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...

Our son is going to be 12 this November. It is hard to believe as the years truly have gone by fast. We have had some big changes in our life this past year as we have changes locations for my husband's job. I can see ways that these changes have been a challenge for all of us. I especially can see where these changes are challenging as a boy in process of changing into a man. I spend time in the mornings praying for him but I wanted to know better how to pray. 65 Promises from God for Your Child by Mike Shreve sounded like a book that could help me pray through the challenges my son faces in our family and in today's world. According to Mike Shreve, God is on our side and has give us promises for our children. This book contains 65 of them--promises for mercy, salvation, compassion, hope, truth and many more. We just need to pray them and believe them for our children. In fact, he encourages us to memorize them and speak them over our children whenever we can. He encoura...

The Brinkman Family adventure CDs are based on the adventures of real missionaries who share some of their humorous escapades through the Brinkman Family tales. The stories are dramatized with various voices for the different characters, along the lines of the Adventure in Odyssey stories. My son is 11 and he enjoyed them. The jacket says that children under the age of 10 may find the stories to be intense so they encourage parents to listen along with them. They seemed to be the right amount of adventure for my son's age as he didn't get too worried and just seemed to enjoy the stories. These CDs would be great to have for long car rides. They would be good to help kids see the excitement in being a missionary.You can purchase these CDs for yourself at: http://brinkmanadventures.com/   You can even listen to a sample at: http://brinkmanadventures.com/listen . They operate on a donation basis and they can download the episodes on the site or order physical CD's.  If...

Daunted. Not a word I use very often so not a word I thought much of until I read Undaunted: Daring to do what God calls you to do by Christine Cain. To be Undaunted is to allow us to not be stopped or discouraged by the challenges we face in life but rather to allow God to use our lives to help others. I could hardly put this book down. Christine Cain writes in such a fashion that this book was a page turner for me. I found her story to be inspiring, and by the end of this book, I felt like God could use me to make a difference in the world as well. Instead of giving in to discouragement in our disappointments, Cain encourages us to let God use those parts of our lives and to remember that something better awaits us. Throughout much of the book, she shares some of the challenges and difficulties that she has overcome in life. She also includes steps to help overcome disappointment and to work through fear that could be holding you back from living your life the way God wants you...