Reflections: on Books!

I love to read. Books are enlightening, interesting, engrossing. Books can shape who we become. They give us reasons to meet up with friends {Yay Book Club!}. They give us a common language, one of my favorite reasons to read aloud with my kids! I went through a period of not reading and fell out of the habit. Sometime in this past decade I decided to get myself back into the habit of reading, so I started with a goal that felt possible: 12 books a year. And I did it! It became something I started challenging myself to do every year and now I read about 25-35 books a year. One thing I've learned is that it is ok to not finish a book. It was hard for me to give my permission to do so, but there are so many great books out there, why was I forcing myself to finish something I knew I didn't want to finish? I've kept a simple note on my phone since 2019 with books I've read, so I'm going to share some with you today. As I look back over the list, I have a few asterisks, so I assume that means I really enjoyed those :D I love a good book list or recommendations from others and I hope this list might give you a new book or two to add to your list as well! 

Dressing up in character for one of our Family Book Clubs with our A&W group. 

Chop Wood Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf

Loving Our Kids on Purpose by Danny Silk

The Life-Giving Parent by Sally Clarkson 

Water Walker by Ted Dekker 

Be You. Do Good. by Jonathan David Golden 

Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie 

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry 

Emotional Agility by Susan David 

There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather by Linda Akeson McGurk 

Adventuring Together by Greta Eskridge

The Circle Trilogy by Ted Dekker

Awaking Wonder by Sally Clarkson

Even the Sparrow by Jill Weber 

All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriott 

Take Back Your Family by Jefferson Bethke 

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 

Built to Move by Kelly and Juliet Starrett 

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

The Tarantula in my Purse by Jean Craighead George

8 Great Smarts by Kathy Koch

The Whole and Healthy Family by Jodi Mockabee 

No Neutral Ground by Pete Portal

The Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers

A Girl Called Zippy by Haven Kimmel 

Younger Next Year by Henry S. Lodge

The Thing with Feathers by Noah Stryker

Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff

Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John 

The Printed Letter Bookshop by Katherine Reay 

The Penderwicks Book series by Jeanne Birdsall 

Chasing Slow and The Opt-Out Family by Erin Loechner 

It Wasn't Roaring It was Weeping by Lisa-Jo Baker

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 

Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace

The Connection Cure by Julia Hotz

The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop

The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Fast Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz 

Nothing Else But Miracles by Kate Albus

Currently Reading: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 

Cool! As I was looking back over these lists, 2024 was a really great year! I read 39 books that year and quite a few made it on this list. I tried to include books on this list only if I could remember what the story was about or something I had learned from them or a picture that has stayed in my mind ever since. I hope one or two might inspire you. If I had more time, I'd go back and do a quick little summary, but I don't feel up to it right now. So if you want to know more about one of these books, please ask! 

To reading... delightful books! 

Reflections: on Movement

I grew up in a family of hard workers. We labored -- gardening, caring for animals, carrying in firewood, mowing. Both of my parents have physically active jobs/lives. As a child, I loved sports, playing outside, and dancing. It kept me active and made life enjoyable for me. But "exercise" felt like.. a punishment. I started running with my sister prior to my senior year in high school and kept running for track and then intermittently in college and into my 20s. I felt like cardio was good enough. I stayed out of the weight room because it felt "boring" and "wouldn't really get my heart rate up". These were my perceptions. Flash forward to *you guessed it* 2016 and I had three kids and wanted to be able to move and keep up, but didn't know where or how to start. I felt tired, running was sorta painful, and I didn't have hours of time on my hands. First habit? Balance 365 presented a walking challenge. So simple. Yet it changed my trajectory, again! 

May 2017 

 I had recently found out I was pregnant with child #4 and the last pregnancy had been rough. What could I do? Well, I could walk! And I did. And I just kept going. In the book "Built to Move" by Kelly and Juliet Starrett, which my sister gave me in 2023, Vital Sign 4 is entitled "Walk this Way" and is all about daily movement. They talk about how it may be good to put in a hard workout for 30 min. every day, but if you're sitting for the rest of the day, your body is going to deteriorate (my paraphrase). So I got a pedometer and aim for an average of 8,000 steps a day. Sometimes I bring my kids along on a walk if I know I need some extra steps for the day. Sometimes I go for an alone walk. I will often meet up with a friend to walk and talk. I park further from the door at stores and places I'm going. It all adds up to more overall movement. 

