I know it’s only been a couple of months since my last books I’m reading post, but I’ve just reeeally been benefitting from these latest reads…

Messy Beautiful Friendship by Christine Hoover
This book came on recommendation from a blogger I started following recently, and after reading the excerpt she posted, I ordered it promptly. After just the first few chapters, I declared to my husband that this book is one every woman needs to read. Because honestly, do you know anyone that hasn’t at some point struggled with this whole mess called friendship? Whether you’re pleasantly surrounded, feeling particularly isolated or wondering why making friends can just be so dang hard, this book applies. Full of Biblical and practical food for thought, it will change the way you look at the women God has placed in your life.

“We want friends, all of us do…curiously, however, we seem to be standing beside one another, holding identical longings yet resolutely believing we’re alone in them. But the truth is we aren’t actually wandering alone and aimless in a desert; we’re practically tripping over each other as we grasp at our ideal dreams for friendship.”

Hints on Child Training by H. Clay Trumbull
Pulled this one off my shelf to re-read on a particularly exasperating day of parenting recently, and have been underlining and starring sections like crazy. Written by Elisabeth Elliot’s great grandfather in 1890, the language is a bit clunky at times, but the concepts set forth are so wonderfully life-giving. This book will make you love and appreciate your children more, which is really saying something for a book on child training. The sweet thread of tender mercy + grace runs throughout. Amazing how these words penned so many years ago are applicable today as ever. 

“It is the mistake of many parents to suppose that their chief duty is in loving and counseling their children, rather than in loving and training them; that they are faithfully to show their children what they ought to do, rather than to make them do it… As God, our wise and loving Father in heaven, deals with us His children, so we, as earthly fathers (and mothers), should deal with our children. We should guard sacredly their privilege of personal choice; and while using every proper means to induce them to choose aright, we should never, never, never force their choice, even into the direction of our intelligent preference for them. The final responsibility of a choice and of its consequences rests with the child, and not with the parent. “

A Shelter in the Time of Storm by Paul Tripp
I’ve been reading the short chapters from this book most mornings over the past couple of months, and it has been such a wonderful way to start to my day. There are 52 meditations, poetry amidst practical chapters, all based off of Psalm 27 — “a psalm of trouble and worship, of difficulty and beauty, of the evil of people against people, and of the mercy of God.”

“I am safe because of the glorious mystery of grace.
I am safe because of the presence of boundless love.
I am safe because of
divine mercy,
divine wisdom,
divine power,
and divine grace.
I am safe not because I never face danger,
but because you are with me in it…
I’m safe because you have given me
the one thing
that is the only thing
that will ever keep me safe.
You have given me
You.
I am safe.”

So good, right? What have you been reading lately?