I love all of the book lists that come out at this time of year. People, we are so fortunate to be literate and to have such an abundance of wealth when it comes to books! (That truth deserves all the !!!!!) No surprise that my nonfiction list is slightly longer than my fiction list and I am all the richer for reading both nonfiction and fiction :).

Nonfiction I loved

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth —What sticks with me is role in high school of being part of a group (any group! music, sports, a club) and sticking with it for at least one year and the way it fosters grittiness that can be tapped into the rest of a person’s life.

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren — I listened to this with my ears and 2021 and plan to read it with my eyes in 2022.

Every Moment Holy, Volume 1 by Douglas Kaine McKelvey (Author), Ned Bustard (Illustrator) — I loved reading these liturgies for every day moments. This is one to pick up and read a prayer, maybe not in the moment something happens. But because you’ve marinated your soul, when a moment happens you are able to notice God in it more readily.

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal — This was one of those “mind blown” books. Distraction is not quite what I thought it was and I have four pages of notes to prove it. Ha!

Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies by Alison Cook PhD and Kimberly Miller MTh LMFT — Very helpful “map” of the soul and why sometimes you might feel or act like an exile, firefighter, or manager. 

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant — I took four pages of notes that start, “I need to buy a copy of this book!”

A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson by Winn Collier — If you like memoirs that read like novels AND you like to how others navigate being a person of faith, dedicated to ministry, and living the ups and downs of life, this book is for you.

The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities by Kate Bowler—I found this utterly fascinating. Each chapter looked at a different area: The preacher, the home maker, the talent, the counselor, and the beauty. Context baby, this book provides a-ha moments as puzzle pieces come together.

Fiction I loved

Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles — He is a master story teller and I never want the books to end!

Out of Darkness, Shining Light: A Novel by Petina Gappah – This is a well-researched story of the Africans who brought David Livingston’s body after he died out of the “heart of Africa” to the coast.

Anxious People: A Novel by Fredrik Backman — A failed bank robber bursts into an open house and takes the viewers hostage. Backman is a master at taking unlikely groups and turning them in a community.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger — The writing and storytelling is breath taking. This is a book you will want to own a copy!

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng — Beautifully told story of a family who didn’t communicate. As a reader, my heart ached for each character as I understood them better and wanted others in their family to know what I knew.

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn — I first read this years ago in China (thank you Stephanie!). If you haven’t read this delightful novel, it is a “must read in 2022.” It might be a tad quirky at first, but keep going. I promise you will marvel at the word twists the author makes!

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One of my goals for 2022 is to read six biographies. What reading goals do you have? What biographies would you recommend? I raise my glass, smile at you and say, “Here’s to good books for all of us in 2022.” Clink!

With love,
Amy

Tis the time of year for book lists! I love to see what other book read and thought you might too. We met on Tuesday night and discussed December’s book and looked back over this list.

Conclusion? We did not have one dud this year! And every book other than January and April’s books were someone’s favorite. The summaries are from Amazon. Happy browsing and then reading!

January — The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford

February — Before We Were Yours: A Novel by Lisa Wingate: Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

March — Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles: On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.

April — Clock Dance: A novel by Anne Tyler: Willa Drake has had three opportunities to start her life over: in 1967, as a schoolgirl whose mother has suddenly disappeared; in 1977, when considering a marriage proposal; and in 1997, as a young widow trying to hold her family together. So she is surprised when in 2017 she is given one last chance to change everything, after receiving a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to help a young woman she’s never met. This impulsive decision, maybe the first one she’s consciously made in her life, will lead Willa into uncharted territory—surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places.

May — Washington Black by Esi Edugun: Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. 
 
But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again.

June — Olive, Again: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout: Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is “a compelling life force” (San Francisco Chronicle). The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” and she has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire us—in Strout’s words—“to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”

July — Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn: Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is “a love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere”

August and our 25^th Anniversary! — Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

September — A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell: In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: “She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.” The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill’s “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and–despite her prosthetic leg–helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. 

October — Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

November — Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger: Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.

December — The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson — We pulled out this classic for something light to read.

Are you in a book group? What did you read?

