Category Archives: recommendations

Why You Need My Book

Posted in My Book, recommendations, singleness by

In case you didn’t get the memo, my book has a brand new look!

This is the new and improved edition:

ta daa!

 

book cover

Because I’m more artist than business person, it is super hard for me to promote or manage or try to sell my book. But here I am, trying to do that.

Why would you want to buy this book? (This is the first tool of the salesperson, you know: create a need for the product.)

You need this book because you feel left behind while your friends are all doing amazing things like dating, or planning weddings, or having babies. You’re watching it happen all around you but it’s not happening to you. You nearly swallow the tantalizing lie that God is organizing others’ lives, but expects you to manage your own by yourself.

Or some of those exciting things have happened to you but you feel empty and your days blur into each other and you wonder if life is just about surviving every day until the supper dishes are washed.

If none of this applies to you, you know you have a friend who feels this way, almost dipping into desperation sometimes, and she needs a message that she can identify with. She needs to know that she’s not the only one to feel this way, that other women say “You? Me too.”

After you buy this book that you need, you find that you like it too. You like it because of the perky little fish on the cover that decided not to keep swimming in circles. You like it because there are sweet swirly graphics between the chapters. And an engaging study guide in the back.

And best of all? In my opinion?

There are lots of sidebars throughout the whole book–and none of them repeat any words in the text. This is my pet complaint in other books: they have little distracting sidebars here and there, and when I finally read them, it only repeats what I already read on the page, and it makes me impatient. Not in this book. The (pretty) sidebars are bonuses to the text, not repetitive distraction.

This new and improved edition has the same general message as the first edition. This one has been edited for tighter writing, fewer exclamation points, less italics (though you wouldn’t think it, seeing this post) and more clarity.

This book won’t answer all your questions or give you pat answers or neat formulas. But it does walk with honesty into basic questions such as Who is God, and who am I, and what shall I do with my unwieldy dreams?

This is not about taking charge of your own life, nor about proving that your life is better than another’s. It’s about living in the reality of knowing that the greatest thing that could happen has already happened–the creator of the universe chose you for eternity–and nothing can ever, ever change that. It’s about making choices decisively so as to guard against selfishness and stiffness. It peers into others’ stories to give you perspective and a sense of not feeling so alone.

Because one of the deepest fears of a woman is that she is alone. This book confronts that fear and reassures you that you are never, ever, ever alone.

If you don’t need this assurance, you know someone who does.

Order your copy from your local book store or the helpful staff at Christian Learning Resource:

Toll Free: 877-222-4769        Fax: 814-789-3396              Email: clr@fbep.org            Online: www.Christianlearning.org

 

What Shape is Love?

Posted in life, recommendations by

 

My personality loves spontaneity and diversity. I like to live large and expansively (not to be confused with expensively!) and strict, sterile routine suffocates me. I need plenty of air to  breathe deeply, and feel stifled in tightly-fitting squares.

However.

Part of living a whole life includes some structure.

There are parts of my day that don’t change. The days are free-form and unpredictable but the beginnings and endings of the days have fixed points that give me stability and rest and predictability.

Coffee is one of those things.

But there’s more. Much more.

Some people call it ‘having devotions.’ I don’t, usually, because it sounds too sterile to me, but for all practical purposes, that’s what it is. It’s my quiet time, the time especially reserved for talking with God. It’s the still point around which everything else whirls. It’s the bread that keeps me alive, the exercise that keeps me healthy, the words that keep me sane.

It’s not all about me, but it’s my initiative, my decision, my deliberately moving into a position to focus and take part in something way, way bigger than me.

I’ve heard many people say they have trouble ‘having their devotions regularly.’ I say this quietly and humbly because I have a lot of trouble with a lot of things, but this particular issue not one of them. I DIE without those fixed points in my days. I get weak and whimpery and grouchy if I don’t keep that structure.

I’m talking about this here, not because I want to talk about me, but to encourage and nudge and facilitate you to find the same kind of sustenance if it’s been alluding you.

