My Current Reading List

I LOVE today’s writing prompt. It simply says: What are you reading.

I love to read. I always have. When I was a teenager living at home with my parents my mom knew one of the best ways to get my attention when I had gotten into trouble was to take away my books. Then I love all things fiction. I read through Little Women countless times and I read through the Harry Potter series at least twice.

As I have gotten older my taste in books has changed only slightly. Thanks to my grandmother and her love of reading I have become hooked on a handful of different murder mystery type books. My favorite ones are the ones that have recipes scattered throughout the chapters.

One of the other areas that has changed in my reading is that I find I am enjoying more nonfiction books with the purpose of helping me learn and grow. One of the HUGE benefits of going to the type of school I go to and being in the program that I am in, my “textbooks” aren’t really textbooks at all. Not in the super huge long and boring book that is a better doorstop than reading material sense of the word anyway.

This semester my “textbook” is Adorned: Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel Together by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. This book is all about how we as women are called to live our lives together, learning, teaching, training, and fellowshiping as Paul described in Titus 2. Nancy breaks down the passage in easy to manage sections and really digs deep into what it means to life out life in the Titus 2 model of women helping women to become the individuals God designed us to be.

The second book that I am working my way through is titled Where’s Mom? written by Dorothy Kelley Patterson. Mrs. Patterson is the wife of the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where I attend school. I have had the pleasure of learning from her in a few different capacities. This book, although short in page number, is jam packed with the biblical importance of having a mother in the home as her primary focus. Mrs. Patterson lays out a case for why God designed women to be keepers of the home and helpers to their husbands, not as inferior beings, but as strong cornerstones of the family structure.

Book # 3 that I am currently reading is titled Eve in Exile: And the Restoration of Femininity by Rebekah Merkle. Rebekah was one of the plenary session speakers at the Biblical Femininity conference that I attended Thursday-Saturday of last week. During her session she laid our a solid case for why we as women in America are in a perfect place to rebuild the importance of what it means to be innately feminine and how we were designed as women by God for a greater purpose than to just wear pretty clothes and have pretty things. This book takes the hour’s worth of information that she shared at the conference and goes further.

The fourth book I am reading is Disciplines of a Godly Woman by Barbara Hughes. This book, though biblical teachings, stories, and the opportunity to reflect through question, breaks down fifteen disciplines that are vital to living a Christian life. Barbara helps to guide women to grow into mature Christian women no matter what is going on in the world around us.

The last book I am reading (which isn’t in the photo above because it is lost somewhere in my bedroom at the moment) is Jen Hatmakers new book Of Mess and Moxie.  In her new book Jen, through her humorous method of story telling, reminds readers that we are not living life on an island. We are all intertwined together and while we may be a bit of a hot mess, we as women all have a bit of moxie within us. All we have to do is tap into that moxie, band together, and we can take on this world for Christ.

All of these books have one central theme: Women living out the life that God has designed for them following the biblical principles found in Scripture. Each one carries a bit of a different perspective but the message is still there LOUD AND CLEAR. We as women have a responsibility to take back our unique design given to us by God. We can not just wake up one morning and decide we want to be something different that what we were created to be any more than a donkey can wake up and decide it wants to be a quarter horse. It’s just not possible. It is my goal and my dream to teach my daughters to embrace fully the women God has created them to be and it is through resources like these I will be able to gain to tools to do so!

Have you read any of these books? What is on your current reading list? Share with me in the comments!