Confessions:

1.  On my to do list since October 2012:  “Write a post on what you are currently reading.”  (Epic procrastination failure here!)

2.  I have run out of bookshelf space for all the books I’ve recently purchased.  I had a ton of books (mostly half read) in book bags on the closet floor.  Today, I bought a couple of storage crates for them and sorted them into 2 categories:  Started and Not Started

3.  I need to stop trolling Facebook because friends are posting pictures of books they are reading, and this just makes me want to buy more books. (Other women buy shoes; I buy books.)

Here is a quick wrap up of what I read in 2013:

Boundaries:  When to Say Yes – How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life

• The Rundown: Henry Cloud and John Townsend summarize the premise of their book on page 27: “Just as homeowners set physical property lines around their land, we need to set mental, physical, emotional and spiritual boundaries for our lives to help us distinguish what is our responsibility and what isn’t.”
• Memorable Quotes“Withdrawal from our boundaries and hostility toward our boundaries are the ground from which trauma springs” (p. 83).  “Rescuing someone is not loving them” (p. 232).
• Biggest Takeaway:  Chapter 13 was titled “Boundaries with God.”  Just as we fail to set up healthy boundaries with others, sometimes we put up unhealthy barriers in our relationship with God.

Margin:  Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

• The Rundown:  Richard Swenson succinctly states the premise of his book on page 65: “If we don’t move to establish effective priorities, overloading will continue to fill up our schedules and keep us captive.  We must learn the art of setting limits.  We must learn to accept the finality and nonnegotiability of the twenty-four-hour day.  We must learn not to overdraw our account of emotional energy.  And we must learn to respect such limits in others.”
• Memorable Quotes: “Stress is not the circumstance, it is our response to the circumstance” (p. 44).  “Margin can be restored.  Broken relationships can be healed.  It takes work.  It takes love.  It might even take going to the cross.  But healing is worth it” (p. 214).
• Biggest Takeaway:  Chapter 14 was titled “Health through Rest.”  Here Swensen explains that a healthy life has 4 gears just like an automobile — park, low, drive, and overdrive.  Our problem is we don’t know how to shift gears from driving to resting.  Swensen argues that we need 3 types of rest:  physical, emotional, and spiritual.  We need leisure time.  We require solo time, and we must remember and worship God during our Sabbath.    We must surrender to His rest.

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life in Christ

• The Rundown:  Peter Scazzero explains the main point of His book on page 60:  “The point is simple: there are powerful spiritual breakthroughs that can take place deep below the surface of our iceberg when the riches of both contemplative spirituality and emotional health are joined together… Together they form a furnace where God’s love burns away what is false and unreal an where the force of His fierce and purifying love sets us free to live in the truth of Jesus.”
• Memorable Quotes:  “The vast majority of us go to our graves without knowing who we are.  We unconsciously live someone else’s life, or at least some else’s expectations for us.  This does violence to ourselves, our relationship with god, and ultimately to others” (p. 66).  “True spirituality frees us to live joyfully in the present”  (p. 93).  “Bad habits are like living roots that return.  These roots must be dug away and cleared from the garden of our soul…This requires the direct intervention of God” (p. 121).
• Biggest Takeaway:  Chapter 8 was titled “Discover the Rhythms of the Daily Office and Sabbath.”  Here Scazzero encourages us to develop a daily rhythm with God by setting aside time for prayer at several times during the day.  He also encourages his reader to set aside time to “delight” in God through Sabbath.  Both of these practices are part of what Scazerro describes as the “Rule of Life” in Chapter 10.  He closes the book by outlining the spiritual practices that one must develop in order to have an emotionally healthy spirituality.

One Thousand Gifts:  A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

• The Rundown:  Ann Voskamp’s theme is that “Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo–the table of thanksgiving” (pp. 32-33).
• Memorable Quotes:  “Hurry always empties a soul”  (p. 67).  “Eucharisteo always, always precedes the miracle” (p. 72).  “The real problem of life is never a lack of time.  The real problem of life–in my life–is lack of thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving creates abundance; and the miracle of multiplying happens when I give thanks–take the just one loaf, say it is enough, and give thanks–and He miraculously makes it more than enough” (p.72).
• Biggest Takeaways:  I am to be a “hunter of beauty” (p. 71).  “The hard discipline is to number our griefs as grace…” (p. 100). “Those who limp know how to see” (p. 140).  “Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand” (p.177).

