For The Love

"For The Love" by Jen Hatmaker

So, everyone has been reading this book and I don't normally jump on the bandwagon but my friend told me that it was too funny to pass up.  I have also just recently become familiar with Jen and I do enjoy her honesty so I thought I would give the book a try.  Yep, it is definitely funny, and honest.  "We need to quit trying to be awesome and instead by wise."  Wise is so much better than awesome.  "Wise women know what to hold onto and what to release, and how to walk confidently in their choices-no regrets, no apologies, no guilt."  Can you imagine?  "Nothing is wasted: not a characteristic, preference, experience, tragedy, quirk, nothing.  It is all you and it is all purposed and it can all be used for great and glorious good."  So let's not try to hide who we are, God uses it all for His glory.  "The best I offer the world is the truth-my highest gift.  What the world does with it is not up to me.  I am not in charge of outcomes, opinions, assessments.  I am not in the business of damage control.  When I present a fabricated version of myself-the self who knows all, is ever certain, always steps strong-we all lose, because I cannot keep up with that lie and neither can you."  Truth is so powerful and done in love can be life changing, but I like that fact that she states whatever happens after the truth telling is not my concern.  "You are doing a wonderful job.  Parenting is mind-numbing lay hard and no one is perfect at it and we'll all ack a thousand parts, yet somehow, against all odds, it will be enough.  We all need to hear that, don't we?  "When people fail you-and they will-Jesus is ever faithful.  When circumstances tank-and they will-Jesus will hold you fast."  Thank you Jesus for being the One we can depend on.  "Lean honestly into every hard place, each tender spot, because truthfulness hurts for a minute but silence is the kill shot."  "Treating your husband like a good friend will preserve your marriage forever."  Kindness, sometimes that's all it takes.  "Every marriage includes two sinful, aggravating human beings.  Grace is our only hope."  Grace for the person we are married to and grace for ourselves.  "Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting through..."  Marriage is worth fighting for.  "But fear is a terrible reason to stay silent.  Fear is a terrible reason to do anything.  It isn't a trustworthy motive and it doesn't ever lead us to wholeness."  Fear can rule you, it's ruled me, but God can break those fears and when we speak them, often they no longer hold power over us.  "There is a clear correlation between how we treat each other and how a watching world will feel about Jesus."  No wonder our world is so lost right now.  We can do better, treat each other better, love better and in turn show Jesus better to a world that so desperately needs Him.  "Our shared redemption should keep us grateful and kind, becasue what other response even makes sense?"  "You are too vital to lose years to regret or shame or insecurity or fear.  We are not slaves to those masters; Jesus saw to that.  Face your issues with courage, sister, because truth and love win, and you have both those cards to play."  We need you, you are vital to His kingdom.  This book has a lot of good little nuggets and will make you laugh.  It is not a heavy read but full of points to ponder and use.

The Gifts of Imperfection

"The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brene Brown

Fellow perfectionists, READ THIS BOOK!  If you need help letting go of perfection this is a great book to read.  We all need help embracing who we are and to stop being so hard on ourselves.  Kindness to others and ourselves goes a long way.  "Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light."  We can be light in darkness, we first have to be willing to step into that darkness.  "Every time we choose courage, we make everyone around us a little better and the world a little braver.  And our world could stand to be a little kinder and braver."  Courage begets courage, in us and in others.  When I am afraid to do something my girls are afraid too.  I'm teaching them courage my doing the things I'm afraid of, not not showing fear but acting despite that fear.  "When we don't practice love with the people we claim to love, it takes a lot out of us.  Incongruent living is exhausting."  So often we treat family worse than we treat strangers.  We need to practice better love to all those around us.  "We don't change, we don't grow, and we don't move forward without the work."  You want to see change, you have to put in the work.  We can't just talk about change, we have to get up and work for the change we want to see.  "Powerlessness is dangerous.  For most of us, the inability to effect change is a desperate feeling.  We need resilience and hope and a spirit that can carry us through the doubt and fear.  We need to believe that we can effect change if we want to live and love with our whole hearts."  Believe in yourself and others, that with God will can make a difference.  "The gremlins are constantly there to make sure that self-expression takes a backseat to self-protection and self-consciousness."  We worry too much about what others think instead of being true to ourselves.  "When we don't give ourselves permission to be free, we are rarely tolerate that freedom in others."  When we give ourselves permission we grant it to others too.  This book takes time to get through, a lot of things to process, but worth the read.  

Like Any Normal Day

"Like Any Normal Day" by Mark Kram, Jr.

