The New Phone Books Are Here!!! The New Phone Books Are Here!!!

Okay, so not the new phone books and frankly how many of those do we need anyway?

I am SO excited because a few weeks ago I ordered BOOKS. I know, I'm a NERD! AND I’m a bit of a ‘bargain hunter’ (okay…I’m cheap), so I had them shipped ground. Well! What’s the point of celebrating a cheap new book via Amazon.com if you are going to pay 5x’s the price for shipping…so I waited, and waited, and this morning they appeared on the kitchen table.

No, our mail delivery isn’t THAT good, my husband stopped last night and picked up the mail at our PO Box. They won’t deliver directly to the Wigwam. Guess what else came? Give up yet? My stamps came! I know you’re thinking; “so what”.

Well, as much as I LOVE America and I do, truly, love America…I hate the flag stamps; they’re so ‘done’. AND, my post-office made it clear to me they do not get to decide which stamps they will carry, so they do not know when they will carry a particular new stamp. I order my stamps online.

It’s easy enough and I don’t have to deal with the marginal customer service skills of the over-worked and apparently, quite angry-on-the-verge-of-going-postal clerks at MY USPS. Yours may be different. I certainly hope so. But as many times as I’ve done the postal survey I’ve yet to be able to give my P.O. a grade above 2 on a 1-5 scale. In the words of my, now half grown nephew, “they are WUDE, WUDE, WUDE!”

Without further ado, I got these stamps and these stamps and I can’t wait to start using them. Oh, we do still use the ‘flags’ for bills usually, but my husband clearly understands that for fun mail (which I’m infamous for), I need FUN STAMPS!

Now on to the books I’m hankering to read! The first one I’ve referenced here before and trust me if you ever see it at a garage sale or thrift store or some discount house…pick it up. You won’t regret it and it may just make you laugh AND change a misconception or two, you have! It is: Nancy Kennedy’s book: “Help! I’m Being Intimidated By The Proverbs 31 Woman!” My sister had given me this book years ago. It’s not even in print currently, but they have several “new” copies available via Amazon.com used books. I L*O*V*E this book. It’s one of my all-time favorite reads. She writes much like Liz Curtis Higgs and I laugh to the point of adult-diapers often!

Here’s an excerpt. This passage comes from Chapter one: ‘Next on Oprah: The Virtuous Woman and Those of us Who’d Like to Wring Her Perfect Neck”.

It was Mother’s Day. No, maybe it was the time our church held a week-long women’s seminar. Maybe it was just another Sunday. Whenever it was, my daughters were sitting next to me in the pew, writing on each other’s shoes, while I sat, trying to untwist my panty-hose with one hand and cover a coffee stain on my white blouse with the other. I’d forgotten to brush my teeth that day, too.

The Pastor stood to speak.

“Open your Bibles to the book of Proverbs,” he said. “Let’s take a look at this beautiful passage of scripture on womanhood.”

His voice dripped with syrup. His eyes glazed over. He looked right at me.

My skirt button popped off and rolled out into the aisle. “I’m in trouble,” I whispered.

If that doesn’t “hook” you…you’ve clearly left your funny bone for the Am-Vets to pick up or you’ve misplaced it in the laundry basket. Trust me, it’s worthwhile and aside from the hilarious writing, it holds true meaning for this OVERWHELMING passage of Scripture.

The next book is by Geneen Roth. I’ve never read any of her books, however; the title strummed my heart strings a bit. The book is titled: “When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair”. It deals with emotional eating (uh, yeah, I can SO relate) and one of the chapters is: “Carry a Chunk of Chocolate Everywhere”, so how could I have gone wrong?

The last two books are less for laugh-factor and more for my eternal quest to ‘un-box’ God! The first of these is by Eric Sandras, and it’s titled: “Buck Naked Faith: A Brutally Honest Look at Stunted Christianity”.

The back cover says this: “Eric Sandras encourages a generation of believers to drop the layers of make-believe nonsense that stunts our spiritual growth. What emerges is a positive alternative to life-crushing counterfeit faiths many of us are trying out best to work through.

To do this, there’s no secret handshake or magic formula, but there is vision and encouragement to take the risk and get dangerously real with God. With a pull-no-punches approach, Sandras exposes the naked truth: We need to dress our lives with a real friendship with God and nothing else."

This type of book always pulls me in because I’ve seen (and continue to see regularly) what appears to be faith that lacks faith, for lack of better terminology. I’ve seen it in myself and friends and strangers. I don’t want to become just another pretty-sounding, phony designer Christian. I’ll let you know what I think of the book and this Sandras author.

The final book is by Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz). It is “Searching For God Knows What”.

This is what the cover says: "What if the deepest longings of your heart were there for a reason? Small-minded, boxed-in formulas of modern religion weren’t the Truth? The gospel of Jesus was not ‘safe’ after all, but full of intrigue, passion -- and romance? How would your life be changed?"

How can I go wrong? I love Donald Miller’s writing style and I’m almost certain I’ll learn something from these books, so I’m off to work and await my chance to break into these little pleasures as soon as I can!

Have a wonderful and blessed Thursday and remember to read (yeah, children's books count too, but only if you actually HAVE children!).