Whoa. It’s 2020.

2019 is over and my book list is unfinished. Tragedy, I know.

Despite falling short, I do feel very accomplished and have some great takeaways from each book. I went at a much slower pace the second half of the year, and one book is to blame. I will explain. But first, before we go any further, here is a link to my first book list from 2019 in case you missed it.

These first two books were not part of my original plan, but they were recommendations from my sister in law’s mom (love her) so they moved to the top of the list!

Barking to the Choir

THE POWER OF RADICAL KINSHIP

By Gregory Boyle

Gregory Boyle started Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention program in the world. This book made me laugh and cry, but mostly cry.

Probably the biggest takeaway for me:

DON’T BE JUDGY!

You simply do NOT know what people have been through. Reading some of these stories made me change the way I look at others. It’s so easy to label people. We’re all humans, some dealt a better hand than others. It’s really about what you do with the hand you are dealt. This organization helps them turn their lives around by dealing with their issues and telling their stories.

“When we label folks scum, it makes it all right to do anything we want to them. Who doesn’t belong? We try and imagine Jesus and God compiling a list of those who should not make the cut, but we come up short. We can’t think of anybody. The minute we accept this to be true, we will see racism, demonizing, and scapegoating dissipate in the wind like sand on a blustery day. The great Jesuit Howard Gray said: ‘God has no enemies and neither should I.’”

One story hit me especially hard, probably because the boy was 7 years old, the same age as my son.

Even retelling the story here makes my cringe.

“One morning,” he recounted, “as my mom was packing up our few belongings and the tarp we used for shelter, I watched a bunch of kids waiting to get on a school bus. I wanted, more than anything, to go with them. My mom told me that if I went, she wouldn’t be here when I got back. I followed that bus to school, but apparently you can’t just show up at school. You sort of need a parent, and to be enrolled, so I left. When I got back to Skid Row, my family was gone. I looked everywhere. I wandered the streets all night and never found my mom or my family. I realized, that night, I was on my own. I was seven years old.” It took several years for the “system” to find Jamal, and once it did, he began a new life in foster care. By the time he reached high school age, he had been raised by several surrogate parents, who were so abusive that they would wake him up in the middle of the night just to beat him and lock him out of the house for hours on end. He joined a gang at thirteen and was subsequently kicked out of 5 schools. He was locked up for two long stints before he was eighteen, and returned to jail again for seven years. It was during that time he started to rethink things. He started to read books and got his GED. ‘In the end, I gave in,’ he later wrote about his experience. ‘I gave in to the sadness of all those years of neglect and abandonment. I gave in to the terror I never let myself feel – as I watched people being beaten, thrown out of windows, and killed on Skid Row. I gave in to, I realize, not sadness and fear but anger. I learned the word ‘schizophrenia’ and came to terms with the fact that my mom did not hurt me on purpose.’ Today his mother is still alive and lives under a bridge in Los Angeles. ‘I hope that one day I can help her find her way home.’

Seriously. Wow. And we think we have it rough sometimes?

The author also shared another story of loss of one man. During the funeral for his sons (yes, sons, plural, can’t imagine) he said “Don’t lose one day. Don’t let a day go by that you don’t pay attention to your kids. Don’t waste time. Our children are loaned to us. They belong to God, and they will return to God. Don’t waste one day not loving them.”

Father Gregory Boyle takes a lot of his staff, former drug addicts, convicts, and gang members, to speak at events across the country.

And a cool side note – he is donating all his net proceeds from this book to Homeboy Industries. Pick up a copy!

Searching For Sunday

By Rachel Held Evans

I could relate to many parts of this book and had a lot of the same questions she had, wondering if there is a “right” answer.

“As reports of collateral damage slid across the crawler, it occurred to me that the women and children killed in Iraq’s civil war were mostly Muslims, not so much by choice, but by birth. They were Muslims because they were born in a predominately Muslim country to Muslim parents, just as I was a Christian because I’d been born in a predominantly Christian country to Christian parents. Was I supposed to believe the same suicide bomb that sent a terrorist to hell sent his victims to hell too? Because they weren’t evangelical Christians like me? Because they were born at the wrong place at the wrong time? And did this fate await the majority of my fellow human beings, including the millions who never even heard of Jesus to begin with?”

I have asked these very same questions many times. What if they never knew Jesus? Is the blame then transferred from them to us for not making that introduction?

I broke my own cardinal rule and read the electronic version because it was free on Hoopla. I managed to stay focused and found myself bookmarking a lot of pages. So many pages, in fact, that I would rewrite half the book if I repeated them all. So I have done my best to hit my most favorite ones! Here they are:

“We could not become like God, so God became like us. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of long for more. “

“We think church is for taking spiritual Instagrams and putting on our best performances. We think church is for the healthy, even though Jesus told us time and again he came to minister to the sick. We think church is for ‘good’ people, not resurrected people.”

“Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are-no hiding, no acting, no fear.”

Sadly the author passed away shortly before I started reading this book. Knowing this gave me a weird vibe, but I have no regret in reading this book. She wrote about so many questions and things to ponder. Now she is in heaven with all the answers.

Defined

Who God Says You Are

By Stephen and Alex Kendrick

This is it.

The book.

The book that brought my book list to a halt. It took me months to read. This book felt short, yet also felt like it should be the size of 3 phone books because it was packed with great content.

One of my most and least favorite sections was the Heart Check. It was a pretty painful self examination based on the 10 commandments, which may seem very archaic, but I promise they are not!

Some of the questions:

Is there anything God would say I’m putting before Him right now? (Ouch, yes)

Do I honor God with my mouth?(eh, most of the time)

Is there anyone I hate? (Um, sometimes)

Am I a gossip? (Well, I try not to be)

Is there anyone I’m really envious and jealous of? (Shoot, at times)

Another part that really hit me:

“What are you honestly trusting right now as the most reliable source to help you understand your life? Yourself? Your family? Your experiences from the past? Or the God of the universe, who made you in His image, who cannot lie, who is giving you every next breath, and who holds your eternity in the palm of His hand?”

Well, when you put it that way it sounds so simple. God of course!

If you have even the most teenie, tiny bit of self doubt or worry, this book is for you!

“When our foundation is not strong, we will likely not stand firm when the toughest storms beat down on us. If we’ve been basing our lives and the perception of our identity on changing things, then we’ve been setting a trap for our own feet.”

“If we’re looking to our self-help efforts as being our path to growth-trying harder, being more disciplined, being more committed-we won’t change at the heart level and will only be modifying the fruit, not fixing the root. We’ll keep fighting the same battles, over and over again, and not see any long-term genuine transformation.”

SO. TRUE.

These are just a few of the sections I noted. By the way, do you read with a pencil? If you don’t, I highly suggest you start!

So, there you have it, the rest of my 2019 reading list.

My reading goal for 2020? Finish reading the Bible plus read 10 books. I am on a chronological Bible reading plan and should finish around October.

If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them!