Gravel Road Musings

  A 6-week guided journey to un-hurrying your heart Let me say first off, this is not the book "Growing Slow", this is the study guide that goes with the book. Let me also say, I haven't read the book and did not realize there was a book to go along with this study guide until I opened the study guide to look at and write this review.  I haven't done the study guide because I was in the middle of a different study book when it arrived, but I was intrigued with what I saw. Reading the book is not a requirement for this study guide, but it does provide a framework and some key concepts that help you apply the lessons learned. For my personality, I will probably try to read the book along with the study guide when I do it, but I was happy to see that I won't have to in case I can't get a hold of the book through the library or Net Galley.  Each week's study has six sessions: key Bible verse, My land (where Jennifer shares her struggles with Iowa), Your land H...

  I like Crystal Paine and I follow her on Instagram, but when I saw she wrote a parenting book, I will admit I raised my eyebrows a bit. Her kids are still in their early teens, what does she know about parenting? But then I read the book and I was hooked from the first chapter on.  The first couple chapters are so much deeper than parenting. They hit on the core of who we are as humans and on how we will live based on our beliefs. If I could describe in two words the premise of the book, I would say, "Live Loved".  Before we can be love-centered parents, we must first believe that we are loved, that God loves us and it is out of that love that we can love others.  "You can't give what you don't have. You can't love your kids well if you don't believe you are fully loved yourself." "Love-centered parenting is about wholeheartedly loving our kids because we know how much we are wholeheartedly loved by God."  Love-centered parenting isn'...

  Mother's Day.  Two simple words that I am sure invoke images of something for everyone of you. There are things that we expect on Mother's Day. We expect flowers or some form of gift. We expect all our chores to be done. We expect the Internet to explode with mother and children pictures, all dressed nicely and all smiling happily. That's the happy expectations of Mother's Day. But for others, Mother's Day is no different from any other day-nobody notices the sacrifices they make every day. Nobody acknowledges their sleepless night and long days. Nobody seemingly cares about them as a mom. And then there are still others for whom Mother's Day invokes sadness. On this day, they are once again reminded that their arms are empty or their children have walked away from their love or there is some other reminder of pain on that day. Mother's Day has meant numerous things to me through the years. Eight years ago, Mother's Day was more of a hidden grief known...

  Miriam, Moses and Aaron's sister. How much more than that do we really know about her? There are few references here and there: she led the singing after crossing the Red Sea, she was made a leper for a couple weeks for complaining about Moses, and not much more info than that is given. Jill takes this information and ad libs a story about Miriam, gives her a husband, children, and a life. Interspersed throughout are glimpses into Moses' life and also Zipporah's. Most is based on fiction and what Jill supposed to have happened.  I'm not a huge fan of Biblical fiction, but Jill does tell a good story and so I keep reading her books. I'm not sure what I'll do when the next book comes out though. While I enjoyed the story of Miriam, it took me awhile to get through it. That is no fault of the author's, it is simply not quite my genre of choice. I do like one thing Jill said in the "Note to the Reader" at the end of the book. "The thing this sto...

  istockphoto.com I walked into the kitchen this morning, feeling good about the fact that I had gotten up when my alarm rang the first time. I was going to have an extra amount of time to sit and enjoy the peace and quiet, which tells you I have been hitting the snooze button way too many times lately.  The first thing I noticed was this brown puddle on the floor. What in the world? Did Dave dump his coffee? But he wouldn't just walk away and leave the mess if he did. No, his coffee mug was still in the drainer. So what happened? Ahh, there I see it, the coffee pot is sitting there by itself away from the coffee maker. Hmm, it did a very bad job of catching the coffee this morning and our coffee maker is smart enough to tell me it won't run if I didn't empty the grounds out of the basket, but it's not smart enough to figure out the coffee pot isn't where it belongs? That's a problem and it created a very big problem this morning.  So instead of sitting in my ch...

  A Mother's Search for Grace I saw this book on NetGalley and was immediately intrigued. Why? Because I recognized the author's name. Right away, I went to Shari's blog to see if it was the Shari I am acquainted with. Sure enough. That was all the impetus I needed to pick the book up right away and start reading. The message of the book and the style of writing kept me spellbound through the entire book. My only regret is that it is not published yet so I cannot hold a paper copy in my hands, flipping back and forth, and drinking in the words.  For me, reading a digital copy, it is harder to go back and forth and fully take in the language and the emotion of the words in front of me. So I eagerly await the arrival of the paper copy in July.  Life has dealt me some blows and I have dealt with depression in a small scale. Reading Shari's words opened up depression for me in a much bigger, more real way. Listening to her fight against the darkness and then finally take th...

 I don't like to think of myself as a procrastinator, but the truth is coming hard at me that that label fits me a lot more than I like to think.  I'm supposed to be reading something inspirational or doing my devotions by 5:30 AM Monday through Friday, but more often than not I hit the Instagram button about 5:27 and you know what happens then. Maybe that is just a lack of self-control. By 7:00 AM, I'm supposed to be pulling myself out of my comfy chair and getting dressed and ready for the day. But....I can find I need to read another chapter or browse a little more online or or or. And soon, Logan comes upstairs and then I need to talk to him and read him a story and soon it is 7:20 or later. This puts the whole morning back a bit and I am soon running later than I like to be. While this doesn't matter now, it will matter come fall when I have a scholar to get off to school.  And then, the ultimate test came this week when I was sitting at the table supposed to be pl...