Danielle Strickland is a speaker that I have had the privilege to hear several times, and even learn from directly at a conference she taught at.
I’m a huge fan of her as a person, and of the work that she does. She’s passionate about empowering women to lead (especially in the church, where sadly, the patriarchy is still often calling the shots) and she’s passionate about justice (working with girls at risk of falling into human trafficking). She’s real and genuine and is someone I highly respect as a human on this planet.
I picked up this wee little book hoping to glean more of her wisdom, and found it to be good, but not the earth-shattering impact I was expecting.
This is a Christian book, so that is unapologetically a main theme here. Strickland points out our natural human striving for order and structure, how our expectations fit into a certain box and how we don’t like anything to deviate from those plans. She contrasts that to how God doesn’t instruct people to live in those contained systems… He does beautiful work out of chaos, calling us into risk and daring and trust.
There was nothing in this that was really mind-blowing to me, but as someone who is often working out of the creative side of my brain, it was a neat revelation that most moments of amazing creativity flow out of chaos and disorder, rather than a carefully structured system and plan. It’s a quick read, and overall just good.