S Club Mama

How can you not be tempted by a book with that title?! And tempted in a good way because family devotions are a good, godly thing! But, let's be honest, they can get to be dull. And frustrating (probably for kids, but definitely for parents). Have you ever sat your kids down and have this grand plan in your head of how they are going to revel in your wisdom and worship songs, just raising their hands singing to the Lord. No? Just me? Moving on... Anyway, Tim Shoemaker's The Very Best, Hands-On, Kinda Dangerous Family Devotions brings you an answer to the dull. The 52 devotions found in this book can be called many things but not dull. They are activities that get your kids involved and center around Christ. image via Baker Book House My family hasn't had the book long so we haven't done many of the devotions...in fact, we've done one. It was "Christianity and the $2 Bill;" the theme: "A true relationship with Christ changes everything and sho...

I can’t quite remember how I got Simply Tuesday in my hands. Probably a book review. But since the beginning of that book, I have adored it’s author, Emily P. Freeman. Reading that book was very pivotal in my life to see God in the ordinary, to live life as if God is in the simple things on a Tuesday. And so I am a fan of Emily P. Freeman. When she started her podcast, The Next Right Thing, back in 2017, I had my earbuds in and I listened to every word. I've possibly listened to every one of her podcast episodes since. I never felt like I had decision fatigue but I really have been helped by the podcast. She walked with me through some hard times in my life: depression, my son’s second brain surgery, awful morning sickness, the birth of my fourth child, and the continuing every day chaos of life with four children. When Emily announced that she was writing The Next Right Thing as a book, I was so thrilled. I have friends who are readers but not podcast listeners (and vice ...

I have found myself drawn to autobiographies and biographies about missionaries for awhile now. I like to read about their passion for the Lord, their love for people, and their hardships. Yes, their hardships. These always end up showing God's character through his compassion, kindness, gentleness. Not always in the taking of the hardships but through His walking with the missionary through it.  Anyone who knows missions knows Elisabeth Elliot or at least her husband, Jim Elliot. Being familiar with their story, I was ready to read "Made for the Journey" by Elisabeth Elliot. It did not disappoint.  image via Baker Publishing I have a degree in English and I fully understand how vital it is to read the Bible in one's own language so I adored all of her linguistics talk! Her honesty about the physical hardships, her identity crisis, and her faith lessons she learned during them. Sometimes we can think of missionaries as Super Christians but Elliot is deli...

Most people are insecure about something. Whether that is in relationships, how they look, how good they are at their roles, something. I found when reading "Silencing Insecurity" by Donna Gibbs, that I have more than I though (which makes me feel a little insecure haha).  image via Baker Book House I found the book to be helpful in identifying some insecurities and symptoms of them. We can identify insecurities by finishing this sentence: "if only..." If only I looked like ________. If only my emotions weren't too much.  If only I could go here or do that.  If only I had a friendship like so and so.  If only my kids acted like theirs.  On and on. These aren't all necessarily mine but you understand my point.  Once you identify these identity thieves (as Gibbs calls insecurities) then you can begin to learn how to replace those thoughts (often half-truths and lies from the enemy) with truths from God himself.  My favorite...

Knock Knock. Who's There? Althea. Althea who? Althea later, alligator. I love knock knock jokes, puns, one-liners, and other jokes. My big boys do too. When my second oldest takes a lunch to school, I like to add a joke; that's way cooler than the mushy note telling him how much I miss him I would like to send. Right? We have several joke books in our home library and my boys will spend time telling jokes between themselves and then telling me the same ones (they don't seem to understand I can hear their jokes between rooms so they think I'm really good at punch lines!). image via Revell "Crack Yourself Up: Jokes for Kids" by Sandy Silverthorne is such a good resource for lunch box jokes and more. I appreciate the cleanliness of the jokes (sometimes it's hard to Google such things because you NEVER know what inappropriate jokes come up) and that they are truly funny. One of my personal favorites is: Q: What kind of lights did Noah use on ...

