My 2019 Book List

The Best

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life, Freedom and Justice by Anthony Ray Hinton—This is my annual drop-whatever-you’re-doing-because-it’s-not-as-important-as-reading-this-book selection. Mr. Hinton, a man who will become your friend and your hero as you’re drawn into his story, was falsely convicted of murder and sent to death row for 30 years (take that in—30 years) until he was proven innocent. Rarely do I go into a book believing one thing and have my mind completely changed by the end. This is that book. There are so many messages here we need to hear, but the most significant might be about the sustaining power of God. Even in a tiny cell in solitary confinement, a stone’s throw away from an electric chair, no one is alone.

And Its Companion

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson—Released in 2014 and recently made into a movie, this book tells the story of Walter McMillian, a man whom Stevenson helped free from prison after six years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Scattered in between the pages of McMillian’s story are other horrific accounts of people Stevenson has defended: impoverished women on death row, charged with capital murder after delivering stillborn babies that they were too poor to have in a hospital; children as young as 13 sentenced to life in prison (or death in prison as Stevenson calls it); the seriously mentally ill who have been left to die in prisons without medical treatment. In partnership with Hinton’s book (he was also represented by Bryan Stevenson), my eyes are newly opened to judicial injustice and death-row practices in our country.

Runners Up

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren—This book has been on my list for a while. If it’s on yours, take it off and start reading. It’s short and sweet but oh-so profound. Warren goes through the seemingly mundane events in her day—everything from brushing her teeth to returning emails to drinking tea—and illuminates the sacred in all of it. I have never thought of brushing my teeth as even remotely worshipful, but Warren has opened my eyes. This little book is a gem.

Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P. Carney—I saw a review of this in Christianity Today and knew it was my kind of book. Filled with research and statistics and real-life stories, it’s another piece in my puzzle to determine how Donald Trump was elected our 45^th President. Of all the reading I’ve done, this may have provided the most satisfying answer. Carney argues that civil society—the things we join and belong to, like churches, Bible studies, PTAs, Little League teams, the neighborhood pool, even labor unions—is what makes us fully human. These things provide support and a sense of purpose, and without a role in civil society, people become alienated, untethered, and hopeless. The more engaged people are with the community around them, the less likely they are to fall victim to diseases of despair and polarizing national political propaganda.

Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner—I delighted in starting my mornings with Buechner, one of my all-time favorite writers. For me, Buechner is best read in paragraphs, not pages, so daily entries from his books were just right. The man used words like no one else, and his writing offered helpful insight into how life speaks to us about who we are.

The Best Book I Didn’t Finish

Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted by Shannan Martin—This is a beautiful book. Martin has a story of radical faith to tell, and she tells it with words that impress, inspire, amuse, and cut straight to your heart. But I couldn’t finish her beautiful book. There are a handful of books (anything by Shane Claiborne, for example) that prey upon my convicting heart and leave me feeling guilty and discontent. I’m all for a book that challenges, but not one that makes me critical of everything around me. Most of you will not have that experience, and I heartily recommend Falling Free to you.

Good But Not Great

Everybody Always: Becoming Love in a World of Setbacks and Difficult People by Bob Goff—not as good as Love Does but worth it for the story told in the last few chapters. This man blows me away and doesn’t leave me with that guilty feeling of Falling Free. He leaves me happy.

Feeding the Mouth that Bites You: A Complete Guide to Parenting Adolescents and Launching Them Into the World by Kenneth Wilgus—I’ve always liked to think of my parenting job with the end goal in mind: raising functional adults who follow Jesus with everything they’ve got. There wasn’t a lot of new ground in this book, but it was good encouragement to keep going, hold fast to structure, and keep my eyes on the long view. Parenting isn’t always fun in the moment, but the work we do now will pay off.  

Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will by Kevin DeYoung—This is a book about making decisions—not so much “how” to make them, but a kick in the pants to, well, “just do something.” We can overspiritualize our decisions and stagnate while waiting for an answer from God, when sometimes, we just need to move forward into what seems like the next right step. A decent little book, especially for young adults.

