Book Review: What If It’s Wonderful?

Nicole Zasowski
Thomas Nelson, 2022
240 pages

Amazon Description:
What if my hope only leads to disappointment? What if I embrace joy only to have it ripped from my hands? What if my celebration is the cause of others’ sadness? What if my joy takes me away from the God I knew so well in my pain?

Author and marriage and family therapist Nicole Zasowski knows what it’s like to take a blow that makes it difficult to look to the future with expectation and ask herself these questions. Yet, as she found the courage to celebrate, she discovered God is as present in our joy as He is in our pain.

Yes, God’s purpose for us is worked out in our struggles. But what if it is also worked out in our dreams and our delighted joy? In What If It’s Wonderful? Nicole helps you:

• overcome the fears that keep you from looking toward the future with joy;
• let go of the lies you’ve believed about happiness and embrace celebration as a part of spiritual growth;
• approach life with an expectant heart and courage to trust God’s good gifts.

With a psychological and spiritual case for celebrating, Nicole challenges you to let go of the habit of practicing disappointment and fully embrace joy, beckoning you to ask yourself a new question: What if it’s wonderful?

This post contains affiliate links, which means I might make some extra coffee money at no extra expense to you if you buy something through one of my links. Read more about that here.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me as a reviewer by sending me a copy of this lovely book.

What If It’s Wonderful? has a gorgeous cover and message I think many of us need to hear – that God loves celebration! So often we go through life afraid to hope for things or to deeply feel joy because if the thing we are celebrating is somehow removed from us then the hurt will be deeper as well. But Nicole Zasowski shows us why this attitude isn’t serving us, and offers some practical advice for how shake it and choose joy.

One thing that really stood out to me is not a new concept, but it’s one that I often underestimate, and that is the fact that feelings follow actions. If we always waited until we felt like doing something then very few dinners would ever be made, very few books would ever be written. But we can choose to celebrate someone’s win even if the feelings aren’t there yet. Likewise, we can choose to receive compliments and words of encouragement from others rather than brushing them off in the name of humility.

I also loved her assertion in the second to last chapter that God cares enough about celebration to schedule it as a nonnegotiable, as proven with the many feasts and festivals that He laid out for the Israelites to observe. It goes right along with the actions-to-feelings narrative. The Israelites were to set aside time to observe these occasions whether they felt like it or not indicating that God values rest and celebration. In this chapter the author states, “Even Sabbath didn’t come as a reward for the week’s accomplishments. A day of rest wasn’t simply the result of exhaustion from the past week. It was, and continues to be, a structure of celebration that invites us to release our grip on control and step into God’s rhythms of grace. Celebration starts when it starts.”

What If It’s Wonderful? is a slim book (just shy of 200 pages, not counting the discussion guide and notes), but this message will leave you thinking. I hope you’ll consider picking up this book and letting it help you choose joy and celebration!