The theme this week at Velvet Ashes is dream. I wrote the following post and thought it would be fun to hear your answers as well.

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We are long overdue for a community post! If this is your first Velvet Ashes Community post, here’s the gig: We’ll have a list of ten questions you can copy and paste into a comment—feel free to answer all ten questions or as many as you want! It’s fun to read through others’ responses and even respond to a few. Here are the ten questions and I’ll answer them below.

This week we have been talking about dreams, so these questions range from the silly to the serious when it comes to dreams.

1. How much sleep do you get on an average night? Are you more a light or heavy sleeper?
2. Do you tend to remember your dreams?
3. When you were a kid, what was your dream job?
4. Aristotle said, ““Hope is a waking dream.” What are you hoping for this week?
5. Do you let yourself dream? Or do you tend to squelch your dreams in order to avoid being hurt or disappointed?
6. What’s a “dream day” for you? What are you doing? Who are you with? Where are you?
7. Do you talk in your sleep? Snore?
8. What is one small way you can kindle a dream in this season?
9. Which “famous” person (loosely defined) would you like to meet?
10. JK Rowling said, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Do you tend to ‘dwell on dreams and forget to live’ or ‘dwell on life and forget to dream’?

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1. How much sleep do you get on an average night? Are you more a light or heavy sleeper? Ideally 8 hours, but my fitbit stats say 8 hours is a rarity for me. Honestly, if I can get 7.5, I’m okay. I go through waves of having a decent week of sleep and then will have several days that are terrible. I’m a fairly heavy sleeper.

2. Do you tend to remember your dreams? Vast majority, no. It’s the ones about people who have died (grandparents, Dad,  friends) that I remember in the mornings.

3. When you were a kid, what was your dream job? In elementary school, the president of the U.S. In junior high, a lawyer. I am so glad on both fronts I didn’t get what I dreamed for :-)!

4. Aristotle said, ““Hope is a waking dream.” What are you hoping for this week? Oh this question threw me for a loop (even though I wrote it, HA!). I wanted to share something deep and profound because that feels like the “right” answer, but the truth is, what popped into my head and heart first is, “I hope All the News That’s Fit to Tell and How to Tell it, the book I released last week, continues to sell and help cross-cultural workers with their newsletters and I recoup my financial investment in it :-).” Want to win a free kindle copy? Enter this Giveaway and you could . . . two people will win!

5. Do you let yourself dream? Or do you tend to squelch your dreams in order to avoid being hurt or disappointed? I am an eternal optimist, so dreaming comes easily for me in most areas. Reality tends to be a big old kick in the pants for me.

6. What’s a “dream day” for you? What are you doing? Who are you with? Where are you? Oh golly, a dream day? Would have about 48 hours so I could do all I want! I love to lounge around in p.j.’s and read in the morning. Then I would go to the gym, later the temp would be mild and I could be outside with flowers. Meet a friend for lunch (see, already my morning has far more hours than is reality) and go see a movie or a sporting event. Now, that’s a day at home. I also love traveling with people I love, so being somewhere new, enjoying a historical place, stopping for a scone and a cup of tea, while having conversations throughout the day that span the deep to the silly and there are several times of deep laughter.

7. Do you talk in your sleep? Snore? I do neither, but I do grind my teeth, so I sleep with a mouth guard.

8. What is one small way you can kindle a dream in this season? Okay, this question just took me in an unexpected direction (if these questions are opening up parts of yourself you don’t normally create space to listen to, I’m right there with you). What came up is that I have the dream to build into and encourage leaders on the field. I long to pour into the next generation and support those of you right now in leadership positions. So, what is one small way I can kindle that dream right now? This spring with the Connection Group Facilitators I have been sharing small snippets every Tuesday called “Leading Tuesdays” and that has been food for my soul. But spring Connection Groups will end soon, so I am not sure. I need to sit with this question more.

