Reading, Writing & Pondering

I have followed Joshua Becker for the past 3 years or more. He is the founder and editor of Becoming Minimalist, a website devoted to helping people find greater fulfillment in life than in more possessions. Somehow I found his website and it resonated with me. We began the journey to owning less. I am so thankful we began this journey as we have lived in 4 places in the last 3 years due to my husband's job changes. I couldn't have done that as easily without eliminating so much of the stuff that we eliminated. We have now been in this house, a smaller house than we started with 4 years ago, for 9 months and we love it. At the same time, I thought it would be good for a minimalist refresher so couldn't wait to review Joshua's new book, The More of Less. The More of Less is subtitled Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own. I think that says the goal of "minimalizing" quite well. Joshua Becker shares his own story and the stories of others he h...

Do you ever just want to quit that new healthy eating plan or workout program? Are you ready to run away from home (for a night) after a long, hard day? Does it feel like your job is just too draining to go on? We all have times we are ready to call it quits and have had enough of something in our lives. In 5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn't Quit , Nicki Koziarz shares a few habits that have helped her keep going when she feels like throwing in the towel. In this book, Koziarz offers great advice and tips to evaluate your situations and make better choices for your life. Throughout 5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn't Quit , she relates those habits and modern life choices to the choices of Naomi, Orpah and Ruth  from the book of Ruth in the Bible. Koziarz also shares several stories from her own life. At the end of each chapter, she offers a short recap of the highlights and a question or two to answer to relate the chapter to your own life. At the end of this book, Koziarz list...

A lot of people live in fear these days. . .As I visit with people, I think the recent political atmosphere only adds to a lot of people's fears. Even without the national struggles, we all have our own struggles that can be fearful. I had a big struggle with fear several years ago when I had to serve as a witness in a trial. For me that was stressful and cause for some panicky feelings. I wish I had had Pastor Lance Hahn's book, How to Live in Fear , then. Fortunately, I found a counselor to help me through the challenge and Pastor Hahn also shares from personal experience how a counselor has helped him. Besides situational fears, some people have bodies are out of balance somehow and struggle with fear and anxiety that seemingly comes from nowhere. How to Live in Fear offers a variety of tools to anyone living with panic/fear or for their loved ones trying to help those struggling with fear. This book is divided into three parts. In the first part, Pastor Hahn shares h...

When I was in high school, I did several collages in art class. I enjoyed making them so much. I also seemed to have an eye for putting them together, as my teacher entered one of my collages in an art contest. I won a Gold Key award for that collage and it hung on display in New York City for awhile. I was pretty excited about that. . .But since high school, I haven't done much with collage. Then I found the Collage This Journal book. I perused every page Collage This Journal and found myself to be excited to be creating my own collages once again.The front of the book offers a few basic principles of collage to get you started. Even though I had once made collages in art, I hadn't done so for several years. Maybe you have never made a collage. It doesn't matter with this book. The author suggest you use the book however it works best for you. . .work on one at a time or work on several at once. She also suggests ways to make them the best with the tools you have suc...

Blotch: A Tale of Forgiveness and Grace by Andy Addis is a modern parable for children to help them grasp the concepts of sin, forgiveness and grace. This book has five chapters and a discussion guide, as well as a letter to parents and a parent's guide to leading a child to Christ. It is important to note those various parts of this book and to pray before you using it with your family to make the most of your experience. My family read Blotch one chapter a day as recommended in the book. The whole book is a tale of the journey of Blotch, a boy who lives in a kingdom where everyone has blotches on their skin. Whenever Blotch does something wrong, another stain appears on his skin. Blotch sets out on a journey through several villages to find out how to get rid of the spots.Each chapter then has some great discussion questions that go along with it.We found the discussion questions to be well-thought out and helpful. Scripture verses are included in each chapter's discuss...

God knows what we need, that is for sure. Since I requested Overload by Joyce Meyer to review, my life started tilting towards "overload" in the stress area. Soon afterwords, I received the book. Overload focuses on practical steps you can take to help you avoid some stress and lower stress that you can't avoid.This book helped me every day this past week as I read a little each day. I would recommend reading it in short chunks so you can absorb the teaching and implement her helps slowly. I found this book to be both a practical and an inspirational help to me spiritually. Joyce shares stories from her life and from Bible characters to inspire us to handle stress better. She Offers ways for us to lower our stress levels and shares how we can look at our life experiences differently to reduce our mental outlook on the stress in our lives. She reminds us that in our modern world, we all have stress, and they also had stress during Bible times too. Using wisdom from t...