Dream New Dreams

"Dream New Dreams" by Jai Pausch

This book is written by the widow of Randy Pausch, who wrote "The Last Lecture".  That was a great book if you haven't read it, it is also on YouTube.  Randy died of pancreatic cancer.  After reading that book I wanted to read what his wife's perspective on his cancer and death.  This book is a very real book of the toll cancer takes on a whole family.  Randy and Jai have three young children.  Jai was thrown into the role of caregiver and writes how hard a job that is but how she wouldn't have traded it. She is a strong woman who has overcome and dared to dream again.  "When you are in difficult straits, identifying the areas where you need an extra hand or a smarter brain takes honesty and courage."  I think we try and do so much on our own because we are afraid to ask for help, afraid of being vulnerable and needy but that is what family and friends are for, to help each other.  That is why God gives us community.  "Please don't die, all the magic will go out of my life."  Jai said these words to her husband, fearing that when he did die there would be no life for her to live, that he would take all the good with him.  "His stories show the reader how our actions and treatment of other people have  a powerful impact on the shape of our lives."  When we give and serve others our lives are enriched and given purpose.  "Here in the safety of friends, the sadness didn't feel as heavy as when I was alone.  Perhaps that was because each of us held a little piece of grief's mantle."  I love that.  When we have community we are all sharing the good and the bad, carrying the burdens and celebrating the joys.  "I didn't have to be handcuffed to the past.  I had to learn to give myself the freedom to do what was best for my family."  "Most important, I was learning not to look at today through the lens of yesterday, which made the promise of tomorrow all the more magical."  So often we stay stuck in the past, past mistakes, past hurts, and that is not what God has for us.  Life is for the living and we need to walk in that freedom.  "At times, I still feel overwhelmed.  I think that's true for many parents-we're frightened by the fact that our children's lives are in our hands; it's a weighty responsibility."  A very weighty responsibility and one that should not be taken lightly.  Thankfully we have a God we can entrust our children to and pray to help guide them.  "I saw that the magic hadn't gone out of our lives when Randy died.  The magic was still with us, inside us.  It always had been."  "I had a wound that would heal according to no specific time line."  Grief takes many forms and takes lots of time.  Everyone deals differently and at different times.  "Randy said, 'In all likelihood, cancer is going to defeat my body, but it's not going to defeat my soul because the human spirit is much more powerful than any biological disease.'"  That is right, we can be hurt and even die but when we have Jesus we live on, free from death with Him forever.  "Life is a precious gift, and I don't intend to waste a day of it. Have I experienced tragedy? Yes, I have.  But it would be another real tragedy if I didn't recover from the sadness I have felt and thus missed the many happy moments along the way."  Most of us have experienced some sort of tragedy but we must keep living or we miss the beauty that God makes from those ashes.

Heavenly Miracles

"Heavenly Miracles" by Jamie C. Miller, Laura lewis, and Jennifer Basye Sander

This is just a short collaboration of stories about people who experienced miracles in their life.  It's a quick little read that is uplifting.  It's great to hear how God is working in others lives and that He still performs miracles today.  "In the midst of everyday stress and struggle, we want to believe and be reassured that there is a greater purpose to our lives."  Everyone wants to make sure that their is some pupose to their life, even the mundane of life.  We are all seeking greater meaning.  "Miracles that save lives are not always dramatic rescues; sometimes they are simply brought about by the guiding hand of love."  "You are special and worthy of a miracle because you are loved."  Everyone is worthy of a miracle because we are all created and loved by God.  Sometimes our eyes just need to be opened to the little every day miracles that happen and sometimes God has bigger ones in store for us.  These stories will bring a smile to your face and remind you that there is a God who cares and He is in the business of miracles.  

