3 hours ago
I think I have mentioned before that Derek and I are country music fans. I am a fan because I grew up listening to country music, and appropriately, I happened to live in the country. Everyone listened to country music where I grew up, but I think I would have liked it regardless. I love how a lot of the music is family focused, and I like songs I can sing along to!
Derek and I have been Josh Turner fans for a long time - he sings one of my favorite songs. When I saw that he wrote a devotional for men called "Man Stuff", I asked Derek if he would read it if I requested it, and he said he definitely would!
This is a book that is geared toward husbands and fathers, and it is filled with practical encouragement. Derek has been enjoying the book so far! I told him I needed a quote from him for my review, and he said:
"He shares a lot of stories from his life and his walk with the Lord. I wouldn't necessarily call it a devotional, but I think it's an encouraging book, and it can help you to focus on godly priorities."
There you go, straight from my man.
Even though I requested this book for my husband, I have been enjoying it too! Each chapter is a different story from Josh Turner's life, including a corresponding Bible verse, with wisdom on how to be a godly man, husband, and father (Turner has three kids). I think I tend to have a different idea of what constitutes a "devotional", and both Derek and I agreed that we wouldn't necessarily categorize this as a devotional book - more just an encouraging book with stories on Christian living, which we also appreciate.
I think it is really interesting to read more about Turner and his family since we are fans of his music! I like the simple truths that Turner shares in each chapter. I haven't read through the entire book yet, but I think lot of the stories he shares are things that men would resonate with. The book lives up to it's name, "Man Stuff".
I think this book would make a great gift, especially for men that like Josh Turner's music, since a lot of the content is autobiographical. Something to keep in mind since Christmas is right around the corner!
Tommy Nelson is offering a copy of this book to one of you! Fill out the form below for a chance to win!
Note: I received this book for free from Tommy Nelson in exchange for this review - this is my honest opinion.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
If you missed part one of my giving-up-Facebook story, you can check it out here!
My break from Facebook was really healthy for me. I honestly don't remember much about it, except that it felt like a really easy detox. There were times when I missed Facebook a little bit, but I honestly didn't think much about it.
But there were things happening in my heart.
I know there were hurts that I was holding on to, and having a break from Facebook allowed me to let those go.
I know I learned a lot about pride through the process. I realized one of my main reasons for resisting the break from Facebook was my pride. I wanted to show off my life, especially to those who had hurt me in the past. While that may be a natural desire, it was boasting, pure and simple. I was trying to prove something to people, prove that I was worth knowing. I was putting the opinion of people ahead of the opinion of the Lord.
Scripture tells us we shouldn't boast, except in the cross of Christ, and I knew that my desire to impress everyone on Facebook did not fit with that. Giving up Facebook gave me the chance to get out of that habit, and it took away my avenue to keep failing in that area.
Mostly, it felt like a breath of fresh air to be off it. I didn't have to think about what everyone else was doing. I didn't have to feel frustrated every time I got on Facebook. I could do my own things, develop the relationships that were important to me in person, and it surprised me how little I thought about it.
However, there did come a day when I realized that maybe it was time to give Facebook another chance. I had been off of Facebook for almost a year, and something big happened in my life.
I got pregnant with Gwen.
That little blessing made it abundantly clear to me that Facebook did have some benefits, such as being able to announce our new addition to everyone I loved at the same time. So after careful consideration, I created a new Facebook account.
When I decided to get back on Facebook, I created a few boundaries for myself.
For one thing, I decided not to be friends with any guys, except for those who were in my family. It's not that there were any problems with any of the males I was friends with before, but I wondered why I had never instituted that rule for myself when I was on Facebook the first time. The stories of marriages breaking up because of connections made on Facebook are rampant, and though I never expect that to happen to me, I wondered why I should even take the chance. Now, most of my Facebook friends are women, and the few men that I am friends with are relatives.
For the first several months I was very strict with who I decided to add as Facebook friends. I mainly wanted to be friends with people who I actually saw regularly in my real life, or people who I would like to be closer friends with. I didn't see the benefit of giving a closer glimpse of my life to people who I never actually heard from outside of Facebook. My friend list was probably about 50-60 people, and that was how I liked it.
If I felt like I was starting to get annoyed with someone's posts, or if someone was just being a little too negative or controversial for me, I just blocked their posts from my newsfeed - sometimes for just a little while, and sometimes permanently. I knew if I was going to come back to Facebook this needed to be a safe place, and something that was going to improve my real-life relationships, not hurt them in any way. So if blocking someone's posts would contribute to that goal, that was what I did.