A very interesting book, one that I don't necessarily agree with but, gets you thinking.  This is the story of Buddy, who is an all-star high school football player. He has it all going for him, friends, girls, athleticism, and personality.  It took about 30 seconds to change all that.  At a football game he was tackled, flipped upside down and landed on his head.  He lay facedown on the field, believing these were his last moments.  Now this happened in 1973, before all the precautions against injury were in place.  He was flipped onto his back, lifted onto a stretcher, and placed into an ambulance with the assumption he had a broken leg.  Buddy ended up with a broken neck that left him paralyzed.  The brunt of his care was shouldered by his mother. Buddy was in constant pain from spasms that left him weary.  He was extremely worried about what would happen to him once his mother was too old to care for him, and that time was fast approaching.  He felt guilty for the huge burden that he was to his mother.  Buddy wanted his mother to be able to live her own life before it was too late for her.  He had an incredible bond with his youngest brother, Jimmy.  Jimmy lived to see Buddy laugh.  He also shoulder Buddy's emotional well being.  One day Buddy had had enough of his suffering and asked Jimmy if he would take him to Dr. Kevorkian.  Buddy made all the arrangements and Jimmy agreed.  Jimmy felt like so much had been taken from Buddy that he deserved to have this one thing.  This is a story of hardship, struggle, brotherly devotion, and unending love.  It is a story that tells of how tragedy affects so many.  

Orphan Train

"Orphan Train" by Christian Baker Kline

This was a one day read it was so good.  It is a novel but speaks of a time in our history where we were shipping orphans by train to the Midwest.  It is not something a lot of people know about, yet it was a reality for over 200,000 orphans.  Many were given a better life, many were mistreated.  The author weaves together two stories, one from modern day-a foster girl just trying to survive, and an old woman remembering her past as an orphan.  I enjoyed how the stories wove together.  It was really well written and interesting to find out about the orphan train.  "The general feeling is that it's best not to talk about the past, that the quickest relief will come in forgetting."  And yet who can ever truly forget their past?  "I feel myself retreating to someplace deep inside.  It is a pitiful kind of childhood, to know that no one loves you or is taking care of you, to always be on the outside looking in.  I feel a decade older than my years.  I know too much; I have seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary.  So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel.  I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside."  A child who feels so unloved and has learned to give what others are looking for, to not feel but just be agreeable.  "And so your personality is shaped.  You know too much, and this knowledge makes you wary.  You grow fearful and mistrustful.  The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so you learn to fake it.  To pretend.  To display an empathy you don't actually feel.  And so it is that you learn how to pass, if your're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside."  "Why, you're as handy as a pocket in a shirt."  

A Grace Disguised

"A Grace Disguised" by Jerry Sittser

If you like tragedy, like me, then this book is for you.  It is written by a man, Jerry, who in one car accident lost his wife, his daughter and his mother.  He tells of the accident that changed his life forever.  Jerry writes of how he chose to respond to the loss.  He writes that in how he responded was his defining moment, not the accident itself.  He had other children to live for and set an example for.  He could not do what he wanted, to lie in bed and wallow in self-pity, he had to show them how to continue to live despite the huge loss.  "We do not always have the freedom to choose the roles we must play in life, but we can choose how we are going to play the roles we have been given."  Choosing how we deal with trials is about the only choice we really do have.  "It is the power to choose that adds dignity to our humanity and gives us the ability to transcend our circumstances, thus releasing us from living as mere victims."  "So with the background already sketched in by circumstances beyond my control, I picked up a paintbrush and began, with great hesitation and distress, to paint a new portrait of our lives."  It's not easy to pick up the pieces from loss, any loss, and start anew.  "Who knows how one experience, so singularly horrible, can set in motion a chain of events that will bless future generations?  Loss may appear to be random, but that does not mean it is.  It may fit into a scheme that surpasses even what our imaginations dare to think."  We do not know the impact our loss, and how we deal with that loss, will effect those around us.  Only God sees the bigger picture, yet there are many that are watching how we respond.  "The problem of expecting to live in a perfectly fair world is that there is no grace in that world, for grace is grace only when it is underserved."  And we are all under serving of that grace.  "Wrong that is forgiven is still wrong done and must be punished.  Mercy does not abrogate justice, it transcends it."  Wrong is still wrong yet I love his statement that mercy transcends the wrong and that can only be God.  "If people want their souls to grow through loss, whatever the loss is, they must eventually decide to love even more deeply than they did before.  They must respond to the loss by embracing love with renewed energy and commitment."  "Choosing to withdraw from people and to protect the self diminishes the soul; choosing to love even more deeply than before ensures that we will suffer again, for the choice to love requires the courage to grieve.  We know that loss is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  So naturally we dread the losses that loom ahead.  But the greater loss is not suffering another loss itself but refusing to love again, for that my lead to the death of the soul."  Such good words, yet so very hard to live out, although necessary to live the life God intended.  