Full disclosure: Before reading "Coach Wooden's Forgotten Teams" by Pat Williams , I know I'd heard the name "Coach Wooden" but I couldn't have told you where or what he coached. If you are as uninformed as myself, let me inform you: John Wooden coached men's basketball at UCLA from 1948 to 1975, winning 10 NCAA championships in the last 12 years of his career. Starting his last year coaching for the Bruins, he started summer basketball camps. He wasn't just a name for the camps but the integral part that makes them stand out still to the men and women who coached and attended. That's what "Coach Wooden's Forgotten Teams" is about - the impact he made on thousands of lives through these camps.  image via target.com I have learned a few things from reading about Coach Wooden and his camps. 1) I never had a coach like him. I played sports for about 14 years and have had good and bad coaches. Some even cared about me as a pe...

"Missing Isaac" by Valerie Fraser Luesse was not what I expected. I wasn't in the mood for a love story, so I went with a story about a boy whose friend disappears. I know this story is about race as the back cover reads, "Though their worlds are as different as black and white, friendship knows no color." I know that it's set in Alabama in the 60s - not a great time for interracial friendships in which one party goes missing. image via Amazon.com The voice in this book is fabulous. You really get the sense of who Pete McLean is, who Isaac is/was. The characters are not perfect characters; they have flaws and are seemingly as real as flesh and blood people. You see their inner demons working their way to the surface, especially when dealing with prejudices (and not just racial ones!). While I wasn't in the mood for a love story, Luesse snuck it in on me (apparently I didn't read the back cover carefully enough to read "...a girl who will ...

"This Road We Traveled" by James Kirkpatrick surprised me by being a book of historical fiction. When I picked it up and chose that I did not realize that it was based upon a real person. I really enjoy when a book surprises me-especially with history. The book follows Tabitha Brown, an older woman who refuses to be left behind in Missouri when her children decide to travel out to Oregon. And by travel I mean in wagons with a wagon train, headed west. That used to be a great dream of mine.  my stack of newly finished books And then I began to read books about traveling west and realized how very, very difficult the time traveling in a wagon was. I believe it was especially hard on women, having to do the cooking without what was then modern conveniences and doing laundry in various places and keeping children occupied that time. I personally would have no idea how to cook over a fire except to make Smores and if everybody wants to eat chocolate marshmallow graham cr...

Depression is not something people talk about much. I have a few friends who have been kind enough to open up about their journeys through depression and an author I admire does, too. In "Hope Prevails" by Dr. Michelle Bengtson, Dr. Bengtson talks about how she has been on this journey many times with her patients. She's prescribed many different successful courses of treatment, but when she found herself in the throes of depression, those same things didn't work for her. I love how encouraging this is to have a doctor say, I've been there. I don't think there is anything more powerful in humanity than realizing someone actually gets what you're going through or feeling because they have been there, too. I have some of my strongest friendships because those women get me. This was a difficult book for me to get into, possibly because of the downer subject that depression is. The writing is good and I think Dr. Bengtson speaks from her heart. I loved the...

I am 10 years into marriage and 9 years into being a boy mom. Yet, some days, I am still drawing a blank on exactly how to handle these boys. Just this last weekend, I remember saying "Seriously? What is wrong with you guys?" Sometimes it's just frustrating (c'mon, boy moms, you understand, right?)! I pretty much jump at a chance to better understand my husband and boys. "I Wish He Had Come with Instructions: The Women's Guide into a Man's Brain" by Mike Bechtle is just such a book. I have dog-eared this book! image via Revell I really appreciated the look into what a man thinks and wants. For instance, "Men want a partner, not another mom...Men want you to understand their need to connect with other men, and they don't want you to be jealous of other women. Almost all of the men I talked to said the former was a genuine need, and the latter was completely unfounded...Women have more of an impact on men than they realize...Women often...

