Read
Introduction
“The last person they want to hear from is someone who has it all together.”
Isn’t that the truth?
The beautiful, messy, gut-level-honest truth? When I struggle with something — feeling insignificant, for example — I don’t want to hear all about it from someone who embodies significance. I want to hear from a friend who gets it, in her own way. And when I struggle with parenting, friendship, my marriage, or how to keep the dust bunnies from attacking us in our sleep, my heart doesn’t seek out the experts. I want to hear from someone who knows me, who knows my strengths and weaknesses and realistic expectations, and who doesn’t live inside the “after” version of an HGTV show.
When I invite women to join me in their personal health and fitness journey, I make them a promise. I tell them that I will never suggest anything that I haven’t already done myself or I’m not willing to do for the first time right alongside them. And that’s exactly what Jennifer is about to do — invite us to join her on a dare, where she has gone on ahead of us, which means we can be brave enough to say “yes” to her happiness dare because we know she did it — and so can we.
It will be scary at times, and maybe uncomfortable. We’ll have to dig deep and lean into Jesus as He walks with us through our individual journeys. But we won’t be alone — we’ll find ourselves among friends on these pages. Friends who “get” us, and we’ll celebrate, laugh, cry, and learn together.I’m ready to take the dare. Are you?
A Free Gift!
When we did our Fervent book club, we loved giving you something to use throughout our study. Instead of prayer cards, we wanted to offer some really fun journaling pages that you could use to record each moment of the happiness dare! You can download your free journaling page here and print as many pages as often as you’d like!
How to Join the Discussion
We know that not all of you are on Facebook (where we’ve hosted our book club small group in the past) so this time we’re trying something new! One of our favorite features of the new (in)courage website is our new forum space. So many of you have visited to share prayer requests and connect with one another already, so our prayer is that this will be an easy, one-stop way for you to join the book club discussion!
At the end of each post, look for the link to the forum topic we’ve started for that day’s reading. Click over, log in if it prompts you to do so, read the discussion question(s) for the day and click “reply” to join the conversation! Read through the comments and responses from other book club friends and feel free to reply those those as well. We’ll test it out today — just click here to head to the forum!
TIP: if you need to log in you’ll end up on your personal profile page. To get to the forum from that page just click “Connect” at the top of the screen then go to “The Happiness Dare Book Club” and then “Introduction” or click on “Blog” and come back to this page to click the link to go directly to today’s conversation thread!
What’s Next
For next Tuesday read Chapters 1 & 2!
Leave a Comment
angelqueen7117 says
Thank you for the jounaling page. I look forward to joining the book study.
Tonya says
Is there any discount code available on the Kobo ebook? I’d love to have the ebook to read and follow along.
Shannon says
Love the journaling pages! I am excited to fill them with my jumbled thoughts. THANK YOU
cloudninegirl says
This website is SO CONFUSING! When I go to the signup page for this book club and click the signup link, it takes me newsletter email subscriptions, not the book club! I’m now on this page, but is this the book club page? WHY ARE THESE WEB PAGES SO POORLY DESIGNED?
Crystal says
Hi Laura – so sorry for the confusion! The sign up for our book club is in fact the same as our email list – signing up there simply ensures that you never miss a book club post. We have two main categories for our blog posts – our main page for our regular contributors and guest post authors, and our book club page for our Recommended Reads program and book clubs. If there is anything more we can do to help, please feel free to email us at incourage@dayspring.com!
cloudninegirl says
Thank you, Crystal! I just received my book and love it. 🙂
Butterflylife2 says
I want to participate and went to forum link. I created an account and it wont let me login. It just hangs when i press login. I have used a chrome browser and safari browser on an ipad air. Can you help?
Butterflylife2 says
Nevermind i tried again and it worked. Thanks!