Don't Go

"Don't Go" by Lisa Scottoline

I devoured this book, it was so good!  I'm in a time crunch because I checked out 6 books at the library and have to get them all read before they are due.  I'm feeling the pressure but thankful I can read fast.  I just grabbed this book off of the New Release shelf because the cover grabbed me.  It is about a man who goes to war (I'm a sucker for war books) and leaves behind a wife and baby daughter.  He ends up getting wounded and comes home to his life that is in shambles.  Nothing is as he left it, his medical practice is a mess, his wife dead and his baby girl a stranger.  How will he piece his life back together?  Will he ever be the father that his daugher needs?  Will he ever recover from his losses?  This book took some twists that I didn't see coming.  It turned out to be a little bit of a mystery which I don't normally read but this one caught me by surprise and I liked it.  It was very well written and engaged me every with page turn.  It again, left me thankful for all the people who serve our country, fighting for my freedom.  They sacrifice so much.  "She's only human.  Don't judge her.  Just love her."  We are all only human.  We all judge but we all need to do less judging and more loving, showing grace to each other because after all, we are only human.  "Here's what I think.  If I hadn't gone over there, I wouldn't be the father I am.  I wouldn't be the man I am.  War changes everything, and everybody.  It changed me, and the sacrifice changed me.  I've decided to live my life in a way that honors that sacrifice, and all the sacrifices."  War does change everyone involved in it and the circle is big.  The only thing is to live honoring the sacrifice that was paid.  I also see this for the sacrifice that Christ gave us on the cross.  He gave everything and I want my life to honor that sacrifice.  

The Yellow Birds

"The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers

Not a good book, not worth your time.  This is the first book for this author and I think, should be his last.  I'm not sure where I got the idea to read this book but after I finished I was just plain mad I wasted my time reading it.  It was written very strangely and thus made it hard to understand.  When I got to the end I was asking what was even the point.  It is a very detailed book which is not my kind of book at all, too tedious and boring if you ask me.  It is about two soilders going off to war in Iraq.  It is about what the war does to them and about loss.  They are both young and forced to fight a war that doesn't make sense nor were they prepared for.  "We only pay attention to rare things, and death was not rare."  Death in a war is not rare and in order to keep going and survive I believe soilders shut off their brains and move on auto pilot.  "All pain is the same.  Only the detials are different."  Pain is hard and it hurts and we all experience it in some way, just in different ways.  "I feel like I'm being eaten from the inside out and I can't tell anyone what's going on because everyone is so grateful to me all the time and I'll feel like I'm ungrateful or something.  Or like I'll give away that I don't deserve anyone's gratitide and really they should all hate me for what I've done but eveyone loves me for it and it's driving me crazy."  A soilder said this when he came home from the war.  He felt like everything he did was wrong and he didn't deserve gratitude.  He hated himself for all that he had done and couldn't understand why others didn't hate him as well.  Really this story is sad.  It it yet another glimpse of our soilders and all the pain and darkness they encounter.  How do you unsee what you've seen in war?  How do you ever undo the things you've done in battle?  How do you ever recover from that?  I'm grateful to our soilders and their families.  I pray they find Jesus to bring them peace and healing after fighting for my freedom.  And as a side note this book has a lot of swearing in it.

The Chance

"The Chance" by Karen Kingsbury

This is a story about a girl whose family has fallen apart.  She is forced to move and leave behind her best friend, Nolan.  The night before she is to leave town they meet in the park and write a letter to each other, bury it beneath the old oak tree and promise to come back in 11 years and read the letters.  The years go by and Ellie's life looks a lot different and she is ashamed of her choices.  She doesn't ever expect to see Nolan again but that day and her best friend stay hidden in her heart.  Nolan never forgot Ellie and he will do whatever it takes to find her again.  This story is about love conquering all and about forgiveness.  It is a powerful story about choices and how they affect those around us.  "The only right response for the rest of her life was to extend that grace to others, to forgive the way she had been forgiven."  God extends grace to us, and we are so undeserving, in turn we should extend that grace to others.  If your struggling with your choices remember that God forgives and loves you no matter what you have done.  He loves you just the way you are.

