For over a year now, Bruce and I spend Wednesdays at noon on a one-hour call with our mentor. Our first few chats centered on goal setting for 2017. I spent weeks figuring out what my priorities were, and then crafting SMART goals for each area. This was a game changer for us as a family, and we’ve managed to move forward in many areas where we had grown a bit stagnant from lack of a clear purpose.

I also created a reading plan. I like to read at last one book per month — it’s a do-able goal for me in this crazy busy season of life. So, I focused on reading at least one book in each of my 8 priority areas: Faith, Self Care, Marriage, Family, Friendship, Ministry, Personal Growth, and Community.

Craig, my mentor, has challenged us to spend at least 30 minutes a day reading for personal growth, and although I didn’t meet that challenge perfectly, I did manage to find more time for reading this year. I started by leaving a book in every room of the house — so that if I had any down time a book would be easily accessible at a moment’s notice.  I also tuck a book into my purse if I am on the go.

12 Fabulous Books I Read in 2017

Audacious

• Priority: Faith
• The Rundown: Beth Moore encourages her readers to love God audaciously and to live out their callings and serve others with that same passion.
• Memorable Quotes: “The person you are when you love Jesus with everything in you–with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength–is the real you. The brilliant you. The bring-it you. The breathtaking you. The born-for-this you.  The person you were born to be crawls out of the shell of a heart cracked wide-open by the audacious love of Christ” (p. 28). “Divine affection is a floorless wellspring with the capacity to water every inch of ground your life will ever cover” (p. 142). “Enjoy Jesus. Have the wildest ride of your whole life with Him. He is the adventure. He’s the best part” (p. 176).
• Biggest Takeaway: “Faith is not the clinging to a shrine, but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind—these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our bell like a heart” (p. vii, quoting Abraham Heschel and Samuel Dresner’s I Asked for Wonder)

Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want

• Priority: Personal Growth
• The Rundown: Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavay team up to explain how to create your personal life plan to guide your steps as you work toward creating your envisioned future dream.
• Memorable Quotes: “One of the best questions you can ask when something negative happens is this: What does this experience make possible?” (p. 39). “People lose their way when they lose their why” (p. 53). “Achieving our goals depends on giving them attention” (p. 134).
• Biggest Takeaway:  Chapter 1 is titled “Beware of the Drift” and explains how people without a plan will find their lives pulled off course like a paddle boat in a riptide.

Never Unfriended: The Secret to Finding and Keeping Lasting Friendships

• Priority: Friendship
• The Rundown: Lisa-Jo Baker shares practical wisdom on how to navigate the ups and downs of female friendships.
• Memorable Quotes: “We need to hack away at the coils that are wrapped around our minds so that we aren’t trapped by the four walls of an Instagram photo; so that we understand that God is always about invitation, about meeting us out in the ‘wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory’ (Rom 5:2 MSG). Spaces that never fill up, that don’t have a maximum capacity, that aren’t designed for limits but instead, created to generously pour more and more and more into our lives than we could ever possibly cup in just two hands” (p. 34). “Guilt-free friendship is the gift that women who are secure in their own sense of acceptance can give each other” (p. 72). “We cannot possibly presume to know what other people are living through. Life is so layered and complicated and beautiful and hard that even our best assumptions about someone else when laid against the truth of what they were living will never have been able to tell the whole story. And a lot of the time it’s not even our business. Our business is to believe the best about people. We are not their judge, their jury, and we are certainly not their god. We are intended to be their blessing. On purpose” (p. 163).
• Biggest Takeaway:  “Listening is one of the most powerful tools we have when it comes to defusing a hard conversation. Making someone feel heard helps take the sting out of their frustration and opens the door for dialogue. Defending yourself lights the fire. Listening to someone else helps put it out” (p. 169).

The Battle Plan of Prayer: From Basic Training to Targeted Strategies

• Priority: Faith
• The Rundown: Stephen and Alex Kendrick have created a primer to unpack the foundational principles of an effective prayer life.
• Memorable Quotes: “Prayer is like a standing counseling session, 24/7, no appointment necessary” (p. 18). “Sometimes the most difficult, painful, fearful, or illogical path is the one that ends up being the open door, the one bearing HIs fingerprints. When Jesus prayed, ‘Not My will, but Yours be done’ (Luke 22:42) in the garden, He stood up to take the difficult path which was in the center of God’s will” (p. 133). “When outside pressures heat up, pray that you’ll hold firm in your unity at all costs. Pray that God blesses your daily delight in one another and marital intimacy” (p. 201).
• Biggest Takeaway: “Praying for wisdom should become a daily habit and is also a source for developing our prayer strategies” (p. 152).

