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"Can't I just grow up to be a kid?" is the first question Becky Freeman asks in her newest book, Still Lickin' the Spoon and Other Confessions from a Grown-up Kid. Through delightful admissions of her own struggles at adulthood, Freeman convinces us that not only has she managed to grow up to be a kid, but it might be a good idea for the rest of us.
This is a woman who cannot be trusted to travel unaccompanied. Her airport antics alone are worth the price of the book. She talks her way out of delinquent traffic tickets with proof of her innate inability to remember things. A desperate search for her son's birth certificate finds it carefully filed under "wrist x-rays." Her youngest son describes her very well, "I was thinking how you are really smart in math and how you write really good books and stuff . . . but . . . did you know that you have no sense at all." Happily, he is quite wrong.
Becky Freeman has a wonderful sense of what is really important. Her relationship with husband, Scott, still has a teenage, sweetheart quality in spite of the rigors of raising four children, building their own home, and his "handyman complex." Her children, three sons and a daughter ranging in age from 16 to 8, are as likely to engage her in an afternoon of "mudding" as they are to share their worries and dreams. (You will just have to read the book to begin to understand this one!)
But it is when Freeman shares her views on her relationship with God, the church, and fellow Christians that you realize she has a true sense of what is really important. By maintaining a childlike faith, Becky Freeman is both an encouragement and an example. There are nuggets of insight in Still Lickin' the Spoon that catch you unaware. Just when you thought she was off on some nutty frolic, she grabs your heart, you see yourself in her words, and you realize that we are never closer to the heart of Jesus than when we come openly and honestly as His children.
Pam Clements is a young mother and reviewer in Nashville, TN.
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