Reading, Writing & Pondering

Radical Well-Being: A biblical guide to overcoming pain, illness and addictions offers a holistic approach to your health. Rita Hancock helps the reader see the connection between their spiritual life, their emotions and their physical conditions. This is also a book that is clearly designed with Christians in mind as their are numerous Bible references and references to God and faith. As a Christian, I especially appreciate finding a health book that is geared to my faith. I've also had some health issues in recent years with pain that I wanted to get to the bottom of. In our world today, most medical doctors don't have the time or take the time to look at their patients' mind-body-spirit connection. It is so nice to see a doctor take the approach that the whole body works together to make for better health. Clearly, she is not saying in this book that physical ailments are in the reader's head. However, she does say that our emotions or circumstances may be cont...

We Laugh We Cry We Cook caught my eye because of the differences between this mother and daughter. Becky (the mom) is not very organized, sleeps in, forgets things and wasn't always cooking when the daughter (Rachel) grew up. Rachel is organized, a new mom and recently became a vegan, along with her husband, Jared. As someone who eats mostly plant-based married to a meat and potatoes guy, I was curious as to how the families blended their meals in harmony. At the time of the book's printing, Rachel and her husband had been eating vegan for about 3 years--and she also became pregnant and had a young child during that time. Becky and Rachel shared back and forth through the book various stories from each of their perspectives about growing up years as well as more recent stories of how food united them as family and how it united them with other friends and family.Their stories were interesting and told with humor. The ladies have a blog they started together  too:  http:/...

All In by Mark Batterson will challenge those Christians that believe they are living their lives following Jesus. . .when they aren't "All In" for the Gospel. He calls it the inverted gospel in our culture--instead of following Jesus, they have invited Jesus to follow them. We've made Christianity to convenient and comfortable. Read page 21 and you will see that those early Christians didn't live that life of convenience by any means. In this book, Batterson challenges Christians to fully surrender their life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. . .to "Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Jesus didn't die to keep us safe." Vivid illustrations from the Bible, history and from Batterson's own church and life show how we can better live our lives "all in" for Him. One example that really spoke to me was of Abraham and Isaac. Batterson says that we all have our own Isaacs to lay down. . .things that could b...

For my new office space at our new-to-us house, I wanted something different for a bulletin board. I went to Hobby Lobby and Pier 1 looking at the boards they had. . .but instead of buying a board, I realized I had a new use for an old window sitting in storage. The window wasn't just any old window. . .this window came out of the attic of my grandparents' house before it was torn down. My grandparents have both passed away so I thought this project would give me both something useful and a keepsake. My office is yellow and I wanted purple accents so I got a can of Glidden Victorian Purple paint from Home Depot. My husband helped me do this project as he thought it was kind of fun too. . .We removed the glass. Then I painted the frame purple. After I painted the frame, we attached chicken wire to the back of the picture with a staple gun. . .and my husband put to narrow pieces of wood on top of that so it stuck out from the wall enough to use clothespins to hang up p...