Summer reading program…check in/check out <3

Well, well, well…the start of a new month and I am wanting to press down hard on the brakes of time. 

In our home, July 4th is not just the birthday of this country, but the celebration of the birth of our third child. And we all know in this house that once we celebrated John’s birthday, summer was basically on the fast track out. 

It will be no time until the stores that have been trying to sell us sleeveless tops and shorts will be trying to convince us we need to up our sweater/boot game. 

But we will embrace all that July holds and love what summer is..even when it’s hotter than we like and the humidity wreaks havoc.

Since it is the first of the month, I am sticking with this book plan. I hope you don’t mind, it certainly is holding me accountable. 

Although all I have to show for the month of June for reading is one completed and one nearly completed book. 

I finished “Your God is too Small” by J. B. Phillips and read almost all of “Boundaries” by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend. 

I think I shared a bit of thoughts on the J. B. Phillips book in last months post, but would add these thoughts having finished it. 

Phillips divides the book into “destructive” and “constructive” thoughts about God. The first section offers a variety of ways that we, even in the Church, have skewed views of who God is. 

The second section helps establish the much broader view we need to embrace of the power and might of our God and how harmful it is when we scale Him down to what we can totally understand and hopefully explain. 

The reading was challenging.

Phillips thoughts and writing style are not easy-breezy. I had to really focus and concentrate and go back over paragraphs.

It is a book I have started and put down several times and I am happy I muscled through. It is marked up now and will be going on the shelf as one I refer back to over the years I have left working out this salvation with fear and trembling. 

Boundaries is another book I had started and stopped numerous times.

As I pushed through and found much good material, I realized that the reason I would put it down and not pick it back up was because the opening chapter covers a rather lengthy description of a woman with poor boundaries. 

I found it exhausting to invest in her story and would give up. There are, throughout the book, other examples of people who had boundary issues and again, I would get weary reading about their situations. 

This is a “me” problem.

If you ascribe to the Enneagram theories, I am a Four and tend to absorb the emotions of others around me. To pursue the book meant I had to purposefully disengage from the examples and just move on to the material that was helpful in explaining appropriate and Christ-like boundaries. 

I should be finished with this one by the start of next week, and I hope to share some thoughts gleaned…so stay tuned!

As for next month…and if you follow this little reading project, you may notice that some get removed and others added because I am both a mood reader, and I tend to lose track of books as they move from bag to shelf to bag…and months later I rediscover one I meant to read…sigh…it’s a problem.

Here is the stack of dreams for July:

As you can see, one is the Truthfilled Bible study by Ruth Chou Simons. I am loving this study and enjoying the fact that the videos are less than 10 minutes but packed with wisdom. 

I am excited to read A Wrinkle in Time again.

I read it as a child and as a mom when I suggested to our children it was a good one and now I hope to read along with Graham. Tia gifted him a copy and this is a classic from my childhood that I hope he loves as much as I do. 

The one on families who lived in lighthouses is one we picked up on our fall trip to Galena.

It was tucked into a shelf of about ten thousand books in one of the many antique shops. I have long held an interest in what life may have been like for these families so am looking forward to what this one holds for me. 

And there you have it…

except I want to know……what are YOU reading this summer????