Books I've read recently

I wrote back in October that our schedule was less busy than we were used to, that has continued. While we came back to Australia with some big audacious goals (the main one being getting our sons settled into living independently here, especially our middle son who has extra challenges), achieving those goals hasn't been a full 40-hr a week job each week. On top of that, for various reasons we've had fewer church and other groups to visit. We've also not been tied to school drop-offs and pick ups. And then our sons moved out in February and we discovered that we had even more time available to us (meal prep and clean-up took less time, for example). And then, obviously, we had two months of leave! It's been a really different home assignment.

So I've had to figure out how to use my time meaningfully when it's not full of the daily deadlines that were the reality of my work in the last several years in publishing. And with all of the above changes, there has been many a day when I've woken up wondering just what I was going to do to fill my time that day.

A few possibilities for how to use my time were taking on further study or volunteering more of my time to our church or another organisation. None of these were ideal because of the lack of consistency I could offer. Particularly with two months of long service leave thrown in there. We haven't been at our church every week because we have had to speak at other churches some Sundays. We've also only got one car, and some weeks it's been pretty busy as David helped each of our sons get the necessary driving hours to qualify to take a driving test, or been helping them with other tasks.

So in the end I haven't volunteered much anywhere. One thing I have done, however, is read. I have read more non-fiction than I usually do, as an attempt at personal growth. Some of the non-fiction books I've read during our HA include:

• Trusting God by Jerry Bridges
• The Bible Jesus Read by Philip Yancey
• A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul E. Miller
• Writely or Wrongly: An unstuffy guide to language by Joanne Anderson
• How Writing Works: a field guide to effective writing by Roslyn Petelin
• First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing . . . and Life by Joe Moran
• The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine by Isaiah Wilner
• My Dream Time: A Memoir of Tennis and Teamwork by Ash Barty
• The Container Victory Garden: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries by Maggie Stuckey
• Australian History in Seven Questions by John Hirst

It's turned out to be a great way to use my time on those days that I have extra hours to fill. The three I have read most recently are pictured here (not in the list) and they've all been very good.

Bullies and Saints was an excellent overview of the history of the church from the perspective of the good and not-so-good things that people who call themselves Christians have done over the centuries. I love history and really appreciated the perspective that the author, John Dickson, was able to provide. It definitely provided perspective on our current cultural climate, and the place of Christianity in it. His podcast Undeceptions is also excellent and I recommend it for thoughtful, well-researched content that addresses many things aside from history, including really difficult contemporary topics.

David and I read the Keller book on marriage together after dinner for a few weeks. It's also given us a better perspective on marriage in several areas. I definitely recommend it to any married person along with singles, pretty much any adult, but particularly those interested in a Christian perspective on marriage.

I'm not quite finished the Carson book on A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers. It isn't the easiest book, but it's really good. For years I've used Paul's prayers in various Biblical letters to help me when, on our prayer schedule, I am allocated the task to pray for people who I barely know or haven't been in recent touch with. So this book about Paul's prayers has given me new insight and new encouragement to pray for people prayers that have more depth. For example, rather than  to  say "Please bless Sue", to pray that God would give her power to know his love deeper and to grow in her knowledge of God and love for others. 

To keep myself ploughing through the above book (and others before it), I've tried to set aside specific reading times. For example, a daily reading time over coffee mid afternoon out on my deck. Top tip: over the years I've found it easier to get things that aren't top of my priorities/joys done (like house cleaning and reading more difficult books) if they are tied to a schedule or some other marker.

Reading has many, many benefits. It's a great way to help you with conversation too: the number of times that I've brought up things in a book I've recently read could not be counted! A book like the one by Ash Barty is a great potential conversation starter in a variety of situations.

I'm grateful for the quieter weeks we've had this year, and the opportunity to invest in reading in a way that I haven't had a chance to do for nearly 25 years!