The Berry Pickers, written by Amanda Peters
Alternating between two narrators, this novel is about a woman who grew up in Maine and a man who grew up in Nova Scotia. She was the only child in a white family that chose to distance themselves from most people and he was one of five kids in an indigenous family where a daughter went missing. It's a story of loss, guilt, fear, and confusion, as well one of hope, love, and varying degrees of reconciliation. It's not on my TBR list and I have no idea where I heard about it, but I enjoyed it.
p. 144, Some wounds cannot be healed. Some wounds never close, never scar. But the further away from the injury, the easier it became to smile.
Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are, written by Lysa TerKeurst with Jim Cress
I've read three of TerKeurst's books and found each of them helpful. This particular book teaches what the Bible says about setting healthy boundaries in relationships and is written from a place of compassionate humility. Sharing from her own experiences, she writes about things like enabling unhealthy behavior, the impact of broken trust, taking responsibility for our own behavior, and accepting reality instead of trying to change it. The book also includes a brief word from her personal counselor at the end of each chapter. Whether the reader's relationship challenges are within their home, with extended family, in friendship, or at work, they'll find the book relatable, practical, and encouraging.
p. xvi, But we can't enable bad behavior in ourselves and others and call it love. We can't tolerate destructive patterns and call it love. And we can't pride ourselves on being loyal and longsuffering in our relationships when it's really perpetuating violations of what God says love is.
p. 1, You cannot build trust that keeps getting broken.
p. 18, What we are looking for are patterns of hurtful and harmful behavior. A hurtful statement can be called a mistake. But a repeated pattern of hurtful statements or uncaring attitudes or even unjust expectations is much more than a mistake. These patterns are misuses of the purposes of a relationship. Why is this so crucial to understand? Because unchecked misuse of a relationship can quickly turn into abuse in a relationship.
p. 20, Like God, we must require from people the responsibility necessary to grant the amount of access we allow them to have in our lives. Too much access without the correct responsibility is detrimental.
p. 21, Setting a boundary is being responsible enough to reduce the access we grant to others based on their ability to be responsible with that access. People who are irresponsible with our hearts should not be granted great access to our hearts.
p. 45, God had grace but His grace was there to lead people to better behavior, not to enable bad behavior. And the same should be true of our grace as well.
p. 49, Loosening my boundaries and enabling them to hurt the relationship and harm me isn't helping them. I am not honoring Jesus when I give permission for the other person to act in ways that Jesus never would.
p. 67, The person who continues to break your heart isn't in a place to properly care for your heart.
p. 88, As I've said before, health cannot bond with unhealth. A refusal to grow and mature emotionally is a big indication of unhealth.
p. 129, We can't control what others believe. We can't control what others feel. We can't control what others do. But we can control and be responsible for ourselves. As we've discussed before, boundaries aren't meant to control another person. Boundaries make it possible for us to hold ourselves together.
p. 149, Remember, Jesus did so many amazing and sacrificial acts of love for others. He fed people, washed their feet, taught them, comforted them, and modeled a different way to act and think. But He didn't do it so people would fill a need in him. He served from a place of fullness, not for a feeling of fullness.
p. 151, If we aren't convinced of how much a boundary will help us, we will be too afraid of what the boundary will cost us.
p. 152, Healthy relationships don't feel threatening. Loving relationships don't feel cruel. Secure relationships don't feel as if everything could implode if you dared to draw a boundary.
p. 196, It's so hard to recognize what is when you've been persistently trying to get someone to step into what could be.
p. 197, Grief made me realize that my sadness wasn't because I was wanting dead things to come back to life. I kept crying because my basic desires had never been given life in the first place.
p. 212, The greatest source of my suffering was my refusal to accept what I could not change.
p. 226, Remember, God does tell us to forgive, but reconciliation is dependent on someone's willingness to not continue doing harm to us.
I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working, written by Shauna Niequist
While I can't always relate to her specific experiences and may not land on the same page with all her opinions, I really love Niequist's writing voice and relate to many of the feelings she's had. She's a gifted writer and this book, written as a collection of short essays, is about discovering that the unexpected places we find ourselves in, while challenging in many ways, can be valuable, beautiful, and meaningful in just as many ways.
p. 58, When you don't know how to help yourself, help someone else. Loss or pain or suffering can turn you inward. It's all-consuming sometimes. But it's so helpful sometimes to show up, even in small ways, for someone else. Serve someone. Help someone. Give something to someone, and the doing so will remind you that the world is still turning beyond your loss. It is, even when it seems like it can't be.
p. 81, One of the central jobs of a parent is to hold anything too heavy or hard for their child, and also, that's just exactly what God does for his children, for us. Prayer is grabbing those worries in our fists and throwing them to someone who can hold them for us while we rest.
p. 161, It's never, ever too late to grow.
p. 176, We only heal by investing in the difficult and ugly work, even if it isn't pretty, even if it looks like a mess for a while.
p. 181, Maybe what makes a day good or valuable or worthwhile is not what you accomplished, what work you did or thing you fixed or task you checked off a list. Maybe there are other metrics - pleasure, connection, caring for someone, learning something new, experiencing delight.
p. 200, When Aaron and I were dating, he asked a friend whose marriage he admired, "How do you know if the person you're dating is the person you should marry?"