I am an introvert-extrovert. Sounds odd but my friend, Cari, is too. Following this oddness I have many friends (as an extrovert would) but I have a small band of close friends (as would an introvert). I love my girls very dearly and never have enough time with them. "The Gift of Friendship" edited by Dawn Camp is a compilation of stories shared from many women (only a few names were familiar to me: Holley Gerth, Liz Curtis Higgs, Tsh Oxenreider, Crystal Paine, Myquillyn Smith, and Lysa TerKeurst) about their friendships. Each story was a grand reminder of how awesome it is to be loved and to love girl friends. image via Amazon I believe I read this book at just the right time. I have felt...not lonely necessarily but kind of a in a funk with a new baby. I just have very little energy to pour into friendships so I haven't reached out like I normally would (maybe this is my introvert self taking charge). However, I am so blessed with a few key friends who have rea...

Dear Mother, One thing I've noticed since becoming a mother almost 9 (?!) years ago is the call to be authentic. I think in the very recent past, mothers have felt this immense pressure (inward and outward) to be perfect - to balance it all, have it all together. This still exists, especially the internal struggle. I struggle with this but I have also noticed a shift. WE ARE TIRED! I am tired of having it all together, of looking picture perfect but feeling like a mess, of hiding my laundry or dishes or struggles, of not balancing anything and of letting some things just fall. I hear this from friends over and over again of how exhausting this facade is. I've heard plenty of my friend moms say that they are over it. No longer will we be fake. No more plastic smiles and "I'm fine" when it's not true. No more acting like our kids don't throw tantrums and drive us up the wall sometimes. It's time for us to stop putting dirty dishes in the oven and...

Squirt is our family artist. He makes really detailed drawings and colors nicely. He dislikes that his brother scribbles, but hey, art is not all of our thing! I thought Squirt would like this "Laugh Out Loud Pocket Doodles for Boys" by Rob Elliott . Something to do in church or in the car. image via amazon.com Basically, you have a joke: "What do magicians like to eat for breakfast?" An answer: "Trix cereal." Then an incomplete picture to go along (this one is a table with a magicians hat full of cereal with a rabbit peering over the edge of the table). Then there are directions on the bottom of how to doodle the rest of the picture: "Finish the magician. Make his absence disappear." Super cute idea. Not all kids like to draw but maybe they like to complete a drawing. Not all kids like to draw but maybe they will because of the jokes. Some kids love jokes and drawing so this is right up their alley! I gave this book to Squirt for a read...

Awhile ago I reviewed "The Desire" by Dan Walsh and Gary Smalley and loved the characters and plot in the story - Christina being pregnant and not knowing what to do, Marilyn taking her under her wing, Michele wanting a baby so badly and not being physically able to carry one. I loved how the authors tied their stories together with exactly what God ties our stories together with: love, grace, forgiveness, and more love. image via amazon.com When the opportunity to read "The Legacy" by Walsh and Smalley came up, I was very excited. This story revolves around Marilyn's youngest child, Doug, and how his life has been very far from the God his parents have found relationships with. Christina is involved, heavily, in this story, and we also get to see the adoption story with Michele play out fully in this. As often with novels, this plot wasn't hard to follow or figure out the ending to. However, that doesn't detract from the tale. Who doesn't lo...

I like reading memoir-type books about mothers with autism spectrum kiddos. It's a comfort to know I'm not alone in this jungle of ASD weirdness. "Sand in My Sandwich (and other motherhood messes I'm learning to love)" by Sarah Parshall Perry was right up my alley. She's got two kids on the spectrum (and her gender numbers will be the same as our own: 2 boys, 1 girl). image via amazon.com There were many places in the book where I was shaking my head in agreement. She uses a pretty well-known quote in ASD circles that is: if you know one autistic kid, you know one autistic kid. Which basically means that they are all so different. I know 4 kids around my son's age with autism and not one of them seems to be exactly the same (and really very little overlap of tics & such). However, in "Sand in My Sandwich" I felt like Perry used a lot of blanket statements for autistic kids rather than pinpointing these were specific to her kids. She a...

