Gravel Road Musings

  Critical conversations about/ Social Media/ Gender Identity/ Same-Sex Attraction/ Pornography/ Purity/ Dating/ Etc After reading that subtitle, do I need to say more? This is something that is critically needed today. Teens are growing up in a culture that is sexually saturated and their parents can be worthless in helping them know how to navigate it because it is so different from the world they knew when they were teenagers. I don't have teenagers yet, but I am passionate about wanting to equip my children to be able to handle the issues that they will face as they grow up. I want to teach my children the sanctity of marriage and sex within marriage. I want to teach them that God created sex and He created male and female and done right, it is all a beautiful thing. But I also feel like there is a need to be aware of the messages and lies that are being forced on our kids whether they want it or not, to teach them how to have healthy relationships, how to have good boundaries,...

  Finding books that are about real life and not some dreamy paradise that hardly seems real to life can be a challenge. There is also that desire to have the imaginary world end well because we all know that life isn't imaginary and doesn't always have neat, tidy endings. So I like both kinds of books. Facing the Dawn by Cynthia Ruchti combines both. It's written in a snarky way that can almost feel contrived, like can any one person really talk that way that much, and yet, it helps to override the deep and almost dark material that the book is made up of.  Mara has lived up to her name: bitter. Her husband, Liam, has taken off for Africa for four years, leaving her to raise two teenagers and a pre-teen and it has not gone well. In the first chapter of the book, we learn that her son has visits with a probation officer and the she just doesn't seem to be handling life real well. It only goes downhill from there.  When the unthinkable happens, Mara is unsure how she is ...

  Deepen Your Connection and Strengthen Their Confidence A small book that is a quick read, but packed full of good points. I'm not sure there were a lot of new points that I hadn't thought about before, but they were condensed into one book and I definitely needed the reminders all back to back.  Reminders like: show delight in your child. Be happy to see them when they come home, when they get up in the morning, whenever you see them.  Do I keep my promises? This one stepped on my toes. I will promise them something and then totally forget about it and never follow through.  Understand your child's strengths and affirm them. Don't try to make them into something they're not. Along with this was the idea of listening to affirm rather than waiting to correct. Another reminder I really needed. I can do a lot of correcting and saying no, but what if I looked for the good and made special effort to compliment and affirm the good? "God defines success as walking in...

  So let me start by saying that if you made it through the last round of review books and are still following, you deserve a prize. I am trying to catch up on review books, so that combined with the fact that I don't really enjoy writing the reviews that much and you have a procrastination problem that results in a stack of six books waiting to be written about. But now I am caught up and ready to write something else. Yesterday, I dug out my geraniums that I had stuck in a box in the basement. It's such a sad combination of dead leaves and albino looking shoots of new growth, but hidden away in that box was that bloom you see above. How does that happen? How in the darkness and cold of a cardboard box can beauty spring forth? It's amazing to me that shoots will start to grow, but a flower?  And what about  me? Do I bloom in the darkness or do I become like the dead leaves: brittle, easily unhinged, and ugly inside and out? This is a question I am not sure I want to eval...

Creating the Home You've Always Wanted Decorate your home for you and your family - the people that live there, not for the latest fashions and trends that come and go and may or may not be practical for your season of life.  Shannon's book is full of helpful tips and advice from how to decorate each room to how to make a color theme work for your whole house, bringing it together without having each room be the same. That part was helpful for me because I hadn't thought of using colors in that way before.  Shannon also provides some helpful DIY and budget-friendly decor ideas for when there is not a lot of money to invest in house decorating. This book was especially interesting to me because I am slowly in the process of decorating our house for the first time since we moved in.  She also has a section on hospitality that was really good. She emphasizes making your guests feel welcome and at home. It's not about having the house finished and neat as a pin, it's ab...

  What Really Happens When You Are Born Again And Why It Matters Steven takes the story of Nicodemus and Jesus in John 3 and expounds on it verse by verse in a chapter by chapter format. Who was Nicodemus? What was he searching for? Why didn't he understand more about who Jesus was?  Steven does a really good job of explaining the plan of salvation and what happens when we accept Christ. He talks about the irresistible power of the Holy Spirit to draw people to Jesus and how unfathomable the Holy Spirit is. I found the book very easy to read and understand and I think it would be a really good resource for new Christians in understanding the new birth experience and in just answering questions that they might have. I received this book from Baker Books and was not required to write a positive review.  All opinions expressed are my own. 

  Big Lessons from a Little Donkey on Faith, Friendship, and Finding Your Path Rachel Anne Ridge is the author of Flash, another inspirational book about a donkey. I highly enjoyed this book and was happy to see her write another book. It did take me a long time to get to reading it. Since Flash, the first donkey showed up on their farm until Henry came to join them, a lot of things had happened, hard things that caused Rachel to question a lot of things. It would seem like she started from scratch to rebuild her faith and figure out what she believed. While I don't think she ever doubted God and His existence, things had happened that shook her foundation. My biggest negative about this book is that it seems that the foundational element of Creation was also shaken in this book and I cannot agree with her current perspective, especially not related to some of the resources she cited in the back of the book.  That being said, there were some good things in her book. She starte...

  Laura Callaway is an orphan that was sent to live in Cornwall. Here she finds the culture and people different from what she was used to and she struggles to fit in and feel accepted.  She makes a hobby of looking for flotsam and jetsam along the shores where shipwrecks are quite common. I found the definitions of flotsam and jetsam interesting. Flotsam  is goods floating on the sea where a ship sunk and jetsam is anything that was purposely cast out of the ship in hopes of saving the ship. She tried to find the owners of the things she found if it was at all possible.  And one night she rescues a man who struggled to shore after a ship wrecked on rocks. But who is this man and is he really who he says is and can he be trusted? For the answers to that, you will have to read the book. This book, while classified as historical fiction, is mostly fictional, but yet loosely based on things that could have happened in that era of time. Tom Parsons, a wrecker, was a real...

  Based on a real character, The Moonlight School, tells in story form some of the work of Cora Wilson Stewart, the first female superintendent of schools in Kentucky. Cora was instrumental in starting Moonlight Schools that enabled adults in the Appalachian Mountains to come to school in the evenings and learn to read and write and do basic math. A lot of the supporting characters in this book are fiction, though some are based on facts and experiences. Lucy is the cousin of Cora who lives in the city, but is in the background and scared of her own shadow. She comes to Rowan County to work as Cora's stenographer and is horrified at the idea of getting on a horse and heading up into the hills and hollers of the county. But as you read the book, you can watch her gain confidence and skill and find her purpose in life.  The strength and fortitude of the mountain people is something we could all do with today. Life was hard for them, people could take advantage of them because of...

  Labeled as a historical romance this debut novel from Jennifer Deibel is so much more than that. I cringe a little to myself when I see that genre on the back of a novel I'm reading because it makes me feel like so much fluff and that people probably think I have no depth to me. Yes, there are times when I want to read a fluffy novel so I don't have to think or process anything, but this book has some good themes running through it.  "Smack in the middle of what God is askin' is the best place for any of us to be. I know you want what's best for the lass, but I think yer confusin' the idea of best with the idea of safe." Where do I start here? I want to be in God's will, but I want to be there and be safe both. This morning I was reading about the courage of Apostle Paul. He was warned about the dangers that were going to face him in Jerusalem and yet he was firmly persuaded that that was where God wanted him to go and he courageously set his face to...