What do you get when you put a fiery redheaded Texan woman, her husband, their unlikely conversion to Catholicism, and their six children together? You get One Beautiful Dream, which tells the shambolic and endearing journey of Jennifer Fulwiler in writing her conversion story Something Other Than God.

Yet her latest release is more than just the chronicling of how she achieved that. More essentially, Fulwiler’s account is encouragement for mums wrestling with the seeming impossible task of integrating their personal passion with family life.

Fulwiler shows with heart and wit that taking the messier, crazier, more chaotic road is sometimes– and probably always– best. Because being told, “you can get back to your personal dreams once the kids have grown up,” sounds all too familiar for mums trying to do the best job they can, yet isn’t overly helpful.

Or how about, “just enjoy this time while you can– the kids grow up so fast.” Enter Fulwiler, who explains how keeping up her passion for writing, which she calls her “blue flame,” was the very thing to give her the perspective and energy she needed to be able to appreciate the beauty of motherhood.

And for those who might still suspect trying to ‘have it all’ is unrealistic at best, and selfish at worst, Fulwiler stresses that those passions have to be reconfigured to fit family life. She isn’t denying that women need to be flexible, adaptive and infinitely patient in their endeavor to live out their personal gifts in a way that is realistic with their family responsibilities.

This is key. Fulwiler believes everybody, (not just mothers, but they’re the obvious focus,) have a passion for something. And that passion should be cultivated through every season of life, not just when there’s time to ‘fit it in.’ You have to make time to flourish as your own person. This is a way of ensuring you’re the best wife and mother you can be, the book argues.

At the same time, though deeply personal, this book isn’t just for aspiring writer-mums like me, (which is why I personally enjoyed the book so much.) She explains how everybody’s “blue flame” looks different. Broadly, it is “more than just a hobby; it [feels] like a way of connecting with the world.”

She describes one woman whose “blue flame” is interior decorating. Making home beautiful is her personal creative outlet. For another, it’s baking. Some personal passions are just easier to weave into family life than others.

But this shouldn’t stop passions not as easily integrated into family living from being pursued, says Fulwiler. Finding a way to make it work, despite the difficult, is paramount.

Now, it can be difficult not to feel slightly daunted by a woman who signs a book contract while lying on a hospital bed having given birth to her sixth child. But it would be smart to not make that the take-home message. Instead, recognizing your own “blue flame,” and being encouraged to nurture it in even the most chaotic stages of life is what the book is essentially about.

And though it reads slightly haphazard at times, this is probably testament to the hectic environment in which it was written. And reading through the lines, the process of weaving passion and family together sounds like a constant balancing trick, not something anyone could ever have fully worked out.

Nevertheless, One Beautiful Dream reads like a rambling tale, filled with entertaining anecdotes, personal revelations, and spiritual insights. It will obviously appeal to mothers most of all, but its relevance isn’t exclusive to them.

~ Veronika McLindon
Veronika writes from Melbourne where she lives with her husband and their two young children.