Book Review: A Simple Change

It has been at least four years since I sat down and read a book cover to cover in just one day. I couldn't put this one down!

Apparently the second book in a series (which I just now discovered when I was searching for the cover image), A Simple Change is the beautiful story of a girl learning to live in a world that is at once simpler and more complex than the one she's used to.

What I liked most about this book was that the themes of morality are carried throughout. Y'all have heard me gripe before about the "follow your heart and damn the consequences" message that was so prevalent in my childhood. This book is exactly the kind of story I've been looking for: one where smart decisions play a key role and consideration for how your choices affect other people is strongly encouraged.

Despite the moral and religious themes, this book lacks nothing in entertainment. The story moves quickly, the characters are developed well, and there's just the right amount of description - not enough to be burdensome, but not so little that you can't imagine the picture being painted.

Even though this was the second book in the series, I don't feel like I came into the middle of a story. It had a very clear beginning point and a great wrap up - with room for me to wonder "and then what happened?" so I'll probably be grabbing the rest of the series pretty soon here.

I love finding an historic romance novel that isn't just a bunch of contrived scenarios with sex scenes thrown in! (For those wanting to avoid it, this book actually doesn't have any sex. They don't even kiss until the last few chapters, it's all very wholesome). The story is well thought out and realistic, and I truly enjoyed myself.

I could say more, but I'll stop here and have you guys check out the Amazon listing for this if you're interested in finding out more.

*disclaimer: I received this book from a friend, who did not ask me to review it. This review is in no way associated with Amazon.

Book Review: Life on the Family Farm

Have you ever gone to a friend's family holiday event, sat uncomfortably on the floor, and listened to one of their relatives you'd never met before ramble on about how things used to be?

Me neither, but that's the picture I got in my mind each time I tried to read Life on the Family Farm by Tom Heck.

In all fairness, I'm sure loads of people enjoyed this book. People who, for example, lived on a family farm. It's full of quirky little stories about gophers and pulling rocks out of the fields and mending fences.

I think I really could have enjoyed this book, if it were just written a little differently. 30 pages in, I still had no idea why I should give a hoot about this dude or his farm (with its gophers and fences). I was having trouble keeping his kids names straight - probably because he was throwing them out willy-nilly without any context to make me care or anchor me to the person he was describing. I had no reason to care, no context to anchor to, nothing to really get me into the stories. 30 pages in, and I was done listening to my friend's grandpa tell discordant, rambling tales about the good ol' days when you put in a hard day's work and enjoyed fishing down by the creek in the evening.

For those of you who do enjoy this sort of thing, the chapters are small and easy to get through. You could even take it one quirky story at a time as you have your five or ten minute breaks throughout the day. It might even be relaxing to read a story that finishes off with a description of the big, beautiful, open skies at the end of a long and productive day.

If you're interested in checking out this book for yourself (or learning more about the author and what some people who actually enjoyed this book have to say), you can find all of that and more here.

*disclaimer: I received this book from a friend and was not specifically asked to review it. Amazon is not in any way affiliated with this review.

Book Review: Infuse

I love, love, love this book!

Not really being a person who drinks, about a third of it is almost totally useless to me. I mean, I might gift something infused to a family member for fun, but it's not going to become something I refer back to often. Despite that, I still love this book!

There's a great mixture of stories in with the recipes and instructions, and - oh my word - the pictures are amazing! Artistic and informative, the pictures accompanying these recipes are so beautiful I could just stare at them.

I didn't realize I was such an amateur infuser (I've been tossing fruit slices into a plastic pitcher of water for a day or two, nothing like this). I'm excited to try the recipes, which seem easy to follow -- and have I mentioned the pictures? Overall, I'm really happy that this book is now a member of my kitchen. And I'm really looking forward to upping my infusing game!

I received this book from Blogging For Books for review - and I'm so glad! For more information, visit the author's bio page here (and order your own copy!).

Day 317 - All Things New

The transformation of a butterfly is by no means an easy process. One day, after a full life as a caterpillar, the little bug starts to build itself a grave. It labors harder than its ever worked before, building this grave onto its own body. It closes the last gap, leaving itself squeezed into a vessel half the size of its body...

and it completely dissolves.

That's right. The magical thing that's happening inside the cocoon is a tiny bug slowly turning into goop. The brain and a tiny set of wings, which were contained inside the caterpillar's body, are all that's left of the caterpillar it once was. Brain, wings, and goop. Then the goop begins to form a new bug body, and the wings grow larger inside the cocoon, until there's no room left in the tiny grave for the new creature. It fights its way out of the tightly-wrapped husk, but it still isn't finished. After this long process of building a grave, turning to goop, and becoming an entirely different bug, the butterfly still has to go through the work of carefully un-folding its crumpled up and still mostly goopy wings. Then it rests, beautiful but vunerable, while it waits for the wings to dry and solidify.

