Book Review: Love Does and Everybody Always By Bob Goff
I read Everybody Always first, which was his third book, but actually his second book. Which prompted me to read his first book Love Does. Don’t bother looking for his real second book. Trust me.
Read the third book to learn why.
Bob’s way of understanding the world he lives in is real and clumsy and happy. Why do I imagine him sitting at the breakfast table spilling jam on his tie and laughing it off while untying it saying… “Oh well, I didn’t need to wear a tie today! God must have known!” While he heads out and jumps into an airplane and flies off to his next adventure?
It’s my visual so I am just going to say… Just go with it.
Bob (because we are on a first name basis… trust me! shaking head… not really!!!!) is me. The me before the pain and the hurt and the evil that I allowed in to change me.
If you are looking for a book that quotes scripture and puts versus to everything that occurs in his life.. then you are not going to like these books.
If you are looking for how someone takes the world he is given and turns it into a romantic comedy with ups and downs and constant laughter then this is the book for you.
2018 was our year of healing so when I saw Bob Goff on a radio show and he was talking about his new book and I knew someone that raved about his first book I was intrigued. So much so I actually downloaded the book from Hoopla and set out to listen to it. Everybody Always – Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People screamed for me to listen to it.
It didn’t take long and I knew this book was going to heal me and change me.
And it did.
Not in the way you might think….
Imagine you are standing in a stadium full of people…. Some you know and many you don’t. And each one… one by one… they come up to you and poke you in the shoulder. After the first few hundred your shoulder starts to hurt, but the poking keeps happening. You’re in pain and you literally shut yourself down, because you see the line of people… and there is no place for you to go.. but to keep getting poked….
Everybody always is the kind of book where Bob see’s you.. and instead of standing in line to poke you… he walks up to you and says… “Do you like getting poked?”
And you stand there staring blankly at him because this is just what you have known to be true… Getting poked…. So when you hesitantly say, ‘No!’ He seizes the moment to grab you out of line and run you out of the stadium… whisks you into his airplane and flies you to his cabin in the Canadian mountains.
Why do I envision hot cocoa in this scene???
And as you keep reading through his pages… you slowly find yourself laughing… and healing… and learning to love again… and it hits you…
You have forgotten how to really love.
The love that God instructs you to do.
Love everyone as I have loved you!
What does that really look like in real life?
In 2019????
And Bob shows you, one story at a time.
He shows you how he loved his neighbors… how he loved the neighbor across the street that was dying of cancer. He shows you how he loved the witch Drs…..
He shows you…. How to love!!!!
This is pretty profound if you think about it.
We were in the middle of a massive potential change in our world. And while I am wanting to say no to it all! Keep with what we have. Don’t start over. Don’t make these changes!!!! I found myself saying yes! But…
Bob makes a point of saying yes to adventures. He just does.
I actually am trying to. While also trying to figure out how to pay for all these yes’.
So when my husband came to me wanting to make a change from our now normal.. I am pretty sure he expected me to say no. Instead I said, ‘Yes, but…. Please read this book before you make your decision.’
The look on his face was puzzling. Till he started reading it and I started to see his expression.
You see, over the last several years my husband had been through hell and back. The attacks on him were definitely not right. And he took each one of them and still did his absolute best. Even when he was handed a bad hand, he found a way to make it work. But the one thing I saw happen to my husband was his spirit fade. His love for life and people start to diminish and his happiness was gone.
He stopped dancing!
I was praying that while he read the book it would ignite the love that this man had in him to help and love everyone! I was praying for the man I married to come back to me. This man that literally would give the shirt off his back to help someone… was lost…
It wasn’t even halfway through the book that the UPS man brought the second book (actually the first) Love Does. I didn’t question it. I just smiled and put it on his stack to read. I had already read the book through Hoopla… So I knew… God was healing my husband… through Bob’s book.
Somewhere along the reading of them we were having tree’s cut down for a food forest to be put in… and my husband wakes up, comes out to the living room and exclaims… Give all the wood away!
I just sat there….. Who was this man in front of me?
He continued, “Call everyone you know that has a wood burning stove and offer it to them… One by one… as much as they want… They can have it.”
“But I actually have plans for it?” I commented.
He thought about it. “Keeping our friends warm this winter is more important!” He replied.
He was right…. This was the moment I saw a glimpse of the man I married.
Selfless.
By the end of 2 weeks… all 15 trees were cut up and removed and in the homes of some dear friends. In fact, as I drive home from town, I can see the stack of wood, our trees…. In a partially covered wood shed… a sign to me that satan didn’t steal my husband from me.
We have 2 sayings in this household…
Love Does.
And
Just say Yes.
To say that Bob Goff changed our lives would be an understatement. His writing, about his life, his stories about how he loved people changed both our lives.
So when we were walking the garden and my husband mentioned that the truck wouldn’t start… and he hesitated… and I knew exactly where he was going…. So I asked… “Who do you think could use it best?”
And there you go… that is how I got my husband back. The man that thinks of everyone else before himself. The man that loves on people and risks his life to protect people from danger. The man that gives a troubled truck away without any way of replacing it…. Because he saw someone needed it more then we did.
He ended up making that drastic life change. The one he was asking me about and it was the best move ever. Sure things are a little tighter then usual. We have to actually plan before just saying yes… But the happiness that walks through the door… is worth it all.
He started to dance again!
Sometimes in the busy world we can forget how to love people. We get poked again and again and we just want it to stop so we curl up inside ourselves and wait….. And then, there are people like Bob Goff that come along and with a dramatic laughter he declares we just need to say yes… and do it!!!!
Bob, taught us how to love, everybody, again.
The Bettencourt's 