What I'm Reading

The first chapter book I remember reading on purpose and without malice was A Woman Named Damaris by Janette Oke when I was 8. I read the entire book in one night - huddled in my closet with my lamp, until the wee hours of the morning.

After that day, I devoured books. One after the other. Quickly. I would run out of new books and read the Anne of Green Gables series and the Little House books over and over and over.

As a young mom, I stopped reading fiction books. I became so engrossed in them that it was hard to put them down and I neglected other things.

And then my life just got so busy that it seemed like I couldn't concentrate on a book. I tried several and couldn't finish them.

Earlier this year, as we've felt led to simplify our life, I've picked up a few and was reminded of why I loved it to start with.

I love character driven stories that are more about the people than the plot. A good plot is nice too, but I want to know who the people are, why they do what they do.

I love nonfiction books and I've gained so much insight by reading spiritual books. But I feel like my head is so full of all of that. I constantly feel the need to improve myself, I want to always be growing. I've been in overdrive for about 10 years now, as far as all of that is concerned, and I feel the need to rest. Not relapse or "backslide", just rest.

Anyway, at the beginning of the year I set the goal to read 12 fiction books. I read 3 by February and then life got SUPER busy and I didn't pick up another one until about a week ago. I'm currently on book 5. I have 8 books read in the next 2.5 months in order to meet my goal.

Here's what I've read so far:

Gray Mountain by John Grisham (for some reason I like John Grisham when I am having to drive on road trips)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

The Clockmakers Daughter by Kate Morton<

Here's what I'm reading now:

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff (So far this is only okay, good enough to finish...not sure I'll recommend)

What I plan to read over the next 2.5 months:

1: My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray

2: The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

3: The Huntress by Kate Quinn

4: America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray

5: Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan

6: The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

7: The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

8: Varina by Charles Frazier

What have you been reading?

Dickens in Exodus 14

Standing outside a door. Cold. Rain.

Stomach churns. Lips and fingers succumb to the piercing cold . . . lose feeling and color.

On the other side of the door is manna and warmth. The picture so vivid I taste and feel it.

 I lift my fist to knock, but stop.

I can't knock again. I've knocked so many times.

But here I am. Cold and wet and hungry. Afraid to knock.

A gust of wind engulfs me, I fall into the door. It opens.

Light and warmth possess me. Strong arms lift me into the shelter I couldn't find words or strength to ask for.

Warm soup brings life to my freezing body. I lay by the fire and drift to sleep.

Guilt and shame threaten to engulf me.

"the Lord will fight for you, you need only be still" are lyrics to the song of the fire.

Fingers find the page where the words appear.

Israelites. Egyptians. Complaining. Not trusting.

They hadn't knocked either. They stood at the door complaining. But it opened anyway.

His people. Covenant sealed with blood. He kept His end, one-sided faithfulness.

After all this time, I still assume God will abandon when humans do. When I do.

He never does. Never.

I can try and strive and fail a million times, and still end up having to rely on Him. Or I can surrender and rest and rely in the first place.

It ends the same way, no matter how I get there.

Guilt and shame fade. I relinquish to rest.

Until the next time I decide it all depends on me, and I need to get to work.

Drowning and Letting Go

I swim in open water. Deep. Dark. I pray.

Desperately I scan the horizon for a sign, a marker, something to indicate this won't last forever. Endless ocean fills my visage. I pray.

My arms are filled with precious things. Good things. Beautiful things. I pray.

I kick my legs furiously, but my arms are full and the water is tempestuous and . . . I choke and bob and gasp for air. I pray.

I fight the panic that threatens to ensue. I pray.

I hear a voice . . . let it go. 

I contemplate releasing the precious, good and beautiful things that impair my ability to navigate the deep and choppy waters. But the people around me tell me to hold on and kick more efficiently. They can't see that my lungs are full of water, so I hold on and kick my legs harder. 

I am asked what's wrong with me, why I can't keep up...but I am unable to even take a breath without filling my lungs with water...and I can't form a thought or speak a word asking for help. 

I fear. Will my relationships survive me letting go? 

So I kick harder. I hold on to the precious, good and beautiful things tighter. I pray. 

I hear a voice . . . let. it. go.