9. Which “famous” person (loosely defined) would you like to meet? The first person who came to mind was Eugene Peterson. I know he is fading, so maybe five-years-ago Eugene Peterson. He was in ministry for the long haul and loved God, people, scholarship, and being engaged in real, messy community. Oh to chat with him! (Now that I have given this “spiritual” answer, it makes those of you who say “Beyonce!” look like jerks :). SORRY. I would also like to talk with Taylor Swift. I would like to have an honest chat about what living such a public life does to your soul, your friendships, your sense of community and purpose. I have a feeling she’s a deeper person than we may see. I could be wrong, that’s why I’d like to talk with her.)

10. JK Rowling said, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Do you tend to ‘dwell on dreams and forget to live’ or ‘dwell on life and forget to dream’? Oh golly. Honestly, I tend to do both, but if I really had to pick, when I am stressed or not my healthiest, I dwell on life and forget to dream.

Over to you!

(Image by Karen Huber!)

I love meeting new people and am excited for you to meet my friend Abbie Smith and offer you a chance to win a book. Friends + books? This is going to be fun!

Hello, I’m Abbie, wife to Micah, mom to Elliana, Eden and Aaliya, newly adopted from India, and author. My husband was raised as a missionary kid in Japan, and I was raised at a country club in Roswell, Georgia. Having become a follower of Jesus in college, I quickly fell in love with his love for the nations, and lived for short stints in China, Paris, South Africa and Uganda. Even though my life and calling feels situated in little ol’ Savannah, Georgia these days, one of the highlights of my week is Friday afternoons when the kids and I pick-up our Pakistani friend and gather with about fifty other refugee women and their slew of children for “English Club.

Do you remember how we met? :-)

Sometimes I think dementia is setting-in early for me, so forgive me if this memory is jaded, but I recall our introduction being your marvelous Mother’s Day post some years back. I had recently released a book on singleness and was struck by your articulate and gracious reflections from an unmarried perspective. I knew I liked you and reached out in hopes of becoming friends. Since then, its been meaningful to loosely follow one another’s writings and various seasons. Someday I dream of actually meeting face to face!

It was that post! I remember taking a picture with a statue of a fancy cow in Beijing as a picture of me with you and writing about how gracious you were. I don’t remember how, but I asked you if you wanted to be added to my ministry updates and you said yes. But I have the strongest memory of when i knew we had turned a corner and were becoming friends. I was in line to go through the Denver airport and you replied to a ministry update. I was touched you read it and responded. Since then, you have the uncanny gift of emailing while I am in line at DIA. It is our unofficial “special spot” :).

I  love talking to people about the story behind the story! What lead you to write Stretch Marks?

Ah yes, I suppose there’s always a story behind the story, eh. I think for Stretch Marks, it was one of the few times when I would lie awake at night still stuck in a blog or journal entry. Typically I’m a forward thinking person, and will write a post, or experience a story, but once it’s over I move on. Something about the pages of my journal that season, and the words and ways it seemed God was speaking to me, wouldn’t stop bugging me though. And when I would share aspects of it with other women, often the response would be, “Why aren’t we talking about this stuff more often?” The content was specific to where I was, as newly married, or a new mom, but it was also clearly hitting a more universal nerve, about being and becoming a woman, made in the image of God. I wasn’t in the mood to write another book, and yet felt as though I also wasn’t supposed to keep these thoughts to my journal. I worked-up a proposal and sent it to two publishers. One said no and the other said yes, so the yes choice and I decided to give it a try.

I bet even the writing of Stretch Marks brought stretch marks you didn’t expect! Could you share a few?

Oh la la, as a four on the Enneagram, I especially love this question. The process of writing and publishing Stretch Marks ran simultaneously with the adoption of our third child. Frankly, I genuinely thought (and hoped) once the stage of singleness was done, so would be the brunt of “waiting” woes in life. (I guess I also though stretch marks only drew themselves on the outside of one’s thighs – ha – how misled I was on both accounts!) The stretch marks of waiting induced by the writing and publishing process of this book, alongside the gaping ones proceeding Aaliya’s homecoming from India, were brutal. Likewise, maybe it sounds unspiritual, but I wasn’t expecting the profound communion Jesus and I got throughout this writing process. It was one of those times when the writing itself led me to unseen layers, and as it turned out, even a main theme of the book. Through the actual writing of it, in other words, I came upon areas of intimacy and empathy with our brother Jesus that I simply wasn’t expecting. Particularly in regards to him being “stretched” during his time on earth to unfathomable layers for the sake of love. Loving me. Loving us. For the sake of eternal love.

