Day 404 June 27 - Top Ten Tuesday - Best Books You've Read In 2017 So Far

The Broke and the Bookish host this weekly meme that is my all time favorite!

This week's topic is:

"Best Books You've Read In 2017 So Far" 

I quit drinking in May of 2016, so by the beginning of 2017, I was still trying my best to keep my head above the water and crawl out of a pretty dark depression.  As I have many many times in my life, I turned to my Bible for solace and a view of the life I might could find ahead of me.  

I needed strength and I needed a reason to survive.  

My faith has always sustained me like that. 
My Top "Twelve" Tuesday of 2017 follows my progression in taking my life back through reading.

1.  Women Living Well Journals

The Women Living Well Journals are more like guided notes than journals...I found by using the journals, I could keep my brain on track.  I learned to use a system of focusing on the words of the Bible, meditating on their meaning, pondering, and sometimes memorizing verses to repeat my myself like a mantra.  One of my doctors told me that with a long term drinking problem like mine had been, it could be up to 18 months before I really had myself back on track.  
The Women Living Well journals helped me immensely before I could really think about much on my own.  They also reminded me how to "write the word"...on the days when I could not stay focused at all, writing the word brought me much solace.

2.  The C.S. Lewis Bible

I love this Bible...in all fairness, I haven't read the entire thing, but there were many mornings when I would start here...hanging on for dear life.  

3.  Chronological Life Application Study Bible

As I began to crawl out of my hole, I wanted to think a bit more so after reading my C. S. Lewis Bible chapter for the day and the Psalms, I would match my Women Living Well Journals with the deeper analysis found here.  I was learning that my brain needed something to think about.  The Life Application Bible doesn't just analyze things for you, it gives you the facts and let's you think as well.

4.  Made to Crave by Lysa Terkeurst

Terkeurst's book was the first book I've read in over a year.  Finally, I was able to focus and branch out a bit away from such a structured reading.  I still kept my Bible readings and journaling in the mornings, but at night I started adding a chapter a day of nonfiction.  I was blown away at the parallels between Terkeurst's description of a "relationship" with food and the "relationship" I had experienced with alcohol.  

5.  Wild and Free by Jess Connolly & Hayley Morgan

Connolly and Morgan's book fell into my lap at the point that I was beginning to think about who I was and what place I had in this world...without the ability to numb myself with alcohol. 
I wasn't sure anymore...and I'm not really sure if I was ever positive.
Wild and Free encourages women to be who they are without worry...using the parallels of the wild horses of Chincoteague Island...very similar to the lilies of the field and the sparrows Jesus taught His disciples about.

6.  Uninvited by Lysa Terkeurst

I was a fan of Terkeurst by this point so Uninvited followed right along with the topic in Wild and Free.  What happens when you don't feel "wild and free'?

7.  Unglued by Lysa Terkeurst

Boy oh boy, did Unglued hit a nerve.  Every page.  Terkeurst might as well have been writing about me. 
Oy.

8.  Make it Happen by Lara Casey

Life was beginning to pick up at this point, and I was beginning to make future plans...it seemed life was going to be ok after all, and I was ready for the next steps.

9.  She Reads Truth  

Misery doesn't love company, but it has been so wonderful and so spirit settling to realize that I am not the only one to fight this fight...and I am not the only Christian woman to fight this fight.  Myers and Williams tell their stories here and help other women keep their eyes on Truth.  I led a group of women through a study of She Reads Truth and began to see that I might have a place in the world.

10.  The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake was my first foray into fiction in a very long time.  I ran across it when I started cleaning off my TBR shelves at home.  I told myself that for every book on the shelves, if I didn't immediately want to read it when I first picked it up, that I would not keep it.  Many many many books...many more than I ever imagined went to the library, but Bender's book was one of the first that I longed to read after looking at the cover...and then reading the synopsis.
Damaged people, damaged lives, children with special abilities...a daughter's intuition made real by the taste of her food...a satisfying end but not happily ever after either. 
I read it in two days, closed the book, and whooped that my reading mojo might be back after all :)

11.  Wild by Cheryl Strayed

I started listening to Wild on audio over a year ago and never finished it.  I remembered how much I love audio with a good narrator but how much I also love "Golden Lines" but have an incredibly difficult time with those when the only copy of a book is one I'm listening to.  I would probably like to have a hardcopy of Wild, so I've been keeping my eyes open for one. It seems silly to buy two copies of a book, but reading from a book or ebook and driving is against the law ;P

12.  Simply from Scratch by Alicia Bessette

I'm in a feel good mode right now...a damaged feel good mode for sure...but definitely cozy, life does get better kind of reading mode.
I'm still not looking for fairy tales or happy endings, but I'm not interested in the psychological thrillers I used to be either.  I think I just want to see somewhat normal people weathering the hard times of life...and coming out ok on the other end.

Woman Thinking

Just as soon as I came back...I left again.

For a lot of reasons, I guess...but I don't really want to talk about them.

I don't want to talk about my melancholy because a blogging friend of mine was hit by a car; she's alive but confined to 2 rooms of her home trying to give her broken body time to heal while not losing her mind.

I don't want to talk about my melancholy because another friend of mine is at home with her 4 year old granddaughter, keeping her comfortable through her last days with cancer.  After a year and a half long fight, the doctors told her son and daughter-in-law this past week that there was nothing more that they can do.  The tumors continue to grow and reproduce.