Man's Search for Meaning

"Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl

This is an old book, one many have read.  It is a powerful book of a man in a holocaust concentration camp who survives only by the hope he carries.  He tells of the atrocious things that happened and how those who survived did so by holding on to hope.  He goes on to write that if man has no meaning he will have no reason for living and such not make it through hardships.  Viktor became, and actually was prior to the war, a psychiatrist.  He helped many people find meaning so that they could overcome.  He goes on to say that in suffering, if we find the meaning, how it will make us stronger and what we can learn from it we can be overcomers. "Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel any more.  The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such commonplace sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him any more."  The prisoners became numb, there was too much suffering and wrongdoing that their brains just could not comprehend and so the emotions get cut off for survival sake.  "When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task.  He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering his is unique and alone in the universe.  No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place.  His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burdens."  How we bear our burdens is the biggest part to this life.  We all have them, we all deal with them differently, but our character shows through in these burdens and who we believe to be in control.  "In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice."  A good book on finding meaning in our suffering and gaining perspective.  The end gets very technical, as he goes into the psychology of what he leaned but I did throughly enjoy the first part about his experience in the concentration camp.  

Three Little Words

"Three Little Words" by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

I volunteer with foster youth in my county and this book was recommended to me by another volunteer.  It is a book that highlights why children in the foster system need advocates.  This story is written by a young girl who was in the foster system and her experiences.  This book actually makes me cringe because it is everything that is wrong with our system.  I kept asking, "How could that have happened, how could this have happened?"  Everything that could have gone wrong for this young girl did.  "What had I done that was so terrible that I had to be taken from my mother?"  How many kids think it was something they did?  How man kids think that they weren't good enough?  Many of these children are have self esteem issues believing that they weren't good enough to be loved.  "Behind the scenes, though, she became our champion, and it would be years before I realized everything she had accomplished on Luke's and my behalf."  She is talking about her advocate or CASA worker.  Ashley, the author, didn't know at first how much this worker was doing on her and siblings behalf.  "What I could not avoid was an irrational throbbing for my mother that came in waves." "Besides, the only parent I wanted was my mother, and if I could not have her, then having nobody was better than somebody else."  Foster kids are afraid to be loved and they self sabatoge for fear of being rejected they reject first.  "It's okay not to love us.  And I'm not going to say that I love you, because I haven't known you long enough to feel that way.  I like you very much and I want you to be my daughter forever, but love is something that grows with shared experiences.  I feel the buds of love growing, but it hasn't blossomed yet."  Ashley's adoptive mom first said this to her when she came to live with them.  I appreciate her openness and her honesty.  It takes a lot of time to heal from the hurt these children have experienced and her adoptive mom did not expect instant love.  "You are our chosen child, our only daugher.  We missed so much of your life, and we cannot erase some of the tragedies.  All we can do is help you to be the person you want to be from now on."  Foster parents are heroes, they are courageous people who love the broken back to life.  I am in awe of their dedication and willingness to be in the trenches.  "Children need families, not programs."  "Placement?  We have adopted you.  You're our daughter, so cut the poor-orphan-me crap.  We never had anywhere to send our sons, so why should you be different?"  Ashley was afraid that if she messed up she would be put back into a group home.  Her adopted mom was telling her that she was loved no matter what she did, that this was a forever relationship.  Unfortunately, many kids act out from their fears and hurts and foster parents end up giving the kids back up.  It takes a lot to foster.  "The state had paid her to shelter children who were already wounded, and she broke them further-some permanently.  In addition, I cannot help but hold a grudge against those in authority who were incompetent, negligent, or looked the other way when the system's foster parents were harming us.  So many children in my position have no voice, but I will not be silent.  I will continue to speak out about the importance of getting children into permanent homes more quickly."   Children need homes, they were never intended to be taken care of by an institution.  We need to speak out, these children need a voice.  "Out of these 195 people, only Mary Miller and Martha Cook were unpaid volunteers-yet they are the two people who made the greatest difference in my life."  I'll end with this, make a difference in a child's life, become a CASA worker!  (Shameless plug)