By Lizzie Thomas | Staff Writer
Recent Baylor graduate Grace Valentine released her book “Am I Enough?” on June 17, and it has since resonated with women, especially in her online community.
Valentine graduated in May and wrote the book while still in school. Valentine started a blog in college after getting responses from her contributions to other websites like the Odyssey. Her message is that although society says women are not enough, they are priceless according to their true identity in Christ.
“My hope is to get people to find their worth in their savior, because in the world we are never enough and in Jesus we are,” Valentine said. “In my book, I talk about how my goal is for women to dance with Jesus and to create something so beautiful that others can’t help but watch. If you struggle with insecurity you’re probably in the world’s lead, like you’re dancing with the world. My goal for the book is that they’d let the Lord cut in and start dancing with them.”
However, Valentine’s book is not just for Christian women. According to Valentine, “Am I Enough?” is written to every woman who wonders about her worth or struggles with comparison.
“I think Christian books have a stigma to them, like they make you feel like the worst person and that you need to do ‘blank blank blank’ to find Jesus,” Valentine said. “You don’t have to pretend to be like the Christian girl to open up the book. I’ve been every single girl, and I get that our identity is not in Christianity, it’s in our relationship with Jesus.”
Valentine has an online community through her blog and social media called “The Enough Movement.” She said this platform helped her succeed in writing a book.
“Social media was also used to build up that platform which is kind of the ironic thing of it, because social media used to feed a lot of the insecurity in my life. My blog reached about 6 million views last year, so I just kept getting blessed. The Lord just kept providing different avenues,” Valentine said.
New Braunfels senior Casey Lee Sheffey, a Baylor nursing student, follows Valentine on Instagram as a part of the encouraging online community surrounding Valentine and has read her book.
“She kept posting about her book, and so I thought, ‘I’m going to get it because I feel like this is something that I would enjoy,’” Sheffey said.
Sheffey appreciates that Valentine talks about real issues and lies that college-aged women believe about themselves, but also how to combat them.
“One thing that she talks about that you don’t read in a lot of blogs or books is not measuring up as a Christian,” Sheffey said. “Because a lot of times we compare ourselves with our looks and our academics and all that kind of stuff, but then also we can fall into the trap of comparing ourselves as Christians. We are not called to [that], but to glorify God in all that we do and focus on that, not other people.”