There are a ridiculous amount of devotional books out there with laughable titles that could make you cringe. (Don’t get me started!) None of them work for me, but if one does inspire you, or helps you focus, help yourself. What I love, love, love, is this monthly printable of adoration from Sara Hagarty. Every day has a different word to describe and adore God, and the rich words can set the tone for my whole day.

A little  chocolate icing on the cake is Grace Notes, daily readings compiled of Philips Yancey’s books and magazine articles. He’s my favorite contemporary Christian author, and there’s nothing cheesy or schmaltzy about his writing, so reading a page of his words gives me something substantial and dynamic to think about.

I’m not a Bible scholar. Should I be? I read the Bible to live. It’s bread and milk and meat to me. For several years, I’ve read the One Year Bible in the New Living Translation. I love the freshness and variety of daily pieces from both Old and New Testaments, Psalms, and Proverbs. The daily portions aren’t long, and are usually not enough food to feed me completely, but it’s a place to start.

In the evening, before I let myself pick up a book or turn off the light, I pick up my Thanks Journal and write at least one gift in the day.  I’ve blogged about this before here and here but I’ll say it again. Deliberately writing down gifts and reasons to be thankful is the simplest and  most effective way to keep a positive outlook and maintain a life-posture of worship. It’s not magic. It doesn’t help everything. But it helps a great deal.

Relationship with God has similarities to any friendship with a person. Healthy relationship includes seasons of  excitement,  silence, wonder, anger, questions–but always communication in some form. I don’t blog about all the details of my relationship with God because it’s way too intimate to share with many people, but to those who have trouble maintaining communication with the Creator of the Universe, I want to say: do what it takes to fill your part of the friendship.

Your part is to show up.

For my own sake and because I love him, I show up routinely.

He does His part.

My Diet

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I came to the US with plenty of extra space in my suitcase. On my return flight, that space will be taken up completely with books. This is the promised land of books, and they’re arriving by post these days, which is so, so exciting. The stacks are growing! Between classes and chapel and walks and socializing I’m gorging on books.

I overheard a conversation lately where one person was saying they don’t read, and if they do, it’s a discipline as in, “This month I will read one book.”

That’s ok for them, and they are very useful in God’s Kingdom, but not reading is the discipline for me.

I’m reading Oceans Bright With Stars, the second in a series by Rachel Devenish Ford, which is a compilation of her blogging while her family moved from California to Goa in West India. My life is nothing like hers, because she writes of she and her husband travelling with three children while she’s pregnant with her fourth, and she talks about how exhausting and bewildering and exhilarating her family and surroundings are.

The book keeps me up reading way too late because she’s so honest and refreshing like cool breezes. In a most inexplicable  way, even if our lives have little in common, I feel like she understands me. Her writing isn’t comedy, but it makes me laugh aloud because I get her humor and crazy metaphors and because I see so much of myself in her, especially in the way she mixes up her words like I do.

Then I just finished The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo, a beautiful little gem that made me smile and cry. It’s reminiscent of Bridge to Terebithia.  I love the writing that sparkles off the page and the way the story blends Blake’s Tiger poem in with it.

If you never read it, just try to be the kind of person that when someone tells you they saw a tiger in the woods, you don’t say they’re crazy, but ask “Where?”

It’s All Good News

Posted in life, My Book, recommendations, singleness by

The lecture comes first and then the fun part:

I was with my family visiting another family whom we didn’t know well. When us girls were getting acquainted, one young lady’s first question to me was “So, do you have a boyfriend?”

I said no. I was so stunned by her question that I still, eighteen years later, remember reeling from the realization that having a boyfriend was the way she valued/ranked her life and her friends’ lives.  While I wanted a boyfriend, I still felt deeply that not having one wouldn’t keep me from living well. Some years later, this girl was so crushed when her sisters married, that she couldn’t function well, and was so desperate that she made tragically unwise, harmful decisions to take whatever man would take her.

In our sub-culture that is pro-family–and rightly so–the girl who has no boyfriend or husband feels a lot of pressure and silent questions. She might be 20 or 29, and very satisfied and fulfilled.  OR she might be 19 or 23 and feel cheated and left behind and missing out. People wonder if she chose to be single. She wonders if she’ll ever get to choose a baby name. People unhelpfully recommend a good man to her, but what can she do about him?