Walking is essential, I can see myself doing it the rest of my life. But I began to learn more about functional mobility and started to think more about my longevity and the fact that I want to be able to move well as I age. This led me to read Younger Next Year and start reading stories about people who were moving well late into life. They were consistently saying the same things: you have to move now if you want to move later. Strength training is crucial. It doesn't matter if you feel like it, just do it. So I started. 9Round served me well for a couple of years -- I loved hitting and kicking those punching bags!! I enjoyed having the workout pre-programmed and trainers to motivate me. But I realized I wanted to be able to work out around my kids so they could see what I was doing and join me sometimes. So I got a Y pass and that was a flop! I had no idea what I was doing in the weight area and ended up using the track mostly. My sister saw me flailing and on my 38th birthday she got me a very confusing gift :P It was called Street Parking and I questioned why she would give me a pass to park downtown when I don't like driving down there to begin with! But I found out it was a workout program. The people who created it are CrossFit trainers who wanted to make something accessible for people to be able to workout from home with a set of dumbbells. And I fell in love! My biggest obstacle had been not knowing how to come up with a workout of my own -- and this solved that problem. My next obstacle was not knowing the terminology -- what is a hang power clean? a snatch? a turkish get-up? They include videos for all the moves! Can a pair of dumbbells really be enough to get in an adequate strength training session? They can! I've seen progress -- I look and feel stronger. I can do more than I used to. When I saw that progress shift was when I transitioned from three workouts a week to four or five. Initially, that felt like too much of a time commitment. I thought I needed to read through each new daily workout and figure it out and sometimes that felt like too much work. But when they suggested saving your favorite workouts and repeating them, that was a game-changer for me. Last September, I looked at my trophy case and decided to set myself a goal of hitting my first 365 workouts by my 40th birthday: meaning I would have worked out every other day for 2 whole years! I'm not going to quite make it, but I'm super close. As of today I have worked out on 337 days over the past two years.  

Something I've come to love is rucking. Very simply: carrying weight in a backpack while you walk. In "Built to Move" it is described like this: "It's strength and cardio in one. It's cardio for the person who hates running, and strength work for the person who hates lifting." p. 125. I did it for over a year with a backpack, a 10# dumbbell, and some towels. You truly don't need to buy anything to start! After I realized this is something I wanted to keep doing, I decided it was time to level up with an actual weighted vest. Now nearly every Tuesday you can find me out for a 20-30 minute ruck. I don't have to change my clothes or set aside a bunch of time. I put on tennis shoes and my vest and leave. Sometimes I just barely squeak it in between teaching piano lessons; sometimes I bring it along on a walk with a friend; sometimes I go the full 30 minutes and other times it's a quick mile.  It doesn't add anything to my mental load for the day because I've already pre-decided that it's what I'm doing. The benefits for me are many. Plus it's fun and accessible to do with others. My sister and I try to go for a long ruck once a month which is a win-win because we both care about movement and spending time together! 

Street Parking has changed the way I approach resistance training. I feel supported to be able to move consistently. They remind us frequently that it's simple, but not easy. My mind has become more tough through these workouts as I coach myself to just do the next move and the next one and then the next. I tell myself it doesn't matter if I am slow, I will keep moving and I will keep trying and it won't kill me like my brain seems to think. I am stronger and tougher than I thought. 

To movement... and building tenacity! 

Reflections: On Food

My jumping off point came in 2016 {look at that! I didn't really consider that I started this exactly 10 years ago}, so apparently I really did kick off my 30s with this mindset shift. My cousin told me about a group called Balance 365 (it had a different name then) about making habit changes, working on your body positivity, and taking good care of your body. It clicked for me. THE thing that shifted everything for me was their advice to make a habit so small that you can achieve it 90-100% of the time as soon as you begin it. Whoa! Is it really worth starting that small? What's the point if I can't prove myself? What if there is nothing to show for my efforts? But I jumped in. My first habit? Eat protein at breakfast every day. I was a cereal-for-breakfast kind of girl. And often, would eat cereal before bed at night too! When I was working on campus at SWBTS (in my 20s), around 10 am, everyday I would find myself hungry and often going to the on-campus coffee shop for a sugary, iced coffee drink. This was normal. When I made the change to protein at breakfast I found *gasp* I didn't really notice hunger until lunch time. This was especially helpful because I was nursing babies, raising and chasing three littles ones, pregnant, and needed energy during these years and was tired of feeling hungry all the time!  

