Jen Oshman
Author, Enough About Me
Many today are turning new attention to our bodies and the very practical issues of exercise, aging, and what we eat and how much—but few provide deeply Christian counsel. Stacy Reaoch knows the perils of our pendulum swings between apathy and obsession, but even more, she wants to help readers to find not just ‘balance’ but deep and enduring joy in Jesus, with genuine love for others. She sees these important issues in light of our ultimate reality, which enables her to meet our pressing need for wisdom, rather than scratch the itch for quick and easy answers.
— David Mathis
Executive Editor at desiringGod.org and author of Habits of Grace
Christian women are not exempt from cultural pressures around aging, appearance, and beauty. Stacy Reaoch offers biblical wisdom, truth, and encouragement that soothes the soul of any woman who is stressed out over how she looks, how she should exercise, or what she should eat. This book offers sweet relief and poignant reminders that the most beautiful things about us are not external but eternal.
— Heather Creekmore
Host, Compared to Who? podcast
Letting Go
Taking our daughter to college is a significant way that God teaches us to trust Him.
Mommy Guilt- The Robber of Joy?
Our righteousness does not come from providing our children with the picture-perfect childhood, or the most nutritious meals, or the best education. Our righteousness comes from Christ alone.
The First Empty Nest
Parenting is a series of letting go, a series of trusting God with the children he has given us.
When Our Children Are Wounded
When our children are wounded, we often want to pity our kids, criticize the wrongdoer, or harbor bitterness. Here are six better ways forward.
Kitchen Table Discipleship
So often we think our greatest accomplishments come from outside the four walls of our house, but the discipleship we do right at the “kitchen table” has eternal impact as we raise little ones to know and follow Jesus.
Parents, Don’t Waste Your Lazy Summer Days
The pressure to keep our kids’ schedules filled to the brim can diminish the possibility of a summer respite. But is it really such a bad thing to have wide open spaces in our planners? Might this be the very thing we need in order to refocus our priorities and make the most of the short season of time we’re given with our children?
How A Busy Mom Finds Time To Pray
In the Christian life, prayer is essential. Prayer demonstrates our dependence on God. It reminds us that we’re not in control of our life and there is One who deserves all glory and praise. Prayer lifts our eyes off of ourselves and reminds us of our heavenly hope. So how do we as busy moms find time to pray? Where do we carve out time to spend in conversation with the Lord when there is always someone (or something) needing our attention?
Will I Ever Be Good Enough
Our hope does not lie in ourselves or our performance. We cannot gain God’s blessing through obeying his commands, and we can’t do enough good deeds to earn forgiveness for even the smallest sin. As mothers, we can be tempted to find our righteousness in giving our children the picture-perfect childhood, filled with super-food meals and the best education possible. Somehow we falsely believe that if we can be the ideal Proverbs 31 wife and mother, we will earn favor with God. Yet our hope is solely in what Christ has already done, what he accomplished for us on the cross.
The Proverbs 31 Woman Is The Church
We need one another. We depend on one another. We bless one another with our gifts…
Give Your Teenager To God
Our children’s growing independence should not lead us to fear, but to trust. Even when our kids step out of our reach, they never step out of God’s.
Mothering In A World Of Better Moms
Our righteousness and rest do not come from providing our children with the most nutritious meals or the best education. They come from Christ.
Delight In Your Children
As I enter into laughter and joy with my kids, I trust God will provide more opportunities to speak of His love and delight in them (Isaiah 62:4-5). The joy I experience with my children is only a tiny taste of the joy we have in Christ.
Exhausted Mom, Lift Your Eyes
They say cleaning your house with young children is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. The moment I finish cleaning the living room, I hear a crash in the bedroom that tells me a stack of puzzles has just been emptied on the floor. In the midst of all the mundane tasks—emptying the dishwasher, tackling the laundry piles, filling the cereal bowls—it’s easy to lose sight of God’s greater purpose.
Five Ways Children Will Change The World
The American Dream teaches us to settle for a child or two, so that we can focus on other more important opportunities in life. One of the best ways to change the world, though, is to have and raise kids. With these little ones, we can pass on truths and passions that will shape and affect society.
Mom’s Battle With Back-To-School Anxiety
The school years shouldn’t be looked at as a dreadful encounter with adolescent life, but an exciting time of discovering God’s plan for our children. I need to be excited for my daughter and the young woman she is becoming, not living in fear of all the what-if situations.