Make Today Count: The Secret of Your Success is Determined by Your Daily Agenda

• Priority: Personal Growth
• The Rundown: John Maxwell outlines 12 priority areas we should focus on in our daily lives if we want to be successful.
• Memorable Quotes: “One of the secrets of maintaining a good attitude is valuing people….You interaction with others sets the tone of your day. It’s like the music of your life” (p. 5). “…a marriage can’t survive forever on leftovers. It needs to be fed continually, or it will starve” (p. 38). “Discrepancies between values and practices create chaos in a person’s life. If you talk your values, but neglect to walk them, then you will continually undermine your integrity and credibility” (p. 117).
• Biggest Takeaway:  “…take responsibility for your own thinking” (p. 53). “The greatest handicap a person has is not reaching his potential” (p. 122).

Deeper Waters: Immersed in the Life-Changing Truth of God’s Word

• Priority: Ministry and Faith
• The Rundown: Denise Hughes has written a love letter to God’s Word where she authentically (and beautifully) shares how she moved from doubter to devoted student of the Word. She provides practical help for anyone who wants to dig in to the depths of wisdom in the Scriptures.
• Memorable Quotes: “…when the deep waters of suffering threaten to take the very breath right out of us, the deeper waters of life with God speak hope into the impossible” (p. 27). “Prayer doesn’t give us the thing we want; it gives us the Person we need” (p. 95). “Sometimes the most important thing we can do is hold a friend’s hand when she can’t breathe.”
• Biggest Takeaway:  This book is a treasure — I loved learning a bit about Denise’s journey of faith and was incredibly encouraged to get into my Bible with more heart.  // I was also inspired by how Denise says simple one-sentence prayers to invite God to meet with her in her every day. Many come straight from Scripture, and I wrote a blog post about how to put that into practice here.

A Heart Ablaze: Igniting a Passion for God

• Priority: Ministry
• The Rundown: John Bevere challenges his readers to pursue personal holiness to spark a fiery faith that honors our awesome God.
• Memorable Quotes: “God is more impressed with inward submission than outward appearances of Christianity” (p.9). “As a church, we have embraced ministers who have told us what we wanted to hear. We wanted to hear only nice and wonderful things to the neglect of the truth we’ve needed” (p. 115). “Your heart will burn with passion if you desire His glory more than you desire anything else” (p. 151).
• Biggest Takeaway:  Don’t resist the fire — it purifies your faith.

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert

• Priority: Marriage
• The Rundown: John Gottman is a psychologist and researcher who says he can predict if a couple will divorce within a few hours of meeting them. He provides countless practical examples, exercises, and questionnaires to help any married couple work together toward strengthening their intimacy and connection. His 7 principles are not from a Christian perspective, but provide practical wisdom that will get you talking with you spouse (or prepare you for marriage).
• Memorable Quotes: “Watching Humphrey Bogart gather teary-eyed Ingrid Bergman into his arms may make your heart pound, but real-life romance is fueled by a far more humdrum approach to staying connected. It is kept alive each time you let your spouse know he or she is valued during the grind of every day life” (pp. 79-80) “I have come up with a new model for resolving conflict in a loving relationship. My fifth principle entails the following steps: 1. Soften your startup. 2. Learn to make and receive repair attempts. 3. Soothe yourself and each other. 4 Compromise. 5. Be tolerant of each other’s faults. These steps take very little ‘trusting’ because we all pretty much have these skills already; we just get out of the habit of using them in our most intimate relationship. To a certain degree, my fifth principle comes down to having good manners. It means treating your spouse with the same respect you offer to company” (p. 158).
• Biggest Takeaway: Gottman ends his book by outlining the “Magic 5 Hours” you can invest in your marriage to ensure its success:  1.  2 Minute Partings (Learn one thing happening in your spouses day before you leave every morning). 2. 20 Minute Reunions (Engage in stress-reducing conversation at the end of your workday).  3.  5 minutes of Admiration and Appreciation (Communicate this in some fashion to your spouse daily).  4. 5 Minutes of Affection (Kiss, grab, or hold your spouse daily). 5. Take a weekly date for 2 hours a week (It should be a relaxing, low-pressure time to connect and get to know more about your spouse’s worries, fears, hopes, and dreams.  Turn toward each other.)

