Reading Round Up July 2018

Ultimate Makeover: The Transforming Power of Motherhood

by Carrie Gress

2016 Beacon Publishing

When I saw this book, it naturally made me think about Teresa Tomeo's Extreme Makeover based on the title. One main difference between the two books is that Tomeo's book was focusing on women in general, while Gress' book was focusing specifically on motherhood as a pathway to sanctification. She emphasized how motherhood has its challenges, but ultimately, the ways it stretches us and helps us to grow facilitate recognizing vices (that otherwise might be buried under the surface) in order to move toward the complementary virtues and to grow in intimacy with God. 

She reflects on how "God in his mercy has given us the most gentle (and adorable) avenue to grow in virtue. Yes, we make many sacrifices for them, but with each sacrifice our love grows. While it is true that raising children is likely one of the hardest things you will ever do, there are much more difficult ways to become holy, such as martyrdom or prolonged illness. God in his mercy and love wants us to become holy, and he gives us a gentle path to get there. The sacrifice is real, but so are the joy, the peace, and the awareness that our gift is fruitful" (p. 66). 

The book complements others I have been reading and an aspect a priest recently reminded me of related to love being willing the good of the other (more about the will, rather than an emotion). At 135 pages, the book was a quick read, written with a conversational style. Each chapter started with a quote and ended with Questions for Reflection. In general, the book celebrates the vocation of motherhood and provides encouragement for layers of how the vocation can be counter-cultural. 

Making Room for God: Decluttering and the Spiritual Life

by Mary Elizabeth Sperry

2018 Ave Maria Press

Lately I have been in a phase of life where the different obligations I had made keeping up with organization around the house feeling like a struggle at times. Right now I am on maternity leave/summer break and am focusing on relationships and routines around the house to position us for shifting back to another academic year in August. It has felt good to be able to do some decluttering and organization, so I appreciated having another book to help me think through the process. At just over 100 pages, the book is a quick read but gives a lot to think about. Most chapters end with the features - my journey where Sperry talks about her own story, Signposts for your journey where Sperry gives areas to consider related to application to the readers' lives, thoughts for the journey with reflection questions and try this with actionable items.

When I read about the concept of Making Room for God, it made me think of Not of this World: A Catholic Guide to Minimalism. The description for Making Room for God refers to it as "the first book on organization from a Catholic perspective," so I was curious to see what it would add that would be different than Not of this World since that book came to mind as one that was already out there with a Catholic lens. Without referring back to Not of this World to verify, if my memory is correct, a key distinction is that Not of this World focused more on a Catholic lens for thinking about minimalism and our stuff, while Making Room for God moves beyond that to also have a parallel in depth dialogue about the spiritual life or how we can take the concepts about decluttering and organization and apply it to our journey with God in general, not only with things but with the intangible layers of life. For example, Sperry makes the connection between decluttering and retreats or penitential seasons of the liturgical year. She emphasizes how both organization and spiritual journeys are about the process and on-going.

I am enjoying the in progress discussions about this book with the St. Teresa's Online Book Club.

The Discerning Parent: An Ignatian Guide to Raising Your Teen

by Tim and Sue Muldoon

2017 Ave Maria Press

In the last year I have read multiple books to try to understand St. Ignatius's ideas related to discernment and the teenage years still feel new to me as a parent, so I loved The Discerning Parent. I appreciated that the book focused on our role as parents - how to model and guide, while also remembering that our teens have their own free will and are learning to navigate towards adulthood. In this sense, their ideas aligned well with the role of a teacher in reading and writing workshop, the way that I love to nurture literacy development as an educator. With workshop teaching, teachers need to be readers and writers, they need to model the process, they are careful observers of their students and provide support tailored to the individual reader/writer. With The Discerning Parent, it was about parents focusing on themselves and their growth in discerning God's will in order to then be able to support their teens, as well as recognizing there are not any easy solutions that will work for all teens. There was also an emphasis on remembering to try to see our teens as God does. The authors also included Scripture passages and reflections on how that might connect to parenting teens.

Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living

by Shauna Niequist

2016 Zondervan

I have had this book in my to read pile for a while. Last weekend when I was at a women's conference, one speaker was talking about how she spent the last couple of years learning how to live in the present moment after a spiritual director talked to her about the importance of entrusting the past to God's mercy, the future to God's providence and live in the present. The concept resonated with me and where I am at in this phase of my life. It also made me think about how I should finally read this book.

I enjoyed seeing glimpses into Niequist's journey. Some of her words felt like they perfectly captured my experience while others did not resonate. That is the beauty of being able to learn from someone else's experiences - noticing the connections and differences, considering implications for my own life and pondering how some ideas might fit with my context. Niequist is not Catholic but did include some references to the Catholic faith and how it fit with her experiences, as well as including some quotes or concepts from Catholics like St. Ignatius, St. Catherine of Siena, and Thomas Merton. I appreciated how she showed different phases of her realization to recognizing she needed to make a change in her life and the reality of it being a process to enact the changes, how it is an on-going process, something that I can relate to.

I loved Brené Brown's books when I read them about 5 years ago, so I enjoyed seeing a foreword by her and also noticed a reference to Tsh Oxenreider in the book, so though I had not read Shauna Niequist's other books, she seemed like a familiar voice as she has common values and priorities to other authors and bloggers that I have enjoyed.