Books I Learned From

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker—Fascinating book written by a sleep scientist on a topic dear to my heart. At certain points it was too technical and sciency, but the sleep tips were helpful. Sobering—pardon the pun—information about how driving sleep-deprived compares to driving drunk. If you’re interested in the topic of sleep, this is a good one to skim.

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf—Wolf provided a good scientific foundation for what I already believe: We read print text differently than digital text, and a mix of both is good for our brains. But for Pete’s sake, don’t give up print. This book offered especially good insight for educating future generations of learners. I hope teachers and administrators are reading this, even though it may be too technical for casual readers.

The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile—I may have been the last Christian woman in America to read this 2016 book, which has become the Enneagram textbook for followers of Christ. I was surprised by how clever the writing was and how fun it was to read. It’s not comprehensive, but it gives enough flavor of each of nine personality types to be able to peg your friends and family (and, with more work, yourself) and offers insight into why people are the way they are.

Mirror for the Soul: A Christian Guide to the Enneagram by Alice Fryling—A good partner to The Road Back to You, this book focuses a bit more on how the Enneagram can be a tool for transformation. It gave me the push I needed to not just lament my number and what it reveals, but to move forward with spiritual growth in mind.

Controversial but Interesting

Irresistible: Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World by Andy Stanley

This one drew a lot of attention, positive and negative. Stanley was widely quoted as saying that Christians should “unhitch” their faith from the Old Testament law. This book explains what he means by that. I actually didn’t find that much to disagree with as he discussed the reason for the law and how its purpose was complete when Christ came. I do think he chooses dramatic language (fighting words?) to rouse attention to his points, and the “unhitch” concept is one of them. Another is his idea to physically unbind the Old Testament from the New and rename them The Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Bible. It’s true that this could eliminate a lot of the problems that skeptics have with the Bible. Most of those issues appear in the Old Testament. But Jesus frequently quoted the Old Testament and never once suggested that His followers should “unhitch.” This was a very thought-provoking book, and I was deeply affected by Stanley’s teaching on Jesus’s command to love God by loving the people around us. He drives that message home as well as anyone. But his tone was not my favorite (Did he really have to bring up Lorena Bobbitt?), and his fighting words left me unsettled.

Fiction

a. Entertainment Fiction

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate—I’m picky about my fiction, but this one was a complete winner. Flashing between present-day and the late 1930s, the book has well-developed characters whom I actually cared about. I also appreciate that I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of garbage language. I read it in a few days. Time well spent.

b. Educational Fiction (i.e., books my kids read in A.P. Lit)

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky—This 824-page book explains why my fiction category is so sparse this year. After talking about reading great Russian literature for a dozen years, I finally committed to this one, and it took me all summer. It’s a book our seniors read, and it was profoundly meaningful to both my son and my daughter. (After reading it myself, my hunch is that this had more to do with their wise, engaging Lit teacher than the book itself.) There’s a reason why we all know Dostoevsky’s name. He is brilliant in places, and he causes us to think about things of utmost importance. But there are at least a few subplots that don’t seem to go anywhere, and the dialogue is lengthy and dramatic. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but I found myself worn out by the sheer emotion of it all. Are Russians really this dramatic? I do feel smarter for having read it, and I can easily cross Crime and Punishment off my bucket reading list.  

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka—Surely I had read this little book before, but like most people, all I remembered was someone turning into a bug. There’s actually a lot more to it than that. What that “lot more” is? That’s subjective. Addison and I saw it as a commentary on family, and on how you can feel the most isolated with the people who you’re supposed to be closest to. Very short and oh-so thought-provoking, this would be a great one for a family discussion.

My 2020 list is growing, topped by Seculosity by David Zahl, Surprised by Paradox by Jen Pollock Michel, and How to Think by Alan Jacobs. If you read a great book this year, let me know about it!

The God Who Comes

How I love Christmas. I don't like winter, I pretty much hate the cold, and yet this is my favorite time of the year. If I had to give a reason why I love Christmas, my answer would be different every year. This year, my answer is that my head is spinning over the stunning, unexpected wonder that the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. God came. As Eugene Peterson put it, God put on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.