Only after it has gone through this arduous journey can a butterfly be appreciated. Until then, it's just a bug. A butterfly's purpose in the ecosystem is to pollenate flowers so that new flowers and vegetables and fruits can grow. But before it goes through this process of dissolving into goop and then becoming a whole new bug, the work it does has little to do with pollenation.

The Bible holds two major references to transformation. The first is in 2 Chrorinthians 5:17
 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

The second major reference is in Revalation chapter 21. To paraphrase: Heaven and earth pass away and God makes a new heaven and a new earth. 

People like these verses. And why wouldn't we? They hold the promise that gets us through the hard times, the promise that someday things will be better. 

What people forget is the part that comes before things being better: The part where everything ends. People forget that the caterpillar isn't just resting in a bed while it painlessly and magically becomes a butterfly. It's dissolving, turning into goop, and becoming a whole new bug. Jesus talked over and over again about how stepping into the life he has for us will require leaving everything else behind.

What if the caterpillar stayed a caterpillar? What if it decided that building its own grave was frightening, that turning to goop sounded too painful, or that it didn't want to become a new bug because then it might lose its personality as a caterpillar? It would never reach its purpose. It would never become a useful part of the ecosystem. It would be forever trapped as the menace that eats the leaves of our squash plants. 

Or worse, what if the caterpillar went through the trial of building its grave, turned into goop, and then gave up because becoming a new bug was just too hard after all it had already been through? Sometimes, for whatever reason, you'll find a long-dead chrysalis with no sign that a butterfly has emerged. Because if you choose to stay in your pain, if you choose not to move past being goop, you can't get what you need to continue living. Maybe the husk will stick around, like a dead chrysalis on a tree branch, but your spirit will suffocate, starve, and die. 

God is in the business of new. But new cannot happen while old is in the way. First the old things must be gotten rid of, and then the new can be formed. 

Maybe you feel like you're far away from your purpose. Maybe you feel like you're surrounded by pain and everything's falling apart. Maybe, like the butterfly, you feel like you're finally on the other end of the struggle but you still can't move forward. 

Just remember: All things new. Step by step, day by day, old things are being removed so that there is room for the new. If you simply continue on the path you know is right - doing the things day by day that will move you closer to your goals - some day you will be able to look at your past from a higher perspective and you will say "That time of my life was painful, and it was frightening, and sometimes I felt like giving up. But today I am a whole new person, I'm fulfilling my purpose like never before, and I know that the pain I went through was just a piece of what brought me to this place."

Day 309 - I Win

It's important to celebrate our victories.

For about two weeks, I've been working hard to change some of my food habits. Specifically, my storage and preparation habits. I ceared the clutter from my pantry and super organized it - learning in the process that I had about 3x the space I thought I did! I bought new storage containers, and I started specifically storing things in pre-weighed portions. I even started cooking up a little extra when I made dinner, storing that away for later.

I also changed what I bought, going for whole wheat pastas, brown rice, and a mixture of fresh, frozen, and canned fruits and vegetables.

It was a lot of work. I won't kid you. And it was a lot of work I was doing even when I was tired, or when my injury was bothering me. I was even starting to feel like it was a whole lotta work for a whole lotta nothing. But then...

Yesterday I hit the wall with six hours to go. I was tired enough to fall asleep standing up, kept awake mostly by the pain in my leg from hving overdone it for the day, and I still had six hours of errands and meetings to go to.

I was crying as I dragged myself into the house after it was all over. I had no brain power for talking to my husband, or figuring out what was for dinner, and I was certainly not up for standing at the counter for an hour to chop and cook healthy veggies and meat.

Used to be, that was when I depended on Papa John to rescue me. I'd order up some comfort food and drop onto the couch to inhale my overlarge portion.

But I've been working so hard to change my habits...and it worked. I didn't even think about good ol' John. I just went to my fridge and threw some stuff together without a thought. My autopilot was in control, and I was going to eat whatever it ended up with.

Here's the win part: dinner last night was good, and it was healthy!

I ended up with whole wheat pasta with some cheese (a perfect portion, thanks to earlier work), diced chicken (left over from a double batch when I made chicken tacos) with just a little bit of low-cal teriyaki suce (not glaze!), and pears from a can.

Exciting? Not really. But it fit in perfectly with my goals - which I didn't even realize until I punched it into my calorie tracker while the pasta cooled. As a bonus, I was so perfectly within my macronutrient goals yesterday, I actually woke up two pounds lighter!

Moral of the story: put the work into changing your habits, and your habits will change the way you live.

Book review: The World Before Us by Aislynn Hunter

Someone disappears,  and someone else's life is changed forever.

The World Before Us is a page-turner, following the main character - Jane - as she digs into the secrets of the past. I found this book extraordinarily written, and I was engrossed. I loved the characters and the just-right description,  as well as the way the story trotted along. However, at the end I found myself asking whether I'd read the same story the author was intending to write. I became very attached to certain characters whose story I felt was left incomplete (despite the beautiful way the main character story closed).

All in all a good book, but with a somewhat disappointing finish for me.

(I received this book for review from Blogging For Books)

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