I don't want to talk about my melancholy because my friend whose husband killed himself is going through a really difficult time with her daughters...they wake up every single day missing their daddy.  She goes to bed every single night without her best friend, a cold spot on the other side of the bed.

I don't want to talk about my melancholy because there are children in the world who are abused, others who don't have enough to eat, drug abuse abounds, and wars are raging. 

Like my middle child I tend to carry the burden of others sometimes too close...to the point that I myself shut down just for self-preservation purposes.  I think I'm there right now...possibly curled up in a fetal position under my desk sucking my thumb...eyes shut tight trying to "find a happy place."  

Don't get me wrong; I'm a very happy person...I just want everything and everyone else to be happy too.

I don't want children to be overcome with cancer.

I don't want kittens to get run over and left in the middle of the road.

I want everybody to have enough money to live comfortably.

I want drugs to disappear.

That's not too much, is it??

I've been getting up in the mornings at 5:30, and Layla and I walk from 6-6:45 around our neighborhood.  It is the most peaceful time of my day and the time that I talk to God.  

Word of God speak.

Would you pour down like rain

Washing my eyes to see

Your majesty.

To be still and know 

That your in this place.

Please let me stay and rest

In your holiness

Word of God speak.

Sometimes the world feels as if it's been put in a brown paper sack and shaken up...kinda like my grandmother used to do with fried chicken and flour.

I don't know how people who don't believe deal with a fried chicken kind of world.

I can come out from under my desk and try another day only because I know there's someone greater than me in control.

I am blessed.

Tragedy

Amidst all the Show Choir excitement of late and the upcoming high school graduation of my firstborn, we received a shocker this past Wednesday night.  As we sat at the table at church during Wednesday Night Supper discussing the exhaustion that always begins to overtake us at the end of any semester, compounded by all the extras happening in our lives right now, my friend and colleague sitting next to me received a phone call.  We knew immediately that the call wasn't a good one...and our group silently waited for her to hang up and tell us what had happened.

Another friend of ours' husband had been found dead.

We sat stunned...I literally froze and my mouth dropped open.

When we finally regained our composure, we immediately began dialing our own cell phones to confirm the news as well as to find out what was happening and what we could do. 

Slowly the word came back to us that he had died from a gunshot...and then the most stunning news of all...that the gunshot was self-inflicted.

You could have heard a pin drop.

Lee and David (not their real names) had a marriage that was real...based on love, trust, friendship and honor.  They were in it for the long haul and loved their family, farm and two beautiful daughters.  Two harder working people in our community do not exist...they answered every call, supported every need, and were deeply devoted to their family and community.

How in the world could this happen to them?

My friend Sandi and I left the church and went Lee and David's home.  The sheriff, coroner, doctor, etc were still there and we supported Lee as they officially pronounced her husband dead, performed the obligatory scene investigation, transferred David's personal effects to Lee and then removed his body from the scene.

Sandi and I stayed into the night...sometimes supporting Lee and following instructions and sometimes just off in a dark corner by ourselves discussing life...and faith.

I don't know any other way to make sense of something like this.

After a long night of visitation...which lasted over 5 hours...the line to get in to speak to Lee and her girls and the rest of their family was wrapped inside and outside the funeral home all night, Lee buried her husband, her soulmate, the father of her children Saturday morning. 

While I have no doubt that Lee will find her feet (albeit probably a while from now), she does not yet understand why.  She admits that she will probably never know.  David did not leave a note, and as of yet, there is no indication of any particular event that might have caused him to take his own life.

As a community we will surround her and her girls with love...we will all become her daughters' parents and we'll figure out a way to help them keep living.

Our own daughters are friends of Lee and David's daughters; they have asked us a lot of questions and we have answered them as best as we can.  I'm sure we'll be talking about these tragic events for some time.

As for the Head of My Household, I've told him many times that if it ever crossed his mind that we would be better off without him, he'd just better think again.  We all like to act like we're tough, independent women...and we are...but he is our stabilizer.  He adds the quiet control that all 4 of us females need.  He's getting a little overwhelmed with all the kissing, hugging and constant reminders of our love...but he'll just have to get over it.

Please kiss and hug the ones you love today...and tell them that you love them.

And, please say a little prayer for my friend Lee.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and NonViolence

In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must

forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I use the text of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech in my Comp I class during our Persuasion/Argument unit.  I am surprised each semester by how many students (of all races) have never read or even seen the video clip of the actual speech.  This experience solidly reinforces to me the notion that history forgotten is history repeated; each generation removed from an historical event loses some of the emotional impact the event/person originally caused or generated. 

There is no other way, in my opinion, to explain the explosion of senseless violence that seems to have become so normal today.  If a person doesn't care for another person's way of life, political stance, race, culture, sexual orientation, etc, annihalating that person and everything/everyone he/she stands for seems to be the knee jerk reaction these days.  Nevermind the innocents who may also be destroyed in the process...just collateral damage, I guess.

It is possible for us all to live together in the world today, but a healthy dose of perspective and an open mind (even if just a crack at a time) are vital in a world where violence is no longer considered the first line of defense.

Maybe we should all have more dreams.