There is no amount of work that I put in, no amount of attitude changes or silent prayers said, that decreases the amount of water entering my lungs. I hear voices asking what I need and how they can help me...but I can't take a breath . . . and I certainly can't speak. I'm too busy trying to survive to be able to form a coherent thought. I pray.

I hear a voice . . . LET. IT. GO. 

My head spends more and more time under the water, until it is consumed by it. 

As I sink lower and lower and lower into the depths, I am about to die. I pray. And I hear a voice . . . 

LET IT GO!

So I release one of the good, precious and beautiful things . . . but I continue to sink. So . . . I release it all. As I watch them float away, I wave my arms, kick my legs and am drawn closer and closer to the surface.

I can't breath yet. But there is hope. 

I let it go. 

Life With Teenagers

Every stage of motherhood has been grueling.

At no time have I felt "together".

I am asked for parenting advice fairly often and the truth is...I don't have any. I still feel unqualified to give it. I have good kids and I am unsure of what part I have played in that. I think it's more likely that I have contributed to whatever it is they struggle with than that I have had much positive impact on their "goodness".

Every stage has been a surprise in one way or another. The baby and toddler years are talked about a lot. Sharing horrifying poop stories is a mother bonding experience. We all know that the mother of several babies and toddlers is tired. When I see a mom with a screaming kid in Wal-Mart, I feel her pain.

I read an article a while back about how parenting teens is a lonely business, and it resonated with me. I'm not going to link to a specific one, I just googled it and there are a lot. If you want to read them, I'll let you do the choosing.

There's a lot of information about dealing with bad attitudes from teens, but what I am most surprised by is the loneliness. The poop stories have evolved into much more serious and potentially life altering stories. And while the poop stories were MY stories to tell, the more evolved, serious, potentially life altering stories aren't just my stories and they are harder to tell.

And the busyness. Oh, the busyness. I feel as though people don't believe me when I talk about this. But I leave the house at 7 am and I don't usually get home until around 9 or later on any weeknight. So we eat dinner at 9 or 9:30 really frequently, and we eat fast food way too often because nobody feels like cooking or cleaning up the mess. And homework has to be done, showers have to be taken.

It's hard to maintain contact and friendships. As hard as it was to connect during the young kid years, it's harder now. I wish I had built strong bonds with other moms who had kids my kids age when they were little, so that now I would have those relationships to fall back on. Other moms who feel the need to meet for coffee at 11pm because that's the only time not already spoken for. Moms whose stories have also evolved into more serious, potentially life altering and harder to tell stories.

I'm not complaining. It is lonely but these are also amazing days. Days where I get to live life with these crazy, good kids. As busy as we are, I am thankful that we haven't experienced a lot of the shutdown in communication that it seems a lot of families experience during these years.

These are good years, and I love them and I want to drink up every moment.

But they are lonely. And I wanted to acknowledge that.

Expressing My Gift for the Sake of the One Who Gave It

My flesh defines my success by how many people follow me, who likes my blog page, how many people share my work and whether I can earn a living by doing it.

By all of those definitions I am a nobody. Definitely not a writer, speaker or teacher.

I get so caught up in all of that. I assume that if this is truly what God wants me to be doing that he will somehow grant me success, as defined above. The thing is, He never has. I've been writing for over 12 years and I don't have a huge following. I've never written a book and no publishers are knocking on my door to ask me to. I don't have any speaking appointments and I only teach on the rare occasion when my own kids are my captive audience.

Somehow, I think that all of this writing has really just been to teach me that there is value in my gift, regardless of how other people accept or reject it. God has given me a gift and it's okay if he's the only one that approves of it.

I listened to a podcast tonight and the speaker shared that they had stopped reading their own book reviews because they had learned that sharing their writing wasn't really about who liked it, who understood it and who didn't.

I've been contemplating how I can accomplish my own version of that.

I've joined websites and read articles about how to grow my platform. And every one of them has said that what I am about to tell you is my new norm, is wrong. That I should be doing this whole list of things to grow my blog. But I'm not going to do that.

No boosting Facebook posts. No checking my stats to see how many people have visited my website. I am just going to share when and what I feel led to share. If God is the only one who reads it, so be it.

I am going to express my gift of creativity to and for the one who gave it.