The Hundred Story Home book review and giveaway

in , , , , , , , , by Linda A Kinsman, Wednesday, July 18, 2018
How does one go about finding faith in ourselves or something bigger than ourselves? How do we step out in faith and believe in the whisper that some of us hear that says… do this instead of that? These questions and potentially finding the answers to my own nagging whisper had me happily agreeing to review a complimentary copy of The Hundred Story Home by Kathy Izard and to hosting a giveaway for 3 copies for you! 



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My thanks to Thomas Nelson, Inc./ Harper Collins for sending me a complimentary copy of The Hundred Story Home for today's post and for hosting my giveaway. All opinions are my own. 


About The Hundred Story Home by Kathy Izard

A memoir about finding faith in ourselves and something bigger.


“Kathy Izard was a graphic designer, wife, mother of four daughters, and volunteer at Charlotte’s Urban Ministry Center when an unlikely meeting with formerly homeless author Denver Moore (Same Kind of Different as Me) changed the course of her life. Inspired by Denver’s challenge to do more than serve in this soup kitchen, Kathy quit her job to take on what seemed like an unimaginable task in her second half of life—to build housing for Charlotte’s homeless.  Woven together in this motivational story of a call to social action is Kathy’s personal journey to define the meaning of home and her own struggle with faith, family, and fulfillment.” 




About the Author, Kathy Izard: 

Do good, love well. Kathy Izard grew up believing in this family wisdom. She was an award-winning graphic designer for twenty years in Charlotte, North Carolina before launching the pilot program Homeless to Homes for the Urban Ministry Center in 2007. She successfully demonstrated this housing-first program could succeed and led the citywide effort to build Moore Place, Charlotte’s first permanent supportive housing for more than one hundred chronically homeless men and women. 



Why Kathy Izard wrote The Hundred Story Home:



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Kathy says she didn’t write this book to convince you to solve “homelessness in your community but to help you solve the homelessness in you.”  Her powerful true story reminds us that not only can we help change the world, but in doing so we change ourselves.  You can learn more about her at KathyIzard.com.



My Thoughts:

I was expecting this book to be a mainstream Christian book, where the reader would have to be a practicing Christian to “get it”, but that is not the case.  While this book gets its start in a church’s community outreach program, and several main figures in the book have deep Christian beliefs, I found it refreshing that Kathy opens up to us and shows us that while she serves at the community soup kitchen, her faith in God and answered prayers had left her a long time ago.

What I really liked about The Hundred Story Home is that Kathy gives us her backstory: all the good times and messy parts that led her to serving in the soup kitchen in Charlotte.  Kathy grew up in a family that was different. Her mom suffered from mental illness and Kathy had a long seated resentment towards her for that and all the lost years of not having her ideal family unit.


Kathy doesn’t shy away from this topic and how she dealt with it; instead, she literally invites us to live out our own stories more fully by taking us through her life to the point where she first heard that life-changing whisper. She asks: Do you ever have the feeling that what you are doing isn’t what you are supposed to be doing? 



Listen to the Whisper and Then Act:


For Kathy, hearing any kind of whisper was bad, so was acting on it crazy? Her mom had spent years in and out of psychiatric hospitals battling bipolar disorder, so how could Kathy “hear” anything from an outside source, heaven-sent or not, and acts on it? But that is exactly what she did! Nobody in her life once questioned her sanity. Not her family and least of all her mom.  She had lots of support as she took on the monumental task of housing some of Charlotte’s chronic homeless individuals.


 As she learned more about the regulars at the soup kitchen and community center, she started truly seeing them and understanding their stories and lives before they became homeless.  There are times in Kathy’s story that she gets lost in this project and her own family suffers because of it, but there is a happy ending! 



Trust Your Heart:


The Hundred Story Home made me feel grateful for all that I have and truly did make me start questioning, what else can I do in this life? Do I have a calling? Do I have my own ministry? I know I do now because reading this book showed me that our ministries or callings don’t have to be big and splashy, or even public, to be helpful.



You see, each of us has a thing we do for others that makes us feel good to do it. For Kathy, it was working in the soup kitchen for years. For Kathy’s mom, it was faithfully sending out cards to all her family and friends for years and years. In the end, Kathy saw that those cards were her mom’s ministry. 


There is a man in the story who got up early in the morning and walked his neighborhood, quietly taking the newspapers from the driveway and placing them on his neighbor’s front porch. He prayed for each neighbor as he did. That was his ministry. 



My Ministry or Calling:

In a word, children. It was put on my heart years before I even became a mom to smile and be kind to children.  To listen to them and truly see them.  Every child that looks at me gets a smile and a wave. Every friend that comes home with one of my daughters is welcomed and treated with respect, and I actually talk with them.  This is huge in this day and age of overworked parents and overbooked kids! And yes, I’m that Mom who offers them food and something to drink each time they visit. This is my heart and my ministry right now. As we approach the start of another school year, I’m going to look for other ways to help kids in my community.  




Everybody Needs a Home:


The Hundred Story Home will make you realize just how important home is. It takes you into the inner workings of city and state projects for homeless people and I think it will make you want to help more, give more, do more.  You’ll get to meet some of the homeless people of Charlotte too and see how having a home impacted them. It’s pretty amazing



The Take Away:

You may walk away from reading this book with a lot of questions and you may even hear that whisper telling you to do that crazy thing! If you have faith, the right people will find you and help you. I believe that with all my heart. 


I’ve always had the heart to help people less fortunate than myself, so I give when and where I can, but I can and will do more.

If you are ready to be called to do more in your life, I highly suggest reading The Hundred Story Home! You could even win a paperback copy by entering my giveaway below. 




Win It:



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Thanks to today’s sponsor, 3 lucky winners will receive a paperback copy of The Hundred Story Home. Perfect summer reading, I think, as it will give you time to consider where you are in life before school starts and the holiday's approach. 



Terms:

No purchase is necessary to enter using the Rafflecopter form below. Must live in the United States and be 18+ or older to enter. Must use a valid email address to enter. Sorry, we can't ship to P.O. Boxes. One winner per household only.  My WAHM Plan is not responsible for prize fulfillment. Winners will be notified by email used on the entry form and have 48 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen. This giveaway is not associated with nor endorsed by Facebook, Twitter, or any other social channel. 


Good Luck!




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Please share in comments: If you won this book, would you keep it or gift it? 


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