When I knew that my posts would only be going out to those whom I already knew and loved, and vice versa, it was much less tempting to try to show off. I thought more carefully about what I wanted to share. I didn't write posts to brag so much as to just share a little bit of my daily life with people who were already close to me. It was a much healthier way for me to do Facebook.
I was also on Facebook much less because I was out of the habit of checking it so often.
I rejoined Facebook almost two years ago, and I feel like it has stayed on a pretty even, healthy level since then. My friend list has grown to 115 people. I have loosened my standards a bit on accepting friend requests from people I don't know very well, mainly because I was reminded of a few people who I would not be friends with at all if it weren't for a connection that was originally strengthened by Facebook. There are some benefits to Facebook, and this is one of them - I think if used properly, Facebook can not only enhance and strengthen existing friendships, but it can also cause friendships with certain people to form when they may never have otherwise.
My goal continues to be to keep Facebook a safe place for myself. I have recognized that I don't have to leave my feelings at the mercy of posts on Facebook, and I give myself permission to limit it where I need to without feeling guilty (such as when I block certain posts). Facebook can be a very useful tool, or it can cause problems in my life, and I think I am the one who decides where on that spectrum it is going to fall.
Within my boundaries, I have found there are things that I love about Facebook.
I love that it does let me keep up with friends that are not in my same state.
I love that it opens up opportunities to connect with some ladies on a more personal level, particularly when it gives me the chance to suggest a get-together that may not have otherwise happened. It's a lot more natural to suggest getting together for coffee with someone through Facebook than through cold-calling or hunting down someone's e-mail.
I love that it allows me to share pictures with people who don't get to see my kids as often, because it has become apparent that I am ridiculously bad at sending out e-mail updates.
I love that I can announce happy news, like pregnancies, so that everyone who is important to me can know at roughly the same time.
My break allowed me to recognize the problems with my own heart that were being perpetuated by Facebook, work on them, and come back with a fresh perspective. I feel like Facebook contributes much more positively to my life now.
So it took me 2+ years to share it, but that is the story of the time I gave up Facebook.
Have any of you ever struggled with your Facebook use? Have any of you ever taken a break from Facebook? What kind of boundaries do you have for yourself on Facebook?
A couple of years ago I gave up Facebook for several months.
There were several reasons I decided to cut myself off from Facebook, and there were several reasons I decided later on to give Facebook another chance. The whole experiment taught me a lot about other people, and a lot about myself.
I never really wrote about it, though I considered starting a post on my decision several times. The words just never seemed quite right. However, recently a current Facebook friend of mine posted on her decision to give up Facebook for a little while, and it made me think of when I did the same - so I thought that maybe the time had come for me to write about it here.
I went back and read a rough draft that I wrote at the time about all the reasons why I wanted to get off Facebook - and though reading that did refresh my memory about a lot of the things that I don't particularly like about Facebook, there is a general tone of exasperation to that post. I was just done.
I think I first started to realize there was a problem when I would close my browser feeling dissatisfied or annoyed. I was friends with a lot of people that I had known in years past. You know the ones that I'm talking about - friends from high school, "friends" that had rejected me informally long ago, though thankfully without severing the relationship with a dramatic de-friending gesture.
But I was still connected with all these people - people who might have hurt me, or people who had always been competition to me, whether in reality or just in my own head.
I got to see their lives play out on cyberspace. Graduations. Marriages. Pregnancy announcements. Houses.
Sometimes it hurt because I was sad that these friendships ended.
Sometimes it was jealousy spurred by something that someone else had, and the frustration came because I wanted that thing, or thought I had worked much harder for that thing. The whole comparison game that it is so hard not to play.
Then there was just the general negativity from people who always seem to want to air their gross laundry where everyone can see it.
I felt beat down. I felt dissatisfied. I felt I felt inadequate. It left me wanting to post about everything fun I was doing to prove to everyone else that I was doing cool things too. I was someone interesting, and they were missing out if they weren't friends with me.
As in real life friends. Not Facebook friends, because "Facebook friends" can mean anything.
Looking back, I think these things were largely a heart issue, and I can't blame Facebook as much as I blame myself. Pride was a huge factor here. The bottom line is that I wanted to feel good enough, and I thought Facebook made me feel less than.
I just ran around in circles like this for years before I started to realize that maybe there was a problem here. Ironically, the effect of Facebook on my own pride was just an afterthought at the time, though now I realize that pride was the biggest problem I needed to recognize with my Facebook use. But that is not what made me give it up.