There are people who, in the face of overwhelming evidence that we were not created by accident, believe in a deity who made human life and then checked out. Think about that for a minute. That would make us little more than a science experiment in the hands of a scientist who couldn't care less what happens to us. That feels more terrifying to me than the idea of no creator at all.

Christmas reminds me that the God of the Bible is not checked out. He is a God who, for reasons I don't quite understand, cares about me more than I can ever know and wants relationship with me closer than I can imagine. Frederick Buechner wrote, "This story that faith tells in the fairytale language of faith is not just that God is, which God knows is a lot to swallow it itself much of the time, but that God comes. Comes here. 'In great humility.' There is nothing much humbler than being born: naked, totally helpless, not much bigger than a loaf of bread. And to us came. For us came."

We speak and sing "Immanuel" over and over, and yet when I really think about what that word means--God with us--I can barely take it in. What? God wants to be with us? Are you sure, God? We're a mess. I am certainly a mess. And yet you want to not only move into the neighborhood, but take up residence right inside of me? You don't just "come" in a generic sense, but also in a personal sense? How can it be?

If that's not enough to blow your mind, consider this: God came, past tense, in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, but He continues to come. He saved once and for all time, and yet He continues to save. He delivered us for good, and yet He delivers me daily. He reconciled us for all eternity, and yet this morning, as I met with Him, He reconciled with me again. But wait, there's more! Christ's coming is not just past and present tense. It's future tense, too. We have only seen the beginning of His coming.

If this doesn't bring us to Christmas "joyful and triumphant," I don't know what will.

What is the good life?

In June 2015, Donald Trump, in announcing his candidacy for President, declared that the American Dream was dead. Seventeen months later, he won the office, largely due to the support of those who believed him. In my continuous quest to try to understand how we got here, I read another book that filled in many of the gaps. What J.D. Vance described so vividly in Hillbilly Elegy, author Timothy Carney explains and supports in a well researched, fascinating new book called Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse. 

Unless you're a serious reader geek, you're probably not going to want to get a copy for yourself. But I'll give you the highlights and tell you how it's affected the way I think about my own definition of the good life. (Scan ahead to the end if the book review feels daunting.)

Who were the people who agreed with Donald Trump that the American Dream was dead? What does the American Dream even look like? These were the questions behind Carney's research, and he found that "place" mattered just as much as individual voter. Of course a lot of votes for Trump were votes against Clinton, so Carney used data from primaries to make his case. Who were the early Trump supporters, those who got him on the presidential ballot? We've heard these answers before: disgruntled white working-class men, right? Yes, sort of, Carney said, but even more specific, early Trump supporters were from communities suffering from lack of "civil society."

Most of us don't use that phrase, but we know exactly what it is. It's the church on the corner that hosts VBS in the summers and a support group for widows on Tuesday nights. It's the adult softball league. It's the children's chorale and the swim club and the high school basketball team. It's schools with high parent involvement. It's the men's bowling league and the women's crafting guild. It's the YMCA where moms with young kids come to exercise with their friends, where seniors meet for monthly potlucks. It's neighborhoods where people go for walks and stand on the sidewalk shooting the breeze with their neighbors. It's local bars and restaurants where "everybody knows your name." It's marriage and children and strong families. In a word, it's what we know as "community." And by and large, early Trump supporters lived in places lacking it. These were the people who were more likely to agree that "the American Dream is dead."

Carney argues that "civil society is what makes us fully human." It also provides us with a sense of purpose:

"Life can't be fulfilling unless you feel needed. When you join a club, or a parish, or enmesh yourself deeply in a tightly bound neighborhood, people start to rely on you. ... When you read the tales of opioid-ravaged towns, you see that drugs often come in where people lack purpose. So many people lack a role in society. Absent a role, they're untethered, and the fallout of this alienation is immense." 

Carney believes that the American Dream is not so much wealth and materialism, or the opportunity for them, but that it's the T-ball game, the standing-room-only high school Christmas concert, the church potluck, decorating the community hall for a wedding. "What if those activities are not the dressings around the American Dream, but what if they are the American Dream?"