What is your hope for this book?

I think “success” would mean a lot of #metoo’s, as well as women walking away from the pages assured that where they are matters. And not just matters, but images God in a profound way. As its summary on Amazon notes, “In some ways becoming a wife and mother was as exhilarating as I envisioned; in other ways it was stifling and painstakingly ordinary. A candid memoir about growth, faith and belonging, Stretch Marks I Wasn’t Expecting delves with startling honesty into conversations about infertility and inner-city living, mommy wars and the incarnation, letdowns of marriage and learning to notice God in the mundane.” So I suppose I can only hope women would feel rapport and rest in this soul bearing bunch of pages.

Tell us a little about your retreat center! You know I hope to visit in person some day!

It’s lovely; please come visit! For going on three years now, we’ve been the caretakers of Wesley Gardens Retreat in Savannah, Georgia. (If you’re an Instagram’er, it’s @wesleygardenslife.) Having studied spiritual formation and soul care in graduate school, it’s hard to believe I’m actually living-out that degree so literally by working at a retreat center. Granted, my husband (Micah) does 99% of the care-taking, but someday when littles ones are no longer the brunt of my daily hours, I look forward to engaging more with the likes of spiritual direction and lending more shape to the retreat.

What projects are you working on these days?

Aside from attempting to stay present to my little people, and bits of discipleship with gals in Savannah, don’t tell anyone, but I’m actually working on a children’s book. That’s the first time I’ve typed out those words – eeeek. It’s still in embryonic stages, but I’m partnering with a wonderful illustrator and honestly feel as though this might be the most important project I’ve ever worked on. I’ll keep you posted!

Abbie, so fun to chat. Thanks for taking the time!

Friends, if you would like to win a copy of Stretch Marks (or win it for a friend!), leave a comment. What draws you to this book? What draws you to Abbie (she’s lovely, isn’t she?). Even if you haven’t been pregnant, we’ve all got stretch marks. How has God been stretching you these days?

If you’re new around here, you’re in for a treat! If you’re a regular, you know what’s coming and you’re still in for a treat because that is what π does . . . treat us all!

March 14th is π Day (3.14, get it?! Love it!?). Last year was the Ultimate π Day since Pi is 3.141592… and the date was 3.14.15. You might wonder, what’s the point this year? Forever we will live in the shadow of the ultimate.

Wrong! Pi is the gift that keeps on giving.

1. Like most of life, Pi is never the same two year in a row. Last year it might have been the Ultimate Pi day, but this year it is Well Rounded Pi. Get it!! 3.14159 rounds up to 3.1416. What’s the date this year? 3.14.16. Don’t worry that Pi’s best days are behind her. Which leads me to my next reason I love pi.

2. Pi can be whimsical and fun. This year a friend asked me why I talk about math so much. There is so much beauty and fun in math. But unfortunately that is the the main message most (at least Americans) believe. Pi Day offers us a chance to challenge this message in the best way! Jokes. Songs. Cartoons. Food. Come on, you try and throw a better party!

3. Not only is Pi different each year, so am I. In terms of Pi, I’ve had high’s and low’s this year. My friend Suzanne got me this awesome t-shirt! I love my Pi t-shirt collection. I really do.

The low, is a lost opportunity. I was scheduled to preach in July on Psalm 8’s relationship with Pi. If you’ve gotten to hear this sermon, you know I LOVE that sermon. Unfortunately, things happened at the church. So, this Pi Day is a small reminder of that loss.

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For fun 

• Listen to these songs: Pi Songs 1 and Pi Songs 2 — be amazed at the relationship between music and math.
• Tell of of these Pi jokes — who can you tell one to?
• Laugh at the Pi cartoons — the cleverness just bowls me over!
• Tap into your artsy side with Pi-ku
• What it means to live Life vs. Life Ala Mode

Happy Pi Day! How are you different this Pi Day from other years? What are you doing to celebrate?

Amy :)