I've been doing more book reviews lately, and it's fun to hear back from you whenever you read a book that you learned about here. My goal with reviews is to do no more than one a week - and not necessarily one every week. But if your appetite for reading surpasses my ability to deliver new suggestions, check out this blog, which is devoted to book reviews, and the blogger does a great job actually offering HER thoughts on each title...you can tell she puts a lot of time and effort into each one.
Two.
I'm not a teacher, but I know many of you who read are teachers, and you're gearing up for a new school year if you've not already begun it! {CRAZY to see in my Facebook feed last week how many people were already headed back to the old classroom!} One of my friends linked to this article, which I so appreciated even as a non-teacher. This was actually my first and longest-standing career choice and the main reason I ditched it was because my parents were both educators, and I watched the school system change so radically and take away so many of their freedoms in the name of stats that I just didn't want any part of it. This article proves there are still teachers that love the kids more than the stats.
Three.
I happened upon this blog last week and may have to spend more time exploring it. But this family has been doing a "summer of service" challenge and {again with the back to school theme...} I was intrigued by their choice for the week. I know a Facebook friend of mine who sells Thirty-One products was doing something similar. She challenged people to donate...ten or so, I think...and she'd shop for school supplies, fill a tote and donate it to the local school. I love all these little spin-off ideas! Anyway. On this post, there's also links back to the previous weeks if you want other ideas!
Four.
With all the race training going on, I'm sure you can understand why this post by Holley Gerth really spoke to me. The phrase I need to remember? "Not my race, not my pace." YES. PS - if you're not a runner, don't skip over this one. It's actually LIFE advice.
Five.
Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. I have so many friends who have mourned the loss of a baby, through miscarriage or stillbirth, and I agree with the words of this post...let's talk about these babies. Let's remember them and give life to the days they did have on this earth, no matter how brief. Affirm their mamas and speak their names.
Six.
I've been doing quite a bit of reading in this last month, and the one I'm telling you about today stopped me in my tracks in a way quite unlike the others. I will confess to you I'd never read Amber C. Haines' blog, but her debut book, Wild in the Hollow, made me add it to my daily reading list.
Her writing style {which reminded me of a cross between Ann Voskamp and Shauna Niequist} is stunning, but she didn't sacrifice the message of the book just to deliver well crafted words. But before I get to the words, I have to pause on the style. I know not all of you are writers, so it might not strike you the same way it did me, but for me, this book was a hands-on course in how to beautifully craft words. I wrestled between being unable to put the book down because I so wanted to know the next part of the story...and putting it aside after a particularly lovely sentence so I could go try to write beautiful sentences of my own. Her writing was a gift to me and made me want to offer more word gifts to others.
Now back to the words themselves: Amber's vulnerability is unbelievable. She shared deep, raw, personal places of her heart, her life, and her sin, which allowed her to also share the deep, raw, personal places of her redemption, her restoration, and her pursuit of a life of faith. It takes a calling and anointing to be able to pen what she did and risk the automatic bristling and judgment of her readers, as she shared about her drug use, her promiscuity, her abortion, her drinking. And if you've been cozy in a Christian bubble, those things are uncomfortable and bristly to read about...but they're necessary to know to fully appreciate the way Jesus met Amber while her cheek pressed against a bathroom floor and she waited to die. But our death brings His life and a whole new life, which she not only experienced, but gulped in until she overflowed with Him.
Her memoir proves that saying yes to Jesus does not bring an easy life. It doesn't mean marriage is perfect and children are shiny and disappointments never come. But her insatiable desire to rise above the temptation to sink into darkness, to push past shiny church exteriors and find ways to genuinely show the love of Jesus in the trenches of life, and to find fullness in smallness is both captivating and inspiring.
If you can read this book and not be moved...not be convicted...not be inspired to live more wholly with your Savior, I'd venture to say you're either lying or hardened. And praise God, He can transform both messes.
Thank you, Amber, for being brave enough to show your real heart. Thank you for the beauty of your words, which pointed to the True Beauty of redemption. And thank you, Revell, for binding these words into a book and providing a copy to me for review.
3 comments:
Thank you so much. The article I Don't Think Teachers Know What They're Doing is mine and I truly appreciate you sharing it and your kind words about it.
Oh I am so glad you wrote the article! I nodded in agreement SO MANY TIMES while I read. It was so well done and I appreciate the reminder of teachers who give their all. Blessings!!
I love your heart for women who have had miscarriages or stillbirths. I think it is so important to remember those babies, and the families who are missing them.
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