Simplify: Ten Practices to Unclutter Your Soul

• Priority: Self Care
• The Rundown: Bill Hybels “identifies the core issues that lure us into frenetic living―and offers practical steps for sweeping the clutter from our souls.”
• Memorable Quotes: “When we fritter away our one and only life doing things that don’t really matter, we sacrifice the things that do matter” (p. 3). “In moments the things don’t go your way or something isn’t said just the way you wish it had been said, the condition of your heart is revealed for all to see. How do you react? If you have enough of God’s grace filling your heart, you can see the situation in its proper perspective. Speed bump. Child’s play. First-world problem. No worries. You can easily overlook it. You can easily forgive. Or you can do the opposite. You can play the victim. You can stand on your ‘rights’ and let everyone know you’ve been slighted. You can let anger and annoyance bubble to the surface” (p. 116). “True friends love one another, even though we’re all a little quirky. We accept each other’s faults and unique wiring. There is a tremendous acceptance and deep safety in a true friendship. True friends serve one another. You do what is best for your friends above what is best for yourself. You put their interests ahead of your own, and they reciprocate. There’s a give-and-take that satisfies both parties in the friendship” (p. 171).
• Biggest Takeaway: “…as Christ followers living under the ever-flowing fountain of God’s love, our hearts should be so filled with His daily kindness, graciousness, and love, that we should have the resilience not to be angered or provoked when the minor irritations of life come our way–the everyday injustices, the normal little frictions that happen in families and friendships. We should have enough grace to easily overlook the little speed bumps, to forgive the minor injustices, to quickly forget about them and get on with life” (p. 114).

The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction

• Priority: Family
• The Rundown: Adam McHugh helps readers develop a “posture of listening” and “become more attentive and engaged” with others.
• Memorable Quotes: “The word we translate into English ‘obedience’ literally means ‘listening from below.’ Obedience is a deep listening, a listening of the whole person, a hearing with your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs” (p. 16). “A loud, overcrowded life is the antithesis of the listening life…The listening life waits, quietly and humbly, for God to make his mark on us” (p. 77). “Empathy chooses to enter into the dark places of another’s world, to shiver with the, and to wait with them” (p. 169).
• Biggest Takeaway: “…when you commit to go deep into listening, you will find that listening ‘speaks’ in ways far more powerful than talking ever could” (p. 213). — This book will stay with me for a long time. You simply must read it.  

Savor: Living Abundantly Where You Are, As You Are

• Priority: Community
• The Rundown: Shauna Niequist put together a lovely 365-day devotional that kept me company every morning. This author is a lover of the table — where hearts unite to break bread and love one another through the messiness of life. The table is where we experience the beauty and the miraculous, and I am thankful she reminded me to be fully present with my people.
• Memorable Quotes: I think it’s our job to live each day like it’s a special occasion, because we’ve been given a gift. We get to live in this beautiful world” (p. 57). “Sometimes we get so tangled up in our perceptions of ourselves that we lose perspective, seeing only our failures and bad habits…a good friend turns on the lights, opens the window, and reminds us that there are a whole lot of ways to tell the same story” (p. 202). “…it’s in the in-between spaces that our lives change, and the the real beauty lies…It’s about showing up in person, a whole and present person, instead of a fragmented, frantic person, phone in one hand and to-do list in the other” (p. 389).
• Biggest Takeaway: Look for opportunities to celebrate today.

I am excited to announce as a social media influencer I now have a sweet list of my favorite resources to fuel a wildfire faith in my very own shop on Amazon.  (Note: I will get a little something back if you follow the link and buy anything on this page. Thanks in advance if you do.).

Looking for more good reads? Here are my 12 faves for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

Let’s Chat: What fabulous books did you read this year that lit a fire in your soul?

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