One day I realized that a lot of the girls who I really wanted to be friend with, but that I didn't really see outside of Facebook, actually thought that we were friends. They thought that keeping up with me on Facebook meant we were friends, even though our interaction only consisted of an occasional "like" or comment on one of my posts.
I didn't want cyber-friendships with these people. If we were going to be friends, I wanted to be real-life friends, and I started to wonder if Facebook's tendency to create a false sense of friendship was getting in the way of actually forming real friendships with these girls.
I started to hear stories of gossip and drama that people had experienced on Facebook. I never experienced much of that personally, but I started to feel a bit convicted. Even though I had never started an actual rumor based on information on Facebook, I would be lying if I said that I had never drawn incorrect conclusions or gossiped to my husband about something someone said on Facebook. I may not have let anything escalate to the level of traditional, rumor-spreading gossip, but I did judge people's motives and invent narratives in my own head about situations I had no actual information about.
I also realized through comments from extended family and friends how much information about my life people got from Facebook. It seemed wrong to me somehow that these people got to know these things about my life without ever actually talking to me.
True friendships can't form without conversation, but on Facebook you don't have to have that. People don't have to put out any actual effort to be friends with you, because all the things they might want to know about you are probably on Facebook. I started to wonder if people might be more likely to reach out in real life if they didn't know everything that was going on with me already. It made me feel a little "spied on", to be honest, but how could I blame anyone but me? I was not only providing the information, I was encouraging the "spying".
The final straw came when someone who I rarely saw gathering a little bit too much information about me from Facebook. It freaked me out a little, and all the other things that had been bothering me came rushing to my mind. In that moment I made a decision that it was time to take a break.
I deleted my account that same week.
Click here to read the rest of my Facebook story!
Clyde was just a few weeks old when Focus On The Family's documentary Irreplaceable came out in theaters, which was a prequel to The Family Project small group curricuum that was released this summer. Needless to say, we didn't make it to the theaters to see it since we had a brand-new baby! I was bummed, because it sounded really good, and I knew I probably wouldn't get a chance to see the full Family Project unless my church decided to do a study on it. However, recently I realized that there is a Family Project book, so I jumped at the chance to review it!
This book is an overview of the theology of the family - God's purpose and plan for the family, specifically how family and individual members of a family, reflect God's image. I wasn't expecting such a deep theological book when I first requested this - I thought it would be more about the scientific research about the family. But even though it was different than what I was expecting, it was even better than I thought it was going to be!
I got so much out of this book. I had never even thought about the theology behind God's plan for families, and this book made me appreciate how perfectly God has planned the family to reflect His image in the world. I especially liked the sections on intimacy and children, because these sections brought up things that I had never thought about before. I thought the book was very well thought-out and biblically sound. All of the major themes in this book were spot-on, and there was just one minor point I wasn't sure I totally agreed with.*
There are many paintings described in the book, which you can also look up on the Family Project's website - warning, there is nudity in some of these pieces! I didn't look up all the paintings, but I really appreciated reading the descriptions of the art in the book, and I felt like it added an extra impact to the points that were being made. If you are an art enthusiast, I would say you would probably appreciate those sections of the book even more than I did!
I would highly recommend this book to any Christian - I think this is a neglected area of theological study, and I learned so much through reading this book. It still makes me wish my church would do the Family Project small group study! You never know, maybe they will. If they do, I'm signing up!
Note: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinion.
*The one minor point I didn't necessarily agree with was a comment about surrogacy being outside the ethical bounds of a married union - if we are talking about a type of surrogacy where the surrogate's genetic material is involved (i.e. when Hagar was a "surrogate" for Abraham and Sarah), then I would agree with that - but if we are talking about a gestational carrier carrying the biological baby of a married man and woman when the married woman is not able to carry her own child, I don't see a problem, because the baby is still conceived within the marital union. That's just my personal opinion. The comment in the book was made in passing, and was not a major point, so even if you disagree, I would say don't let it stop you from reading the book. It's definitely worth reading.
When I was three or four years old, I had an entire Curious George book memorized. I used to sit down with the book, turn the pages, and recite the entire thing while my mom and dad listened (and chuckled to themselves about how adorable I was, I’m sure).
This is not a unique story – I have heard of many children memorizing the words of their favorite book and pretending to be able to read it themselves. As adults, we smile and chuckle at the fact that these little children, who technically can’t read, like to pretend that they can.
