Straza's story begins with a trip to India where the poverty and misery she witnessed put her through a process she calls the Shredding: a shock to the system that opened her eyes to the Question (she's big on capitalizing) of what she is doing with her life. Unfortunately, she discovered that a truthful answer to the Question was mostly seeking her own comfort, to maximize her pleasure and minimize her pain, or even her effort, a response that she finds antithetical to the biblical instructions of Jesus to his disciples.
Straza's response is to go through a comfort detoxification process, consciously rejecting convenience, emotional and professional safety, perfectionism, avoidance, entitlement, and indulgence. Only when that is done does she advocate pursuing the positive goals of compassion, trust, humility, engagement, and contentment.
There are two reasons I don't like this book. One is that it is written almost as a sort of study guide for a group. Step 1 of the detox is to gather a group of like-minded friends to go through this process with you. It seems that self-improvement, like going to a public bathroom, is something that girls ought to do in a herd. More importantly, though, at the end of the process, Straza suggests dedicating onself to a Cause (that's my capitalization, not hers) to get uncomfortable in the pursuit of and suggests charities focused on providing education for girls around the world. Perhaps I shouldn't find that surprising, given the setting of her Shredding, but for a book which approaches life from a strictly Christian viewpoint, it's disappointing that the end goal is a very mainstream, socially-acceptable cause. If our lives are radically different because Jesus went outside his comfort zone, shouldn't out goals be different as well?
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