Gravel Road Musings

A Neurosurgeon's Look at Faith, Doubt, and the Things We Think We Know. Glioblastoma has a 100% mortality rate or does it? There are those few unique cases, but mostly when Dr. Warren sees that tumor, he used to think, "I've seen the end of you." He knows how the disease is going to play out, what is going to happen and the ultimate result of that diagnosis. But now, at the end of the book, he realizes there is more to the story and maybe this is just the beginning. Dr. Warren is a Christian and a neurosurgeon and so he wrestles. How do you pray for a patient when you know the end result, when you know the prognosis is death? How do you pray with a patient when you know there's no hope? Dr. Warren is wrestling with this and then tragedy strikes him personally and he has another battle to fight. The stories were fascinating and the struggle was real. Dr. Warren had a chaplain friend he called Pastor Jon (he was an amalgam of hospital chaplains, all represen...

This is the first book I have read by Melanie Dobson and I certainly hope it isn't the last. I already have one book of hers on order from a rewards program and I already scoured the library to see what they had available to borrow. So that's high praise to start this review. I haven't read a lot of World War II historical fiction until the past few months. It's so heartbreaking to read and yet it can be so redemptive. Now, I realize that not all the actual happenings of WWII were redemptive, but I can appreciate the efforts authors make to bring those bittersweet, redemptive endings to their historical fiction. Melanie did an amazing job of bringing an aspect of World War II to life that I had no idea about. Who knew that some American businessmen had invested in the Nazi regime before and during the war? I had no idea that that had happened and it made me so sad. And yet it was encouraging to read about the many children that were rescued in Holland despite Hitl...

The Life and Legacy of Susannah Spurgeon wife of Charles H. Spurgeon I've known about Charles Spurgeon my whole life, but I have not known much about him or Susie, so this book seemed like a way to remedy that. I was sucked in at the introduction and first chapter and was sure I would fly through the book. Alas, that is not quite how it worked. I am not sure how to get my thoughts from my brain to the screen in a kind, coherent manner. I do not like to give anything less than positive reviews, but I feel a little mixed up on this one.  The content was good. Susie was an amazing woman who challenges me in a lot of ways, especially her care of Charles and her sacrifice for the sake of the Lord's work. That is not an easy thing to do. Her care of pastors, in general, was also impressive, especially considering that she suffered a lot through a great portion of her life. Her illness remains unknown, but she didn't have much of a social life for many years. I think my bi...

365 ways to improve your life, career, and relationships. "Relationships are like batteries. Both positives and negatives keep things charged."  Dean goes on to explain that the negatives, the conflicts, can bring new depth to the relationship if they are worked through. "Profanity is nothing more than a momentary lapse in creativity."  I love this quote because it can seem so true. I don't swear, but I still have my list of words I tend to repeat and I love the challenge to use different words to describe situations. "A shortcut rarely is" There are 363 more quotes like this in this book. Yes, I numbered that right because "It's always good to go beyond what others expect of you." These "shifts" as Dean calls them cover a wide range of topics from listening, to careers, to relationships, to goals and much more. Read over a week they can all start to muddle together, so I would highly recommend just reading one or tw...

I was just looking back through my blog posts and realized that May was the last time I wrote a blog post that wasn't a book review. That makes me sad because I do like writing blog posts. I write book reviews because I get free books for doing it, but I write blog posts because I enjoy the writing process. I don't count myself a professional by any means, but good grief, I won't improve if I don't practice.  In fact, I just got a book off of NetGalley that I am super excited about. It's called "My Unedited Writing Life..." You can read more of my thoughts about it  here . The reason I'm excited about it is that I want to use it to generate more blog posts that aren't book reviews and aren't just stuffy me-trying-to-fill-space posts either. I don't know yet what it will look like, but I certainly want to write more than once every 6 months. A lot has happened since I last posted. Baking season has come and gone and it was a real...

For some time now, I have been wanting to do more purposeful writing. While I don't consider myself a professional at all, I do enjoy the craft of writing and trying to put words to my thoughts. This book looks like a great opportunity to practice my writing skills along with helping me to think outside of the box in what I'm writing about. I have not read the entire book. To me, this is not the kind of book you sit down and read from cover to cover. I think that might drown whatever spark of creativity you had when you started if you were to read all 365 invitations at once. I plan to keep this book close and use it on a regular basis in 2020 and maybe even beyond. Some of the creative invitations included in this book are: "Write a permission slip for yourself to do something, to be something, or to create something you've held back from pursuing." or "Turn your attention to a secondhand object. Write about its journey or about an imagined previous ow...

Have you ever wondered what inspired Stuart Hamblen to write "This Ole House?" Actually, if you're like me, your first question would have been who wrote "This Ole House" in the first place. The answer is curiosity. He spotted an old, abandoned-looking house and had to see what it was. He found an old dog and a man who had passed away in the last week or so. Fascinating isn't it? This book is filled with stories like this. Okay, I don't think anyone else stumbled across a body, but you get the idea. The inspiration for these songs came from all kinds of places and were written by all kinds of authors. I knew a fair amount of the songs, but there were also quite a few that were new to me. "Victory in Jesus", "I'll Fly Away", "Roll, Jordan, Roll" and many more are talked about in this book. There's a short chapter for each song and, if possible, the song is written there as well. Another thing going for this bo...