Prayer:  Finding the Heart’s True Home

• The Rundown:  Richard Foster describes the three “movements” of prayer – moving inward toward transformation, moving upward toward intimacy, and moving outward toward ministry.   Prayer is a defined as “an ongoing and growing love relationship with God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit” (p. 13).  Through prayer, we “come home.”
• Memorable Quotes:  At times our prayer may be reduced to a single word: ‘Mercy!'” (p. 43).  On the “Prayer of Relinquishment”:  “…learn the prayer of resurrection.  ‘Lord,’ you may pray, ‘bring back to life what will please you and advance your kingdom.  Let it come in whatever form you desire.  Let it be in your time and your way.  Thank you, Lord, for resurrection.’  Some things will remain dead–it is better for you that they do.  Others will burst forth into new life in such a way that you will hardly recognize them” (p. 56).  On
  Formation Prayer”:  “None of us will keep up a life of prayer unless we are prepared to change.  We will either give it up or turn it into a little system that maintains a form of godliness but denies the power of it–which is the same thing as giving it up” (p. 57).
• Biggest Takeaway: In discussing “Contemplative Prayer,”  Foster suggests asking yourself “questions of examination.”  I now write these into the front page of every new journal and refer to them often when I need a “heart check”:  “Am I becoming less afraid of being known and owned by God?”  “Is prayer developing in me as a welcome discipline?” “Is it becoming easier for me to receive constructive criticism?” “Am I learning to move beyond personal offense and freely forgive those who have wronged me?”

Anything:  The Prayer that Unlocked my God and My Soul

• The Rundown:  One night, Jennie Allen and her husband abandoned themselves to God and prayed a simple prayer: “God, we will do anything.”
• Memorable Quotes: “Every sin, at its root, is based in something we do not fully believe about God” (p. 5).  “…we seize more of God when he seizes us through our broken dreams” (p. 61).   “We give our lives to him and he gives our lives away” (p. 176).
• Biggest Takeaway:   God wants all of me.  Jennie explains this well:  “If we pray anything, we will all, like Christ, be called to give up this life and things we love.  We will be called to risk for his glory.  Christ never intended those who walked with him to feel comfortable and safe.  This was meant to be a risk-it-all pursuit..  The glory of God will be made great on this earth, but what a privilege to be part of his plan to restore it” (p. 136).

Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes

• The Rundown: In her introduction, Shauna Niequist shares an insight about the “table” that captures the beauty of her book:  “What’s becoming clearer and clearer to me is that the most sacred moments, the ones in which I feel God’s presence the most profoundly, when I feel the goodness of the world most arrestingly, take place at the table” (p. 13).  Toward the end of the book, she explains: “Whenever you offer peace instead of division, when you offer faith instead of fear, when you offer someone a place at your table instead of keeping them out because they’re different or messy or wrong somehow, you represent the heart of Christ” (p. 250).
• Memorable Quotes:“The heart of hospitality is about creating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved.  It’s about declaring your table a safe zone, a place of warmth and nourishment” (p. 114).  “We don’t learn to love each other well in easy moments.  Anyone is good company at a cocktail party.  But love is born when we misunderstand one another and make it right, when we cry in the kitchen, when we show up uninvited with magazines and granola bars, in an effort to say, I love you” (p. 132).
• Biggest Takeaway:  One phrase that stuck with me after reading this book was to be “present over perfect” (p. 167).  Niequist challenged me to open my home and heart with her words:  “…you can decide that every time you open your door, it’s an act of love, not performance or competition or striving.  You can decide that every time people are around your table, your goal is nourishment, not neurotic proving.  You can decide” (p. 195).

What Happens When Women Say Yes to God: Experiencing Life in Extraordinary Ways

• The Rundown:  Lysa TerKeurst states her thesis on page 16:  “Being a woman who says yes to God means making the choice to trust Him even when you can’t understand why He requires some of the things He does.  It also means that once you’ve said yes to God, you refuse to turn back, even when things get hard.”
• Memorable Quotes: “Each day when I wake up I pray a very simple prayer even before my feet hit the floor.  God, I want to see You.  God, I want to hear You.  god, I want to know You.  God, I want to follow hard after You.  And even before I know what I will face today, I say yes to You” (p. 14).  “Saying yes to God is more about being than doing.  It is choosing who I will worship and then depending on God to give me the strength to follow through” (p. 86).  “When you are committed to radical obedience, you see everyone through God’s eyes of love” (p. 146).
• Biggest Takeaway:  I must trust God with my yesterday, my today, and my tomorrow.