There's much more to say about who has access to good schools and swim clubs and who can afford YMCA memberships. (Carney argues that the single greatest institution of civil society is the local church, mosque, or synagogue, which offers its services for free.) There's more to say about how the government attempting to fill the gap left by a lack of civil society does not seem to renew people's hope. But that's not my point for writing today. I'm more fixated on the claim that civil society is what makes us fully human. This resonates deep within me.

I am never more alive than when I'm working with a team of people to accomplish an important task. It could be burning calories with my friends at a 5:30 a.m. class at the Y, feeding 150 hungry marching band kids at their state performance,  or problem-solving with a group of co-workers. That radiant feeling I have at basketball games and track meets and band and choir concerts? It's not just that I'm proud of my kids. My kids don't even have to be involved. I attended the high school musical a week ago and was radiating with pride for other people's kids, for our whole community. Even unloading tubas from the band's rental truck the other day, I couldn't help but think, in light of Carney's book, "this is the good life."

So how does actively recognizing that this is the good life change the way I live? A whole lot less complaining. Less frenzy over how "stressful" my life feels. Yes, I may need to make a meal for a hurting family, drive five kids to a dance, send out a dozen emails to the baccalaureate committee, prepare a lesson for AWANA, work concessions at the basketball game, help a friend prepare for a talk she's giving, and clean my house because we're hosting our small group. In one day. But every one of these things is a blessing. Every one of them keeps me tethered. I do not want to be a person who complains about my blessings. I also want my children to know that I see service and participation as a joy, not a burden. This can be tricky, especially when it comes to cleaning my house because their friends are coming over for Bible study. The vacuuming? Toilet cleaning? They are part of the good life. They're a small part of my American Dream, the one I am blessed to get to live out every day.

If you're not plugged in to some aspect of your community, find a small place to begin to connect. Volunteer an hour a week. Visit an elderly neighbor. Go to a neighborhood church. Sign up for a Bible study or small group. And if you're up to your elbows in community, as you begin this busy season, with every batch of cookies you haul to some event, with every party you attend, with every teachers' gift you shop for, with every Christmas card you address, with every kids' concert you watch and every sporting event you endure on hard bleachers, remind yourself, "This is the good life." 

How did we get here?

Shoot. I spoke too soon. I started the approach to my soap box four days ago after reading a news article, and no good judgment has knocked me off yet. Here's the issue: In the past week, several news sources have reported that the recently opened Chick-fil-A in the UK will soon close because of protests over the company's "donations to anti-LGBT groups." That part in quotes is straight from the BBC.

Chick-fil-A is no stranger to controversy, of course. But I wondered what these "anti-LGBT" groups were. The language brings to mind hate groups, something along the lines of KKK members targeting gay and trans people.

The BBC article went on to list three of these organizations, one of which is the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army has been around since 1865 and is one of the most well-recognized humanitarian organizations in the world. It operates 495 homeless shelters, 232 children's homes, 160 homes for the elderly, 114 men's and women's refuge centers, 661 community daycare centers, 121 rehab centers, 52 mobile units that serve members of the military, 77 disaster rehabilitation units, 30 hospitals, and 29 maternity hospitals. Its community-development programs serve nearly a million people worldwide. In America alone, the SA serves more than 58 million meals and cares for 30 million Americans every year. 

The BBC and other news outlets choose to refer to the Salvation Army as simply an "anti-LGBT group." It's like calling Google a place where you can find out the time. Except that's actually true.

In 60 seconds of research, I learned that the Salvation Army policy is that "anyone who comes through our doors will receive help based on their need and our capacity to help. We annually serve 30 million Americans from a variety of backgrounds--we do not pick and choose who we serve based on religion, sexual orientation or any other factor. Any instance of discrimination is in direct opposition to our core beliefs and is against all of our policies." Recognizing that gay and transgendered people are often those most at risk, the Salvation Army lists on its website a variety of services aimed to help them: food, shelter, job training, substance abuse treatment, suicide counseling.