I wrote a book called Life is For Living–Not for Waiting Around for the girl who is forlorn and desperate, because I know that God had infinitely more in mind for her when He first dreamed her up. The book doesn’t answer the unanswerable questions, nor resolve all the hang-ups we get stuck on. One of my friends said that when she reads it, she feels like I understand her and am walking with her in this solo walk. It was high praise, and fulfilled part of what I dreamed the book would be.

Because a big fear of women is that we’re on our own. I think we can do anything if we know we’re not alone. My book is a kind of companion that says “I get it. I know, me too.”

Wives and mothers tell  me they like the book as well, because everyone needs a voice beside them that urges them to search out abundance and fullness in Jesus. Romance and children are beautiful and rich  gifts, and not everyone is given them. Is that fair? Hardly. But the good news is that life and fulfillment for every lady is found in one person, and his name is Jesus.

The fun part is this: we’re doing a close-out special, a 60% discount, on my book until March 31.  Which means it’s $4.40 now instead of 10.99.  Order here from Christian Learning Resource. Wholesalers, contact the office and  get 75% off. 

This would be a good chance to buy copies for a study group. Contact me and I’ll be glad to send you a study guide–free!–for your group.

Spread the word–let your friends know, forward this post, share it on your networking places–and I would be so grateful!

Transplants and Love Does

Posted in books, life, Poland, recommendations by

1. Today I was one of three girls walking across campus, and on the other side of the drive was another group of three girls walking together. What we two trios had in common was that each group has lived outside the US. They, in Kenya, we, in Europe. Now we’re in the US for various lengths of time, enjoying the benefits and ease and junk food of it, but our hearts are always feeling stretched across time zones and cultures, and we wonder if we will ever feel at home anywhere. Or know where we’re from. Or if we’ll ever fit in anywhere. I’m thankful beyond words for the high privilege of living outside my birth country for nearly half my life, but it comes at considerable cost. This isn’t the time to talk about that cost, but for now the understanding and kinship of others who share my experience is something I treasure deeply.

2. If you’re hungry for an easy-read, this is a must-buy: Love Does, by Bob Goff. From the website: “A book and a movement about love in action.” I heard Bob Goff speak last week, and it was phenomenal, the way he lives large, and loves big. I will never be the same again, watching how he loved on his audience and told us stories of teaching witch doctors in Uganda how to read and write. “Walk in grace, live in love” was the theme of his talk, and he urged us to make it our mantra when we walk: walk in grace, live in love, walk in grace, live in love.  People won’t know we love them if it just stays inside our heads. We have to DO love. A key word in the book is “whimsy.”  This is the man who wakes up his Sweet Maria every morning with a cut rose from their garden (this is possible in San Diego) and jumped off the dock with his children to wave goodbye to Don Miller, their guest leaving by boat. My favorite story in the book is when he got his children, in response to Nine-Eleven,  to write letters to hundreds of world leaders in order to dialogue with them and send them house keys to invite them to come stay with them. Walk in grace. Live in love. This is the mantra that will change the world.

Ann Kiemel and Don Miller

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1. Ann Kiemel Anderson died a couple days ago, and her funeral is Saturday. Dying in the Lord is not a tragedy, but it’s an enormous loss to her family and larger world. Ann is the girl who sang songs to her taxi driver and loved her neighborhood by baking cookies and buying ice cream cones. She inspired many people in several generations to say YES to God, and run to change the world. I heard a wise man say “The most gifted ones struggle the hardest,” and I think that was true for Ann. She fought a lot of personal demons, got addicted to fame and drugs and running, and hated herself for it, and failed often, but kept stumbling back to God for help. I think she fought well, cancer was her last enemy, and now she can rest well.

Related post: Yes, Lord 

2. I’m coming off such a good weekend that it deserves a whole big post all to itself but it would sound like I’m gushing. My good friend Janelle flew with me to San Diego for  the ’14 Storyline Conference. I knew it would be good, but it was way better than I was expecting. We were 1,700 people in the Point Loma Nazarene University chapel, focusing on how to live a good story. Donald Miller was the main speaker then there were many others, writers and visionaries, who told us their stories and life missions. It was authentic and honest, not glitzy or emotionally manipulative which is why I could respect it and take in what they were saying. Three recurring  points:

  • Life is going to be hard, very hard, either because of our own mistakes or just because life is unfair.
  • God is fathering us, and He’s a good father.
  • Every bad part of our story can be redeemed.

