January 2016 Reading Update

While I haven’t read as much as I expected to in January, the two books I did finish were winners!

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• Making Home Work in a Broken Society:  Bible Principles for Raising Children and Building Families by Paul Chappell.  This was a great parenting book to start off the year!  The simple yet effective principles Chappell lays out encourages parents to build relationships and grow their families in ways that are pleasing to God.  Chapters on “Taming the Media Monster” and “Navigating the Teen Years” were especially helpful in my current stage of life.  He also talks about the influence parents have, teaching respect and contentment to our kids, and concludes the book with a chapter highlighting the importance of prayer.  This is a parenting book that I will recommend to others in the future!

• The Best Yes:  Making Wise Decisions in the Midst of Endless Demands by Lysa Terkeurst.  I’d seen this book recommended by many bloggers, but wasn’t sure what to expect from it.  However, I gleaned so much from this book!  I read it on my Kindle and have large portions highlighted to review from time to time.  If you’re a people pleaser who tends to say “yes” whenever you’re asked to take on additional responsibilities, Lysa gives principles for choosing the best and most important things to add to your life.  She talks about the overwhelmed schedule, asks readers to consider the trades they make when they say “yes” to certain things, shares the power of the small “no” (one of my favorite chapters!), and encourages us to chase down our decisions by thinking through ahead of time where each decision will take us.  I also appreciated her advice to evaluate opportunities as they relate to my time, my ability, my money, my passion, and my season.  I think the whole book could be summed up in the following quote:

“The decisions we make dictate the schedules we keep.  The schedules we keep determine the lives we live.  The lives we live determine how we spend our souls.  So, this isn’t just about finding time.  This is about honoring God with the time we have.”

I’m halfway through Hannah Whitall Smith’s The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, another book from my 2016 reading list that I’m really enjoying!  I’m going through it a bit more slowly as I try to think through what she’s teaching – and this book’s getting lots of highlighting, too!

I hope to post a review of Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy, a follow up to The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, very soon.

What good book have you read lately?