Anyone can put anything on a website. But I used to volunteer at the Salvation Army. That means I've got a dog in this fight, and that I have first-hand knowledge of who and how the SA serves. I saw the website policy faithfully practiced, day in and day out. We cared for people without bias and without judgment. A same-sex couple wants to register their first grader for after-school care? She's in. A transgendered person needs food or help with their electric bill? We're on it. The bill's been paid; the food is boxed up and ready to go. How else can we help?

The bigger questions are these: How has everything in our society been reduced to a single issue? How has gender and sexuality evolved into the Singular Issue of our time, the thing that draws lines between people, organizations, churches, and even restaurants? What has our world come to if even the Salvation Army is considered a hate group? If the compassionate person who drops money into the red bucket at Christmas is labeled a hater? If we'll gorge ourselves on fried chicken from a company that hordes its profits, but we'll protest and chase you out of the country if they share their earnings with the destitute? How did we get here, and is this who we want to be?

Slow to Speak

In my early days of writing this blog, I posted a new entry once a week. I had four little kids underfoot and was trying to launch my freelance career, but still I had thoughts, ideas, and words pouring out of me by the week. Eleven years later, I have more time to myself than ever before, and yet the words don't tumble out nearly so freely. The thoughts and ideas that precede the written words are still there, but more often than not, they're ill-defined, gray as opposed to black and white.

It's not that I'm not still learning and growing, or that I'm less bothered by things, or have become apathetic. I've considered writing about numerous topics over the past month:

• Is disdain for construction and neighborhood expansion a sign of old age? 
• Why are Democrats uninterested in courting my vote?
• How can Ralph Reed tell me I have a "moral obligation" to vote for Donald Trump? 
• Drum majors: the most underrated, growth-producing job in high school
• What to do when the words you sing at church don't match your reality? 
• What does it look like in practice for someone like me to love the widow and the orphan, the immigrant, the prisoner?
• What to do with an enneagram number that I sort of hate but that sounds a lot like me?
• What on earth is happening with my hormones and why has this new layer of padding taken up residence in my mid-section? 

My male readers can thank me for not pursuing that last one.

I think what I'm discovering is that I don't know much at all. Just about the time I'm climbing up on my soapbox, something flies at me to knock me down. When I think I've got something figured out, I get information to the contrary, and I'm back to square one. When I believe I have some great exhortation that must be shared with the world, better judgment steps in to tell me that maybe I don't know what I'm talking about at all.

It makes me wonder . . . is this the maturity and wisdom I've been praying for?

It might be that a truly wise person would stop putting their words and thoughts out on the internet. I'm not there yet. I began this blog with the intention of sharing what God is teaching me, and certainly He is still teaching me plenty. There are still things that arouse great conviction and passion in me. But I do take to heart the apostle James's admonition to be slow to speak and slow to anger. I'm a former sprinter who likes to do everything fast, but I'm learning the value of being slow with my opinions, judgments, and words.

What to do with the Bible?

From what I can tell, there are two reasons why people reject the Christianity they used to believe in. One is our representatives. They decide that Christians are nasty, judgmental, hate-filled, and naive. The other is our book. They decide the Bible is nasty, judgmental, hate-filled, and naive.

The second of these is what's on my mind today. What to do about the Bible? What to do with the only written revelation of God that just happens to be difficult, controversial, confusing, seemingly contradictory, and plain unlikable in parts? People have come up with a number of solutions. Some leave the church while maintaining some kind of spirituality. Many become progressive Christians, cherry picking the parts of the Bible that are most attractive--like social justice and loving your neighbor as yourself--while ditching the parts that seem unenlightened and on the wrong side of history.  An influential pastor has suggested pulling the Bible apart and letting the New Testament stand alone from the "Hebrew Scriptures" where most of the offensive stuff rests. Two prominent Christians, one a well-known author and pastor and the other a writer of worship music, have recently decided to scrap the whole thing and walk away from the faith entirely.

