recently read for february 19, 2014

Jo Frost's Confident Baby Care

Haven't read it cover-to-cover, but finished the bulk of it and loved her approach - basic guidelines that are simple and to the point. I'll be better able to gage how solid her advice is once baby arrives.

The Silver Star

By Jeannette Walls
I love Jeannette Walls' voice and writing. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, is one of my all-time favorite books. (Half Broke Horses was great too.) This novel is about two sisters raised by a free spirit of a mom who comes and goes as she wishes, leaving them to take a bus across the country to stay with relatives in West Virginia. Their adventures in the small town in the 1960s make for a fun, quick read.

Boundaries
By Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend
People have been telling me this was a great book for years. Even while I was reading it, people would see it and say - 'Ooh that's a great book!' I generally don't have trouble saying no, so that chunk of the book was not necessarily insightful to me … but other chunks were WOW-worthy. A great read for anyone, because they give profound and practical help and explanations for all sorts of relationships. You will learn something helpful. Unless every relationship in your life is already absolutely perfect. Highly recommend.

Calling Me Home
By Julie Kibler
SO RIDICULOUSLY GOOD. The kind of novel that you hit a certain point, and don't want to stop reading until you're finished. It weaves the story of the friendship of an old white woman and younger black woman in the present day, with the older woman's interracial love story set in the 1940s. A smidge reminiscent of The Help (one of my favorite books and movies), but maybe even better?!

Why Revival Tarries
By Leonard Ravenhill
Powerful and convicting! I strongly encourage you to read it if you have any desire to be inspired. If I listed all of my favorite excerpts I'd end up quoting the entire book - it is that excellent. Just a few gems …

"The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning."

"He who fears God fears no man. He who kneels before God will stand in any situation. A daily glimpse at the Holy One would find us subdued by His omnipresence, staggered by His omnipotence, silenced by His omniscience, and solemnized by His holiness. His holiness would become our holiness."

"If we displease God, does it matter whom we please? If we please Him, does it matter whom we displease?"

On Becoming Babywise

By Gary Ezzo and Robert Buckham
I wanted to like this book … and I did, but I didn't. Their guidelines might be a little too "Type A" for my personality. I like the general idea, but it was overwhelming. I liked the first chapter about prioritizing your marriage best. Apparently this book is very controversial - like just about every other parenting book out there? ;)

volunteering at the pregnancy clinic

i always wanted to volunteer at a pregnancy clinic, and it worked out for me to start doing that when i moved to georgia. i volunteer one day a week and i love it, but when i was going through training i considered dropping out and forgetting the whole thing. i did not feel like i fit in with the people working and volunteering at the clinic ... and i didn't want to.

fitting in has never been my forte. i make friends easily (and i have moved and adapted to a decent amount of different environments, locations, and situations where i've had to), but i would still say that fitting in doesn't necessarily accompany that. when i was in middle and high school it bothered me that i never quite felt like i belonged, but i don't remember an occasion where it bothered me enough to give into peer pressure or do anything major. i was friends with people in all different crowds, but never felt like i truly belonged in any particular one. (and it seemed like everyone else did.)

maybe that's a universal feeling that accompanies growing up, but i always felt like i was different. i still do. around the time i went to ywam maui after i graduated high school was when i learned to know myself, what made me who i am, and who i am in Christ - my true identity. i realized that i liked who i was, and figured if other people didn't, that was their loss.

knowing who i am and having confidence is a good thing, but i need to be careful about indifference. i need to be careful about differentiating between fitting in and loving people. really LOVING … ALL people … not just people i find interesting and want relationships with. 

so when i'm volunteering at the clinic … loving the chance to counsel girls and women who come in and need to talk … i need to also love the women working and volunteering at the clinic, even if they're not people i would naturally gravitate to.

i'm glad i didn't back out of training, because there are women working at the clinic who are so positive, encouraging, and a breath of fresh air. their perspectives on faith are different than mine, but it's good for me to be around. and even though i don't feel like i fit at all with the southern baptist crowd (and we don't get each other's jokes), i love being a part of what God does there.

it was easy for me to judge during training. i shadowed counselors who said things i found condescending, judgmental (the irony is not lost on me), or insensitive to the girls and women coming in for help.

judging is easy. but the doing and the acting is what takes effort and makes things happen. i saw God come through in people's lives every time i was in the room shadowing a counselor. even when they said things in a way i would not say them, or said things i wouldn't dream of saying - God spoke through them, and people committed their lives to God and decided to choose life for their babies!

now that i counsel on my own, it is the most comforting thing to know that God uses our weakness. He doesn't expect us to be perfect - just obedient to His voice. He will speak through us even when we don't think we have the right words to say.

i complicate things and imagine that for a person to commit their life to God or to change their mind about having an abortion, another person has to say the PERFECT thing. too many days i say nothing to people about my faith because of that lie!

volunteering at the clinic forces me to speak out. when you're one-on-one with a person, who may or may not be pouring out their heart, and needs help … you have a perfect opportunity to speak up, even if you can't think of the perfect thing to say. (or anything close to perfect!)

last week i had a client who was considering having an abortion. she is married, and has three kids. her youngest is only six months old, and they're already exhausted and strapped financially, so i could understand her inclination to abort. i could have cried and cried because of how hard her situation was, and because the thought of her going through with an abortion broke my heart even more.

when i went to check her pregnancy test results, i prayed. i didn't know what to say to her and it felt desperate. her results were positive. i got a bible to give her and underlined a few verses i thought would be good for her and baby. i went back and we talked. i tried to encourage her, and then i read her the verses …

"cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." [1 peter 5:7]

"the word of the Lord came to me, saying, "before I formed you in the womb i knew you, before you were born i set you apart; i appointed you as a prophet to the nations." [jeremiah 1:4-5]

"for i know the plans i have for you," declares the Lord. "plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." [jeremiah 29:11]

i was saying that welfare in that case meant to do well and prosper - not to go on welfare like today, and we were laughing about that. before i started reading part of psalm 139 to her, she stopped me and said, "how do i find these in there after i leave here?" 

i told her that i underlined them, and then explained how to look up the books of the bible at the beginning and then find the verses.

again, i could have cried. i completely took for granted that this is not something everyone has been taught. even if they have attended church or call themselves christians because of whatever family ties they have to a religion.

so much of what i know i assume to be "common sense" that no one wants to hear. when it comes to my relationship with God, i wonder if i have anything worth sharing that hasn't been heard already. another huge lie that keeps me from speaking up!

she loved the verses, and that alone made me feel like my being there was worth it, but then she told me that she doesn't think she could go through with the abortion. that since she's married and has a family, she really doesn't have a good reason to have an abortion. and she hadn't even had her ultrasound yet!

i left the clinic that day wildly encouraged. fitting in isn't the goal in life. being different works - it works really well. so be yourself. and you have more to offer people than you might think or realize. be confident and be bold.