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I was happy to write the foreword to this book, here’s a little bit from that…

St Augustine is often credited with this idea: “There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”

So, what about us?

Do we dare imagine ourselves, maybe in our wildest dreams, as becoming saints?

Sometimes the only images our minds have of saints are the white plaster ones in a churches or museums, or paintings and icons from long ago. Rather than perceive the holy boldness they possessed, we falsely picture their lives shrouded in an unrealistic piety, or an unreachable cleanliness-that’s-next-to-godliness. It’s sometimes hard to imagine them as real. Or messy. Or messed up. Or messin’ with people.

That’s what I like about this book. It introduces saints that smash the holier-than-thou and goody-two-shoes boxes we sometimes categorize them in.

Nobody’s dissing piety or faithfulness here. There are no saints without it. But women of holy influence come in a variety of shapes and sizes, temperaments and tempers. And they come to faith through countless circumstances and circuitous channels that bring them to God.

God’s beckoning to us may come through a variety of voices… some off beat and some in tune. Who inspires me is likely different than who might inspire you. Johnson’s litany of the courageous who’s in her life is infectious: It’s worth getting to know a saint or two who might actually be more like us than we’d care to admit, or one who might shock us into a new and more courageous way of living. This is a book that’s not afraid to talk of the beautiful mess, where faith meets real life, where saints and mortals coexist, one cheering the other on to glory.

Johnson writes:

The path to sainthood starts — and ends — with my desire to act for the love of God.

I think I can do that….

It’ll just take a little audacity on my part…. to banish the silly notion that “they don’t make women like that anymore.” (p. 27-28.)

God, indeed, is still in the business of creating women who are destined to do great things.

By all means, order the the book!