Wonderstruck: Awaken to the Nearness of God

• The Rundown: Margaret Feinberg suggests that “Faith invites us into an enchanting journey–one marked by mysteries of divine beauty, holy courage, irrepressible hope, unending love” (p. 7).
• Memorable Quotes:  “Many of us say we want to experience God, but we don’t look for his majesty.  We travel life’s paths with our heads down, focused on the next step with our careers or families or retirement plans.  But we don’t really expect god to show up with divine wonder” (pp. 26-27).  “I came to see rest as a divine invitation to make the physical, emotional, and spiritual confession that God is Lord of all.  If I affirm that God holds everything together, then I am free to establish a sustainable rhythm as I entrust everything and everyone to God.  When I enter into God’s rest, I crawl into bed knowing the world lounges safely in his hands” (p. 64).  “Words are a gift through which we keep the past alive, the present bearable, the future hopeful” (p. 121).
• Biggest Takeaway:  Feinberg’s final chapter made a connection that spoke to me deeply:  “… when we live life awake to the wonder of God around us, we find reason to give thanks even in the wake of wreckage and discover God at the end of the runway” (p. 154).

Prayer Warrior: The Power of Praying Your Way to Victory

• The Rundown: Stormie Omartian defines a prayer warrior as a person who “has a heart of compassion for suffering people and bad situations, and desires to do something to make a difference” (p.16).   She believes “if we join together in prayer, we can break down every barrier to the unity God has called us all to and become the powerful prayer warriors He wants us to be” (p. 24).
• Memorable Quotes:  “The better you know your Commander, and the more you look to Him for your strength, power, and guidance, the better a warrior your will be” (p. 27).  “When you speak the Word of God in the face of every attack of the enemy, you are driving a sword through his plans” (p. 115).  The enemy despises our worship and praise to God so much that he cannot even be in the presence of  anyone who is actively doing that.  So whenever you want the enemy to flee, worship God” (p. 116).
• Biggest Takeaway: I need to persevere in prayer and remember that “Something happens every time we pray, but we cannot put limits on what we think God can do or will do, because the answer is up to Him” (p 122) and that “Every prayer can save a life, change a life, spare a life, or redeem a life” (p. 193).

A Confident Heart: How to Stop Doubting Yourself and Live in the Security of God’s Promises

• The Rundown:  Renee Swope explains that “Self doubt blocks the promise of God’s power and truth to change us from the inside out so that we can live with a confident heart” (p. 22).  She argues that “We’ll learn how to live beyond the shadows of doubt by holding each of our insecurities up to the light of God’s Word” (pp. 24-25).
• Memorable Quotes:  “We were made for love that isn’t measured by our last accomplishment but marked by God’s measureless grace.  A confident heart is found in a woman who knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is loved no matter what.  Lasting security comes when we bring the empty well of our hearts to Jesus and ask Him to fill and fulfill us with the security of His unfailing love” (p. 62).  “A confident woman asks God to birth ministry through her burdens by meeting her needs, and then she looks for ways to join Him in meeting the needs of others who are going through something similar.  She knows god can use her brokenness to do something beautiful, because the cracks allow His light to shine through and His living water to pour out” (p. 151).
• Biggest Takeaway:  This was a powerful book that provides practical help for tearing down mental strongholds.  Renee explains that “As we come to know God and fully rely on His love for us, we stop allowing the past to determine our future” (p. 73) and that “When we follow Him, we find our confidence in Him and our lives become a message about Him, the One who came to illuminate our darkness with His redeeming love” (p. 86).

The Greatest Gift:  Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas

• The Rundown:  Ann Voskamp invites her readers on an Advent journey to “Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved.”
• Memorable Quotes:  “The answer to deep anxiety is the deep adoration of God” (p. 14).  “God comes through mangers.  The mundane holds miracles” (p. 116).  “You know you have an idol whenever you have to perform” (p. 149).
• Biggest Takeaway:   My job is not to produce Christmas, but to receive it.  Ann explains: “Your greatest gift is not your gifts, but your surrendered yes to be a space for God” (p. 224).

 Q4U:  What are you reading these days?  Are you a book addict like me?  Have any confessions to share?

(I finally finished this post! Victory!!!!)

I am joining like-minded book addicts at What’s on Your Nightstand, Cozy Reading Spot and Saturday Review of Books.