Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
– Matthew 6:19 – 21

In a culture sickened by materialism, gluttony and greed of all kinds, the Gospel’s call to live simply and to share abundantly is more pressing than ever. For many of us, voluntary poverty is an ideal. But to be voluntarily poor—as opposed to the pendulum swings of overspending, underearning and pathological self-deprivation that can dictate our lives—we have to be rich first: in trust and love, if not in money.

In Loaded: Money and the Spirituality of Enough, lawyer-turned-writer Heather King shares her own recovery around money as well as the stories of others who have worked to reverse self-defeating patterns and move on to a healthy, mindful relationship with money. In an approach that’s very much informed by Jesus’s many words on the Subject, she offers simple, proactive and transformative steps you can take to heed the Gospel’s call in your own life. The Language of Loaded will be familiar to those in recovery for addictions of various kinds, and easily accessible to those who aren’t. Wherever you fall on the spectrum between freedom and bondage around money, these stories and tools will help. And the underlying principles—clarity, honesty, the confluence of will and grace—apply in every area of our lives.

Unlike so many money books, Loaded is not about how to make more and consume more. It’s about how to detach from the idea that our identity could possibly lie in how much or how little money we have.

It’s about discovering that money is a means of love and service. And it’s about following the deepest desires of your heart—and discovering that the real economy is, “As you give, so shall you receive.”

Heather King is the author of Stumble: Virtue, Vice, and the Space Between as well as the memoirs Parched; Redeemed; Shirt of Flame; Poor Baby; and Stripped: Cancer, Culture and the Cloud of Unknowing. She lives in Los Angeles, speaks nationwide, contributes regularly to Magnificat.