Sometimes we just seem like we're in a rut - we're stuck where we are, how we are, in whatever our circumstances. God doesn't call us out of slavery to sin just to be stuck and not really living free. "Life Unstuck" by Pat Layton is about really getting out of the sticky mess we find ourselves in and finding out how to get unstuck. I really thought I'd get a deeper read with this "Life Unstuck" but, for the most part, it was a shallow book, very fluffy. Now, that's my opinion, and somebody may really need this book in their life. It just wasn't for me  at this time in my own life. image via Amazon.com Some of the good things I gleaned from this was that yes, we (especially as women) need to change what we believe about ourselves by saying positive things about ourselves. We are so hard on ourselves - give yourself the same grace you'd give your friend. In the latter chapters, Layton also talks about being free to be flawed. I thin...

When I decided to review " You're Loved No Matter What " by Holley Gerth, I don't think I was expecting a whole lot from it (sorry, Holley). Gerth's previous books have spoken much truth and yet I was expecting fluff in this book. Yet, what I found inside the covers of this book is so much more. image via Amazon.com Truth, much truth, flows out of this book. I should have known how deep it would touch me just by the back copy print: "As women, we tend to think that if we could only get our act together, life would be perfect. But you're not supposed to be perfect. You're supposed to be human. And humans are messy, flawed, glorious, and deeply loved. It's time to lay down those unrealistic expectations that exhaust you. It's time to embrace who you are - even the messy parts. It's time to start living fully instead of just trying not to fail. Let's do this together." Hallelujah, right ladies? Aren't you tired, ...

Historical fiction is something I believe we need to be cautious of reading so that fiction does not turn itself to fact in our minds. That said, I enjoy historical fiction greatly. "The Crimson Cord" by Jill Eileen Smith gives us a look into the life of Rahab, of which there really is not much said in the Bible. I learned something new while reading this book: that people of Jewish faith traditionally believe that  Rahab married Joshua. I grew up believing that she married Salmon in the lineage of Jesus Christ, so that was news to me. This telling of Rahab's life was a look I'd never given it - how did she come into prostitution, what was her life like, how was she so easily in faith of the one true God? "The Crimson Cord" does a wonderful job weaving a tale that does not leave her in rose-colored glasses but also does give some compassion to her way of life. Smith did a great job of weaving historical fact, Biblical fact, and fiction together in a ...

I think sex trafficking is getting a lot of media attention these days - but it's not enough because it's still out there. I will always remember hearing that the Super Bowl attracts the biggest number of human traffickers during that time - and that just sickens me. That people can do that to other people - sell them in the modern-day slave trade. That's what this is: slavery. Slavery. Can you believe that?! In today's world there is slavery everywhere; I doubt one area is immune. It's not just in big, foreign cities. I think the book "Stolen" by Katariina Rosenblatt, PhD, very clearly shows that it's happening in our back yards. image via Amazon Katariina was taken into trafficking scenarios several times during her teenage and young adult years. She escaped, which is almost unheard of in trafficking scenarios. I related to Katariina in this book during her teenage years. She came from a broken home (I did not) that left her with very low sel...

"The Desire" by Dan Walsh & Gary Smalley isn't a book I'd normally read. I don't read a lot of fiction, but something drew me to this particular book. I'm very glad it did because I couldn't put it down. The premise of the book is that Allan and Michele have been trying to have a baby for over a year and it's been really hard on them emotionally. Michele wants to further researching infertility treatments while Allan doesn't even realize how big of a problem this is and chooses to focus his time (and funds) on mission trips in Africa. image via Amazon The plot of this book intertwines other plots from the Restoration series by Walsh and Smalley. The good news is that you needn't read the other books to read this book; it stands on its own well enough. I hadn't read the other books either, but I'd really like to sometime. This book is not just about Michele and Allan but about a girl named Christina who is pregnant out of w...