No offense to those who are trying to make the Bible work for them or have shut it altogether, but these seem like the easy ways out. My solution is a lot less interesting, and a lot more work. It's that we study the Bible like our lives depend on it. Most of us are well past the days where "for the Bible tells me so" is much good for anything. We've got to know what it says for ourselves. We can't just think we know or rely on a memory of what we knew 5 or 10 or 20 years ago. Our Bible studies need to be places where we actually open the Bible. Our church services need to cover not just feel-good moral principles, but the nitty-gritty hard stuff from Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges. We need to learn to appreciate God's holiness as much as we love His grace.

We need to study the Bible with old and new commentaries and cross references and maybe even a Hebrew dictionary close by. Learn about the culture. Dig into the words and phrases and metaphors that don't make any sense. Be familiar with different types of literature--narrative history, prophecy, poetry, letters--and where each book fits in. Know who wrote each book, who they were writing to, and why it mattered. Don't gloss over the hard parts or get frustrated with them and walk away. Sit with them and ask questions. I recently spent a week with God in 2 Samuel 21 and literally asked Him my questions out loud. He's met me over my dining room table with a stack of commentaries, a host of online messages, and insights from some wise friends that make me think deeper than my own shifty feelings.

I am writing this as a memo to myself:
To hold on to the Christianity of our youth, we've got to be in the Bible today. And by "be," I mean up to our elbows. We can't sit around in Bible studies sharing prayer requests and talking about the social issues of our day. We can't spend 15 minutes yawning our way through a devotional each morning and call it good. We've got to open the Bible and study it with all we've got. We can't splash around in the shallow end, and we can't let our kids stay there either. They've got to wander out into the deep end, and we have to lead them there. We're going to do some flailing out there. It's OK. There's solid ground just beneath our swirling, kicking feet.

Consenting to a New Season

It rolled in this afternoon about 4:00 like a thunderstorm. I could feel my funk, my August funk, start to settle over me. The calendar may claim we have 40 more days of summer, but anyone with school-age kids knows that summer ends when school starts. For us, that happens tomorrow.

I call it my transition funk. It's not an eloquent name, but I don't know how else to describe it. It's not sadness or anxiety. It's not regret. It's more just an unsettled feeling that things are changing, a feeling that leaves me a little fragile. The tears are just under the surface today as I anticipate our day tomorrow: my youngest entering a new school and starting her first day of junior high; my oldest making the 24-hour drive back to college. On Thursday, I send two more daughters into their sophomore and senior years, a reminder of just how soon each of them will be moving out of our house.

I couldn't be more excited for them all. But I also recognize that my stage of life is shifting quickly. I love what my friend Margo has to say about shifting seasons:


"I have lived long enough to experience that each life stage is full of both blessing and challenge, privilege and cost.  Flourishing in whatever season I’m in has always required that I receive its gifts as well as grieve its losses. I don’t always do this well. Comparison can rob me of living the season I’m in. I can look back at seasons that felt more (or less) full. At times when friendships seemed more life-giving than life-draining, or opportunities and capacity to use my gifts seemed to be balanced just right. I can look around at others whose life stage seems to be giving them freedom for more (or less) of whatever I currently want. Or I can look ahead in anticipatory dread to seasons that I fear will hold more challenges than blessings.

An inner response of consent, of granting permission, for life to be what it is at this stage, with all its costs and privileges, is not a passive “whatever.” It’s the courage to name whatever realities I can about my current season and invite God to live in the ebb and flow of it with me. He wants to give me discernment not only in stewarding the pace of my life, but in stewarding the stages of it as well." 

Margo's a wise woman. She helps me understand my funk. Each August, I go through the process of consenting to a new season. Some of those seasons are bigger than others. At this stage of kid-launching, they all feel big. I'm not just accepting what comes; I'm consenting. I'm saying, "OK, God, I know you've prepared me for this moment, and I want to live it well. I accept what you give, and I accept what you take, knowing it's all doing your good work in me. And thank you that I no longer have babies. Amen."

It may feel a little funky and I may find myself a bit soggy-eyed over the next week, but I'll take it. I'll consent, and I'll invite Him into the ebb and flow of my new realities.