After I got the protein habit down, I decided to try another habit from their list: eat 3-4 meals a day. This is challenging when you have kids and you've been taught that snacking is good/ok/even healthy! {As an aside, if you have a different kind of body that requires snacking for some reason or other, I am not saying you should do what I did. I'm just sharing what I found that made me feel best.} As I eliminated snacking from my days, I realized that I was nice and hungry at mealtimes. I noticed that my body actually felt better, instead of sluggish, because it wasn't always processing food. It had time to perform other functions. I lost some weight when I began this process and I was happy about that. But I got pregnant again after that, and ultimately this habit didn't end up being about weight loss for me, it was a matter of listening to my body's cues and realizing that I functioned better throughout my day, when I avoided snacking most of the time {aka 90-100%}. 

With just these two main habits, maintaining my weight became a non-issue for me as my 30s continued. Which was a big deal, because prior to this point in my life, I was always afraid of "going back" so I felt like I had to exert a lot of control over every food choice OR just fall off the wagon completely and gain weight back and feel out of control completely. These two habits gave me so much freedom and added joy back into my life when it came to food. I also needed it to be a non-issue because with four young kids, homeschooling, teaching piano lessons, and just the life of a young mother, I DID NOT have the capacity to add to my mental load: constant food choices. I needed to free up my mind to focus on my daily tasks and these two foundational habits did that for me. 

A few months ago I finally felt ready to add in something new -- less sugar. I knew it would be my hardest work yet. My whole life, I've loved sweets. My whole life, I've never gone without sugar. I've seen research, I've read articles, I've heard people talk about the detriments of sugar. I've justified myself "it can't be that bad"; "other people are eating it", "what about enjoying my life?!?", etc. I needed to assess the best way of attack. I knew I didn't have it in me to quit completely, and I knew that was not a long-lasting solution for me. To be honest, I'm still figuring this one out. But I knew there were 2 main issues I needed to address: my daily coffee + creamer and my dinner after dessert. This is a work in progress, but it may be one of the most important ones I get a handle on. And as I look back over what I accomplished in the past 10 years, I know I can make progress in this area too! 

These are my big rocks. It is extremely hard for me to leave the post like this because there are many other little things that I have practiced, tried, experimented with along the way and they've all taught me and assisted me in moving forward to better health. But if I get bogged down in the minutiae of each detail, this post will get way too long! But if any of this sparks your interest, I'd definitely be down to chat because I believe the way we eat greatly impacts our lives. 

To food... it's delicious! :D 

Reflections, Introduction

I am a quiet, observant, introverted, enneagram 5 who mostly lives in my head. And if that sounds weird to you, that's ok. I often feel misunderstood, and while it's painful to feel like I don't come across the way I hoped, I am learning to let go of my idealized version of myself and embrace the reality of life {I didn't even like typing that sentence!} Here's a picture: often, as I'm leaving a group setting, I will think "Wow! What an enriching, meaningful conversation we just had!" and then as I reflect some more I will realize that I actually forgot to say anything out loud. As people share and discuss, I am listening, ingesting, commentating and responding inwardly, but often forget or am afraid to speak out loud. 

Because, you see, it is much safer to keep those thoughts internally. And then I frustrate myself further because when I do pluck up my courage and decide to actually say words *out loud* I find my voice often gets all wavery and my eyes will sometimes tear up because I feel passionate, or strongly about the subject and I'm so not used to saying anything, that the experience feels even more vulnerable and it takes a lot of energy out of me. 

Nevertheless, as I countdown the days until I turn 40, I thought I'd share some things I've learned in my third decade of life. I'm blogging it, which is like so 2009, but I figure that gives people an option to click on the link or just move on if they'd rather not read an excessively long social media post :) 

Something I began over the past decade is work on my habits. I've never been one to rush or make quick decisions or try something rashly. I reflect, predict outcomes, consider what's realistic in my season of life, and alter course slowly; maybe even painstakingly slow. But as I near my 40th birthday next week and consider those small changes that I chose to become habits, I am thankful I didn't wait for the "perfect time" or when things were "easier". Yes, there were some things I started that were fails, but the ones that have stuck, I'm glad I made the effort to try and not give up even when I didn't see "results" as quickly as I wanted. I suppose along the way I might have read "Atomic Habits" by James Clear as many people reference when it comes to habit building, but I have not. Anyone out there recommend it? As I share a little each day, I will try to share some of my resources that have helped inform my decisions. Perhaps it will provide you some insight to a subject you are interested in as well! 

To habits... and writing again!