I heard and saw so much grace, love, and hope poured out, and it fed something deep inside me that had felt parched. I will never be the same for having witnessed people loving their world and equipping others to live well, stop being a victim, make wise choices, and stumble to Jesus for forgiveness and freedom.  For anyone wanting to refocus and be refreshed, I recommend this conference. And if they have it in San Diego again, you will love Point Loma.  How can you beat bird-of-paradise and roses blooming in February?

 

Good News

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1. For a long time, I’ve resented how newspapers and the news media in general are fueled by the thirst for negative, sensational stories.  There are so many good stories out there, but somehow that’s not exciting enough to sell, so we get fed negative stories. Why would one PAY to read bad news? This is a perpetual mystery to me. Of course there are terrible, twisted, heartbreaking things that happen, but that’s not the only reality.

That’s why I love Humans of New York.  Brandon Stanton lost his job, hit the streets with his camera and took hundreds of photos of people, asked them simple questions, and posted their photos and short dialogues on his blog. Last Christmas, the book came out: HONY, and overnight it became a New York Times best-seller. Someday I want a copy too.

I like HONY because it’s positive and real. There are heartbreaks and loss, but there is unabashed joy and creativity and trembling life and darling children (“today in microfashion.”) Everyone in the world has a story, and every night this blog celebrates some ordinary person’s story. Seems lots of other people like it too. It has created a kind of supporting, cheering community around the globe. It makes me happy that some good, ordinary stories  are making it big because one man notices things that others just walk past.

2.  In 48 hrs, God willing, I plan to be flying across the Atlantic. Yay, yay! It’s been a year since I’ve been there, which isn’t so long, but it will be wonderful. Even the airports in America smell different than in Europe.  Yesterday a friend asked what I’m most looking forward to. The answer is easy: “Spiritual fellowship and speaking English.” And the access to good books. I want to inhale good books, and have visions of coming back with suitcases full of only books.

But I will also miss the snow in Poland, my friends and their hugs, the pickles, and the little old ladies wrapped in fur hats and long fur coats. Sarah, Plain and Tall was right: there is always something to miss, no matter where you are.”

(related post here)

To My Friend with SAD

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To my friend with SAD, I care so much about how you’re feeling. I know how it is to be wrapped in gray fuzz, to feel that nights are never long enough to get enough sleep, to be afraid that someone will bump you and spill out all the acid inside you. I know irrational tears and impossible fears. This winter, for whatever amazing, incredible reasons, SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)  hasn’t come to visit me, but I know what you’re feeling. I get it. And I would like to help you, how ever bumbling and unprofessional my care is.

If we lived in the same town, I would want to invite you to my place. If you didn’t want to come, I’d go to your house and make you some coffee or tea and listen to you if you want to talk. If you wanted to be quiet, that would be ok, and I would hand you some tissues, and ask if you want to journal. While you journal, I would journal too, or doodle, or read stories to your children. I’d make you some more coffee, but not more than one more cup, and fix you an egg or yogurt (protein instead of carbs) and then invite you to go on a walk with me.

We would put layers and layers on–leggings, socks, fleece jacket, scarf, hat, coat, boots, and gloves, then go outside. If it’s raining, we’d use umbrellas. We would walk and walk for at least 40 minutes, talking only when you want to.

Back inside, we would talk about what we want to create. A new recipe for supper? Something abstract in acrylics or pastels? Plant bulbs or repot seedlings? A new centerpiece on the table? A collaborative poem about our walk? A photo collage of your last holiday? It has to be something new and something you care about. Something that has never seen the light of day before.

Then I’d hold you and pray over you and go home. I would be confident that God is up to something good in your darkness, and that you won’t always feel this gray.