His friend said, "Is she a grower? Is she a person who's willing to learn, willing to listen, willing to get it wrong but make it right? That's what a marriage takes. Marry someone who can and will grow."
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All these years later, I can see with greater and greater clarity how wise that friend's words were: marriage is about a lot of things, but one of the most central is a deep willingness to grow together - toward one another and for one another.
The Keeper of Stories, written by Sally Page and narrated by Jessica Whittaker
A woman who's decades into an unhealthy marriage, takes her job seriously even though it's looked down upon, and is carrying a secret. Another woman who's cantankerous on the outside, has compassion for those she cares about, and is an expert at discovering secrets. Stories within stories, each a bit more evidence that there's always so much more to a person than meets the eye. Randomly chosen because it was available immediately, this novel is a reminder that honesty and kindness are important parts of all relationships.
Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference, written by Warren St. John
I love books about cross-cultural experiences and underdogs beating the odds, especially when they're about real people. This story is about a Jordanian immigrant woman living in a small Georgia town, the soccer teams she coached that were comprised of boys who fled a wide variety of countries as refugees, and a community that wasn't particularly welcoming of diverse newcomers. This book went on my TBR list back in March of last year when I heard about it at a library event and I really enjoyed it.
p. 299, (quoting Tracy Ediger) "I need to look around myself and see my neighborhood, and what is going on here and five streets over, and what I can do in terms of investing myself and my time, to be present for the people around me, and to do something positive for change in my community."
A Place to Hang the Moon, written by Kate Albus and narrated by Polly Lee
This middle grade novel's about three orphaned siblings who join a mass evacuation from London during WWII in the hopes of finding a permanent home. It's a fairly predictable story with challenging circumstances, multiple sweet relationships, wartime concerns, and characters who love books. I learned about this novel from a list of audiobooks on Everyday Reading and enjoyed it.
59:34, The first words of a new book are so delicious - like the first taste of a cookie fresh from the oven and not yet properly cooled.
Rabbit Cake, written by Annie Hartnett and narrated by Katie Schorr
This novel about grief and family dynamics has a twelve year old protagonist, a girl who remembers lots of facts, tries hard to protect her family at all costs, and wants to know all the details surrounding her mom's death. While there was an aspect of the story I didn't like (not saying what it was because it would involve spoilers), I loved the main character. I heard about this book on What Should I Read Next?, episode 147 - Ruining your childhood one book at a time, when I listened to it back in October.
Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better, written by Brant Hansen
I've only heard super positive feedback about this book over the years and now I know why. It's great. A quick read that's biblically-based, practical, and humorous, it's a call for Christians to be the least offendable people on the planet.
p. 8, Anger does not enhance judgment.
p. 59, Remember: Anger and rest are always at odds. You can't have both at once.
p. 156, Rules are wonderful. As I said in chapter 2, I'm a rules guy. Rules bring wisdom into our lives. They help us live better. They spare us from pain.
But rules don't change anyone's heart, ever.
Grace does.
p. 184, Timothy Keller uses the idea of favoring an inflamed joint to make a great point: this is precisely how the human ego works. It "hurts" when it's inflamed. Sure, it's always there - everyone's got an ego - but when it's oversized, it's constantly being injured or threatened. When it's "all about me," I'm constantly aware of myself, bracing myself for ego injury.
Real humility isn't about putting yourself down or pretending your performance is substandard at everything you try. Real humility lies in self-forgetfulness.
Few want to hear this, but it's true, and it can be enormously helpful in life: if you're constantly being hurt, offended, or angered, you should honestly evaluate your inflamed ego.
p. 194, Self-forgetfulness is not about mystically wishing myself into nonexistence or pretending I'm meaningless. It's just the opposite. Self-forgetfulness is what happens when we're emotionally healthy. It's remembering that God is my defender, His opinion is what matters, and whatever my offenders are doing to me, I've done to others as well. And God has forgiven me. I simply must forgive in return and forfeit my right to anger.
Where the Red Fern Grows, written by Wilson Rawls and narrated by Anthony Heald
I don't remember if I read this book or watched the movie as a kid, but all I knew as an adult was that it involved a boy and his dogs and had a sad ending. I've been listening to a lot of kids' audiobooks lately and decided to acquaint (or maybe reacquaint) myself with this story. I appreciate the value it places on setting goals, working hard, and behaving honorably as the reader learns about a boy who desperately wants two hunting dogs of his own. It's a sweet story of childhood dreams, lessons learned through growing up, and the love of family.