However, now when I hear those stories from the perspective of a parent, I also think about how the parents of those kids must be doing something right! If a child who can’t read has an entire storybook memorized, it must be because someone has read it to them, and read it to them many times. Those kids may not be able to actually read the words on the page, but they already have a head start with reading skills because someone is reading aloud to them.
I’m sure there are experts who could tell us about all the intricacies of the benefits of parents reading aloud to their kids, but these are few of the reasons that came to my mind…
----
Visit the Tommy Nelson blog to read the rest of my thoughts on why you should read aloud to your kids!
I will be the first to admit that Derek and I are horrible about having "date night". We don't get out very often (once every few months maybe?), and when we do we usually just go see a movie. So when I had the opportunity to review 52 Uncommon Dates from Moody publishers, I decided to jump on it, hoping to get some inspiration for going on more unique dates.
This book did not disappoint! The book starts with an introduction from Gary Chapman on the importance of continuing to date your spouse, and then it jumps right in to the date ideas. Some of these dates are things that I might have thought of before, but most of them are things I don't think I would have ever come up with.
What I liked about each date idea was that they were each geared toward helping you connect with your spouse or significant other on a deeper level, emotionally and spiritually. Discussion questions that have to do with the theme of each date are included, along with ideas for praying together before and after your date, ideas for incorporating your spouses love language into the date, and Bible verses you can look up related to the themes. The book was very much geared toward Christian couples and strengthening not only your relationship with each other, but also pointing you both toward God through the process of dating. That was pretty great, I thought.
I found that a lot of the dates were also flexible enough to adapt for a couple with young kids - which is nice, I think, because we can't always get a babysitter (which is probably why I can count on one hand the number of dates we have been on this year). I liked that we could probably include the kids on a lot of these dates and still have a good time reconnecting with each other! So Derek and I decided to do a jigsaw puzzle date over Labor Day weekend, inspired by the book. Here we are:
(Derek always makes these funny faces when I pull out the camera! he cracks me up.)
I think this is a fun book for any Christian married couple, and it will challenge you to date more creatively and think of ways to not just have fun together but also to include the Lord in your dating process. Definitely check it out!
Note: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for this review - this is my honest opinion.
I'm sure you've heard the statistics that the divorce rate is 50%, and that this number is the same between Christians and non-Christians. But what if that wasn't really true?
When I read The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Couples, this book, The Good News About Marriage by Shaunti Feldham was referenced, and I was intrigued. I put it on my to-read list next.
In this book, Felham evaluates existing studies to try to determine what the actual divorce rate is - and her findings are surprising and encouraging.
For one thing, she finds that the actual divorce rate is not 50%, and it never has been. The actual numbers are probably closer to 30%. And what about the argument that divorce rates are the same inside the church? It turns out that much-quoted fact is actually based on a misunderstanding of some data - and that among those who attend church weekly, the divorce rate is 27% lower.
I found the numbers and statistics in this book really interesting. I have never thought to myself "I have a 50% chance of not getting divorced", because I know Derek and I are both committed to being married until we die, so divorce has never been an option for us. However, I'm sure there are a lot of couples out there that have been discouraged by the 50% statistic that is thrown about so carelessly, so I think this book would be really encouraging to many couples when they realize that number is not accurate!
I would say that I never internalized those faulty statistics in the past, so learning the new statistics wasn't necessarily life-changing to me personally - but, I was encouraged to hear those numbers in respect to defending and encouraging the institution of marriage! It turns out that the divorce rate is much lower overall than people have said, and the majority of couples are happy in their marriages - and I found that really encouraging to me when I think of society as a whole.
I will say I was a little annoyed at the repeated mention of people who married at younger than 25 and baby boomers as being higher-risk groups for divorce. I got married before age 25, as did most of my friends, and my parents happen to be baby boomers, so I guess I took those stats more personally. I felt like focusing on and comparing the stats of the "higher risk" groups to "low risk" groups could actually be discouraging to people who are in the higher risk groups, and as a result I felt a little excluded from some of the "good news" that Feldham was trying to present. Considering her main goal seemed to be to encourage people about their marriages, I was a little frustrated that her references to those who married young seemed to be more negative than positive. Personally, I would like to see stats on how many of those young marriages ended before year five of marriage, and how the divorce rates of "high risk" groups are affected by things like church attendance, but my guess is that this kind of data isn't currently available.
Regardless, I'd say this book is worth a read, whether you are married or not. It will make you think about divorce statistics in a different way and look more critically at some of these statistics that are so often quoted.
Note: I received this book for free from Blogging For Books in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
