Book Club Selection: A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman

Have you recovered from yesterday’s disappointing Groundhog Day results? Well, they aren’t all bad. With six more weeks of winter ahead, we have lots more time to cozy up with a good book. Like Emily Freeman’s A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live.

It’s the next pick for the Food for Thought Book Club. Together, we will take in Emily’s thoughts on how God has designed each one of us to bring Him glory and joy—and how we can uncover it, nurture it, and live it each day.

We’ll meet in February to discuss Part 1, in March for Part 2, and in April for Part 3. Let me know by February 10 if you would like to come! You can RSVP in the comments or e-mail me directly. Then I’ll include you on the e-mail thread to set the dates that work for the most gals.

For now, grab a copy of the book and start reading. Mark any parts that are especially meaningful to you.

This is best way I can think of to spend these last weeks of winter! Hope you can come. And by the time we wrap, spring will be here!

Visit me at The High Calling today for a wrap-up on Ann Kroeker’s Not So Fast.

I Want to Live Slow on the Inside

Was it just one week ago? It feels much longer.

I can still hear the Pacific waves crashing to shore. I can still feel the warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze. And I can still sense the comfort of being tucked next to my soul mate’s side, the heaviness of his arm about my shoulders.

Just seven days ago, I had a few hours of unhurried bliss.

I want to go slow enough to make new friends.

We were in Carlsbad, California, for the Carlsbad 5000

Have You Been Bullied by Busyness?

When you think of your daily life, what word comes to mind?

For many Americans, the word is busy.

We are busy working, busy playing. We are busy at home and at church, in the community and in our thoughts.

Sometimes I wonder if busy is merely a catchall term used to summarize the typical trappings of everyday life. If everyone is busy, then busy is normal, expected, common.

But busy doesn’t feel that way to me. When I have too much happening, busy feels abnormal. It’s as if my heart undergoes an allergic reaction, bucking against busy with all its might.

Life may have its typical share of busyness, but I don’t think our hearts were meant to run at such speeds.

How do we slow down? How do we listen to our hearts that cry out for a bit of slowness?

That’s what we’ll be looking at each Monday in April for The High Calling book club:. as we read Ann Kroeker’s Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families. Ann has stopped to look busy full in the face, to see it for what it is. She has found that:

“The hurried life loses its rhythm. It just pushes and pushes with no pauses, leaving barren souls, cluttered with activity but emptied of meaning.” (42)

Do you ever feel that way? Bullied by busyness, left barren by it? I have. Busy has run me around and worn me out.

It’s only when I’ve stopped to assess my life, to listen to my heart that I see where busyness tries to boss me around. I’ve excommunicated it by clearing my schedule and drawing boundaries, only to find myself back in the swing of it just months later.

Keeping tabs on busyness is an ongoing task for me. I regularly have to step back and see what’s making me spin inside and out, and put my foot down to stop the ride and keep myself of getting sick from the dizziness.

This is what Ann writes about in Not So Fast. She asks great questions:

• With all that’s filling our lives, why aren’t we more fulfilled?
• Are we too busy for God?
• Are our hearts calloused by the relentless paces and pressure of our schedules?
• Are we missing the beauty of Christ?

If the pace of your life has outpaced your heart’s capacity to rest, I invite you to grab a copy of Ann’s book and make time for it. Her words are calm waters to our frantic souls, reminding me of a song by Sara Groves titled “Just One More Thing”:

There will never be an end to • The request upon your time • It’s your place to stand up and tell the world • You’ve got to rest awhile

Busy is more than a full calendar. It’s a heart that’s tossed by every wave. So this month, I’m going to practice slowing down. I want to be busy with knowing God, resting in Him, basking in the beauty of Christ.

Want to join me? Grab a book and dig in, then come every Monday to join the discussion. Next week: Chapters 4–7.

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Join us Tuesday, March 5, 7 PM!

Don’t Forget the Variable of Grace in Work’s Equation

If you were to pinpoint when your professional life solidified, you might name a workplace manager or mentor. Or you might think of a college professor who inspired you. You might even go back a bit further to name a high school teacher or your parents.

Although there are likely many influences, the shaping of your career still took plenty of work and dedication on your part—schooling, studies, work ethic, and the like. We still had to show up to class and study. We had to make connections and take chances. We had to get to work early and be willing to stay late.

Our professional lives are a direct result of our hard work.

But we forget something in this equation,

My Big Fat Greek Definition of Work

By nature, I’m a dreamer. I could read and ponder my days away, staring into the skies and scribbling in journals to process the many thoughts that rattle about in my heart, soul, and mind.

What I am by nature has also been influenced by nurture. I would name many influences—Jesus, family, friends, education, society, and so on.

Greek philosophers would not have made the list. But after reading Part 1 of Timothy Keller’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work for The High Calling book club, I have discovered they deserve a spot.

Does Our Daily Work Make Any Difference?

In my last weeks as an undergraduate student, I spent my daydreaming on my yet-to-be-decided first professional job. I imagined it would match the project work from my capstone courses—research, problem solving, team discussion, discovery, reporting.

To say I romanticized the notion of work would be an understatement.

Doubt and Faith Pave the Way to Wonder

It is often assumed that faith is the opposite of doubt, as if these are diametrically opposed. Instead, I see them working in conjunction, like two sides of the same coin. This partnering of faith and doubt ushers us to the conclusion of Karen Swallow Prior’s Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me for The High Calling book club. It’s a fitting end to a book so beautifully fixed on the process of growing, of becoming.

This process to becoming is life long, with plenty of faith and doubt to go around. Although doubt is often feared in Christian circles, Prior says that avid and “promiscuous reading has humbled me in showing me that ‘there is nothing new under the sun.’ As real and as important as any questions I have might be, I’ve seen that they are not unique to me. There is comfort in this, and chastening, too.” (191)

Doubt pushes us to seek answers that we might not be motivated to search for otherwise. When doubts plague me, I am forced to engage, to wrestle, to refuse to sit idle—to keep pressing through the darkness until faith becomes sight. And because my questions are only new to me, someone has wrestled with it before me. Their searching and finding in days past bring flickers of light to my current darkness.

Whereas doubt can often be pegged as anti-faith, Prior explains that this ability to question reflects how we are made in the image of our Creator: “Even the ability to doubt him, to struggle against him, to wonder at his ways is rooted in him. Certainty seems bigger than me, skepticism smaller. Wonder is just right.” (191)

I like that. Certainty feels like blind faith that refuses to address the very real difficulties we face in our becoming here on earth. And skepticism feels like denial that something within pushes us to acknowledge God, even if it’s to blame Him for what we don’t like around us.

Wonder feels like a freshly washed bed sheet snapped into a sweet-smelling canopy. Under its cover, I find room for all my faith, all my doubt. Wonder allows for questions, for pain, for frustration, for awe, for trust, for praise. Wonder covers me, reminding me that I do not know everything. But I know the One who does. In this process of becoming, I find that to be just right.

Calling the Real Erin to the Stage of Life

Life is a long process of discovery—who we are, what we are made to be and do, and what the world is all about. In this week’s reading of Karen Swallow Prior’s Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me for The High Calling book club, I’m appreciating how Prior associates books and reading to this discovery process. Each chapter has a particular book highlighted as she shares her heart and childhood process that has brought her to where she is today.

Chapter 4 features Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (which I have not read but now have added to my must-read list). Prior speaks of one character’s need to have separate selves for work and home, something that is common to us