"Get Back Up: Trusting God When Life Knocks You Down" by Sheryl Giesbrecht

It's true: life will knock you down. It's also even more true that God is trustworthy and we can reach up to Him and let Him carry us in those moments. I've experienced getting knocked down before, and I'm sure you have, too. I'm always eager to find books to help facilitate healing in those hard circumstances. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I didn't find much that was helpful in this book. The format was awkward, as it was part life story, part practical help, but neither area was developed satisfactorily. She'd leave stories from her personal life hanging, or make mention of a truth she often taught to women's groups without expounding on what that truth was. It seemed like this should have been a companion volume to one of her speaking engagements, rather than a book offered on its own.

I'm also unsure if this book ever saw the eyes of an editor. If it did, that editor might need to rethink their career choice. The worst example of this was found on page 48, where Sheryl writes: "As a social worker for the state of California, I networked resource services as a social worker with the state of California for parents of children with developmental disabilities." Say what? There were numerous instances of missed or misplaced commas, clunky wording, redundancy, and even a sentence on page 146 which does not start with a capital letter. On page 116, Sheryl also claims, "...63 percent of most non-Hodgkin's patients..." Sixty-three percent of most non-Hodgkin's patients? Seriously, where was the editor on this one?

Even worse was the way that Giesbrecht incorrectly related information from the Bible. On page 78 there is a whole paragraph of stuff she made up about Moses. The Bible records nothing about "the day he discovered he was of Hebrew descent," nor that he "became confused about his identity." There's plenty to draw from in Scripture without telling fiction as though it were truth. On page 105 there is a mention of Potiphar being the king of Egypt. That is simply a factual fail.

Although the grammatical and content errors were driving me crazy, the last straw was when I realized the author was incorrectly quoting Scripture. Although she stated she was using the New International Version, which I do not personally use, I am familiar enough with the Word of God and with the structure of the English language to know that she was not actually quoting the Bible. I looked up these verses on BibleGateway and my suspicions were confirmed. If Giesbrecht had mentioned she was paraphrasing, it would have been one thing. But to claim those verses came straight from the NIV was a lie.

Was the book a complete loss? I found it intriguing that she opened each chapter with real life accounts of those who had survived massive free-falls, and how we could pick out a truth from each story to apply to our spiritual lives. There were some good moments and things to reflect on, but her outright abuse of the English language and the Holy Scriptures will stay with me much longer than anything else from this book.

I received my copy from LitFuse in exchange for this honest review. All opinions are my own. For more information about this book, please click on the graphic below.



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