After a day or two, I’d call you again, and ask how you are, and as tactfully as I could (which is really hard for me because I tend to lecture), ask if you took a walk that day, and what you had for breakfast. I’d ask God to pour His grace into your day, and tell you to call me anytime you need to talk.

This is what I would want to do. Would that help? What is it that you need, and that your friends could do for you? You’re not alone, and maybe this comment section could be a safe place  for you and others with SAD to be heard and cared for?

The Most Incredible Story I’ve Ever Read

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I seem to live in expansive statements and superlatives. They make me happy but the sane people around me know that my statements reveal how many details I forget.

“This is the best salad I’ve ever had.” Because right now I’m so hungry and the table is set so prettily I forget all the other salads that have been wonderful.

“Did you ever see a cuter child?” Because at the moment these twinkly eyes and squishy cheeks are the only ones that exist.

So I know this is a pattern of my words, and it’s not always wise and I probably shouldn’t always use so many superlatives.

Even so, I want to say that Island of the World by Michael O’Brien is the most moving book I’ve ever read. Really. Honestly. It doesn’t feel right to call it a novel because it’s so real. The character followed me around town and at work. I would talk with my English students and his words and ethos were in the room with us. Does that sound spooky? It’s a powerful book. The most powerful story I’ve read. Ever.

It is set in Croatia in wars and ethnic cleansing of the 80’s. Since I live in Poland, I enjoyed the Croatian words and names that are similar to Polish. Josip is the main character, and it follows his life from boyhood to death.

It could be comparable to Les Miserables with its epic scope and its grace-filled, super-strong main character. It’s never fluffy or trite or sentimental. It’s not an easy read and it takes a certain level of emotional stability to absorb it. Many times I had to put it down and close my eyes and breathe “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” There were several pages I couldn’t read because there was too much sadness and blood. There were pages where I cried and cried, and later still felt all choked up. (I cry fairly easily but not over books!)

And yet. There was incredible strength of character that invited me back to witness redemption. There was peace and joy on a deep, supernatural level that was more real than any thing peripheral. Now that I’m finished, I find myself wandering around, not being able to settle down with any book. Everything else is pale and insipid.

Isn’t it a basic truth that we are brought to prayer only by passing through suffering? In this respect, the war was a blessing because it taught this generation how to pray, and it taught us the power of prayer. We learned that it was prayer that preserved us through impossible odds and only prayer that brought us independence. Dare I write these words–O God, how dare I write them?–yet I cannot be silent. The war was a catastrophe, but in Christ the worst catastrophe can be transformed into a blessing. –Josip, in a letter to Slavica

 

 

Comforts While Drinking Hot Chocolate

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1. I’m in the middle of Island of the World by the talented Michael O’Brien. It’s a deep, riveting story. I’m always amazed when a novelist makes his character write. I noticed and was fascinated by that skill first a long time ago when I read Emily of New Moon. And now in this book, when it has a fragment of the main character’s notebook, it takes me aback because O’Brien has to write doubly, and write in another kind of personae. I think a novelist like him must have an enormous soul. Other snippets of another of his books are here and here.

It is called the “chambered nautilus.” Nature’s powers are so endlessly ingenious that one must take care not to assume one knows where its outermost (and innermost) frontiers are located. –from Josip’s notebook

2. Pinterest is to me like a cozy blanket at the end of the day. A bit of humor, comfort, inspiration. Not every night, but almost, I treat myself to checking what came into my feed that day. There are women who  sneer at it, and others who deal with depression and envy because of it. That’s not Pinterest’s fault. For me, it’s a tool and a breath of new air that gives me ideas. I control the boards I follow and  when one has too much sarcasm or home dec or fussy hand-made cards, I unfollow it. (Yes, how did that word become a verb?)

I cannot put into words how it soothes  my soul to do something with my hands. During and after a season of dark depression, when most everything else in my life was unpredictable and uncontrollable, (or isn’t that all of life?) my fingers did something with paint or pen or paper or an onion, and the medium did what I asked it to, and the result lightened me as nothing else can. It wasn’t about controlling the medium; it was about finding and creating something that hadn’t existed before and having a little more beauty in the world as a result.

Beauty has many layers. Life is, it seems, about unwrapping those layers.