Cross Roads

"Cross Roads" by WM. Paul Young

This author wrote The Shack.  Don't know if you read it but it was somewhat confusing.  Well this starts out just as confusing and lost me for a while.  I started it and didn't like it and put it down for a couple months.  When I picked it up the second time I was determinted to get through it.  I will be honest, it took till about chapter 4 or 5 till it started getting good.  But it finally did get good and then I couldn't put it down.  So you have to stick with this one.  It is about a man who is in a coma and meets Jesus.  He is told that he can heal one person, any one person.  The story goes back and forth from earth to the in-between life where the man is while in a coma.  The book is funny, has lots of truth to it and also takes some liberties.  "Hold on to Jesus, Anthony.  You can never go wrong by holding on to Jesus.  And know this, He will never stop holding on to you."  Truth, Jesus never lets us go even in our darkest or worst moments.  "There are lots of folks besides Christians who believe in me. 'Believer' is an activity, not a category."  To believe involves doing.  "Love will not condemn you for being lost, but love will not let you stay there alone, even though it will never force you to come out of your hiding place."  Love never condemns and never forces.  "The arrival of the unforseen reveals the depths of one's heart."  When life suddenly takes a turn it tends to really show whats truly inside of us.  "There is nothin' fair in a broken world full of broken people.  Justice tries to be fair, but fails at every turn.  There is never anything fair about grace or forgiveness.  Punishment never restores fair.  Confession doesn't make things fair.  Life is not about granting the fair reward for the right performance."  Just as things that happen in this world are not fair neither is the grace we receive.  "Sometimes silence speaks loudest and presence brings the most comfort."  Sometimes all we need to do is be there.  "Somehow the pain, the losses, the hurt, the bad, God is able to transform these into something they could have never been, icons and monuments of grace and love.  It is the deep mystery how wounds and scars can become precious, or a ravaging and terrifying cross the essential symbol of relentless affection."  He always turns beauty for ashes if we allow Him.  "What initally kept you safe can eventually destroy you."  Sometimes we build walls for protection and that is good but if we never tear down those walls they will be what kills us in the end.  "But I discovered that when you blame God for evil, there is no one left to trust, and I couldn't live that way."  "Prayer, it seemed, was simply a conversation inside a relationship."  It's really that simple.  There is no right or wrong way, it's just a conversation.  "One never knows if anything's a good idea.  You just make a choice and go with the flow and see what happens.  You only get one day's worth of grace, so why not spend it extravagantly." 

The Longest Ride

"The Longest Ride" by Nicholas Sparks

I got this book for my birthday.  It is his newest book published in September and I think this is the soonest I've gotten one of his books.  I was so excited to read it, he never disappoints.  I dob't know how he continues to write such good books.  This book was a change up from what I have been reading.  It was nice to read something a little lighter.  The story is about an old man at the end of his life, reliving precious memories of the years with his wife and of another young couple just starting out on this road of life.  The couples come from two different eras but soon their lives will connect in ways no one saw coming.  "You kissed me, yes, but it was not just good night.  Even then, I could feel the promise in it, the promise that you would kiss me just like that, forever."  Isn't Nicholas a great writer?  "I think that the point is that people rarely understand that nothing is ever exactly what you think it will be."  That's one of the hardest things to comes to terms with in this life.  We think we will be happily married or we will have well behaved children, or children at all.  We think we will always be healthy or strong.  Often times what we envision our lives to be is rarely what actually is.  But remembering that God has plans even when things aren't what we thought they would be, even in the hardest of times, gives us hope and a rock to stand on.  "For it is one thing to declare one's love for someone and quite another to accept that loving that person requires sacrificing one's dreams."  We say we love but when it comes to sacrificing what we want, that's when love gets real.  That's when love gets hard.  "Your heart is still beautiful.  Your eyes are still kind, and you are a good and honest man.  This is enought to keep you beautiful forever."  Doesn't matter what we look like on the outside, even the most beautiful face will age, what matters and what lasts is the beauty within.  "At night, the space between us in the bed felt like the Pacific, an ocean impossible for either of us to swim across."  Sometimes it feels that way, doesn't it?  A chasm so wide we cannot cross or a wall so big we cannot climb it?  But with God all things are possible and sometimes we just have to show up and be willing to take the first step towards the other person, even if they were in the wrong.  It's sacrificing, putting away our pride-hard love.  "A truth emerges in any long marriage, and the truth is this: Our spouses sometimes know us better than we even know ourselves."  "I know you miss me terribly.  I miss you, too.  But we still have each other, for I am-and always have been-part of you.  You carry me in your heart, just as I carried you in mine, and nothing will ever change that."  Oh I love that.  When you truly love you become a part of each other and when that person is gone a part of you is missing but they are in your heart, forever a part of you.  Another great Nicholas Sparks book, another great read.