what i'm reading: all the pretty things and others

I just finished Edie Wadsworth’s beautiful memoir All the Pretty Things: The Story of a Southern Girl Who Went through Fire to Find Her Way Home. It was a deep and vulnerable and hope-filled story, and I think you guys will love it. It’s about loving flawed people, forgiving the unforgivable, and finding grace and forgiveness for your own failures.

I finished Shauna Niequist’s Present Over Perfect a while ago, and the challenge it brought me to redefine success in my daily life is still pressing into my soul. I have come face to face with my contorted way of trying to earn grace and impress Jesus lately. The emptiness that is in that endless race is not what I want. I am learning the beauty of being His is far sweeter than earning a crown I can’t hold in His presence. Present Over Perfect may be my favorite book this year.

I started Brown Girl Dreaming a few weeks ago in the bookstore. I haven’t finished it yet, but I can’t wait to pick it back up! It’s free verse autobiographical poetry about growing up as an African American girl in the South during the civil rights era. The words amazing, deep, moving, and brilliant don’t come close enough to telling you how I feel about it so far.

I’m taking looooong plane ride to Africa soon, so I have a stack of books waiting to head with me over the Atlantic. I’m a little nervous about spending DOZENS of hours on a plane, you guys. I’m also a wee bit anxious because I’m leaving my “babies” at home. Of course, the only more stressful scenario would be taking all four of my kids with me on the plane for thirty hours, so I’m basking in the joy of not dying a bazillion deaths as a result of my children losing their minds on planes. Even so, I don’t sleep on planes at all- even if I take sleeping pills, so I will arrive in Africa a full-fledged, very well-read zombie. Bless it.

I can’t say how these books are because I haven’t started them yet. But here they are: