My Favorite Books of 2021

The Christmas decorations are being packed away, the New Year has rung in, and now:  tis the season to look back at favorite books of the year!  I've seen several of you post your favorites, and I love it!  I copied and pasted  a visual of my full list from Goodreads this year, which I will put below.  Let me know if you've read any of the same ones and what you thought!  

The categories are a little tweaked from past years, but they reflect what I've been reading most recently.  I'm making more of an effort to read older books that have stood the test of time, and it seems both weird and unfair to compare those to the hot new books, so I broke old and new into separate categories.  And my kids are at a great read aloud chapter book age, so there are enough middle grades on here to give that category it's own space.  (I also want to note that I quit early if a book is not worthwhile in some way, so I would give a thumbs up to most all of the books on my finished list.)  Without further ado....

Top Six Favorite Backlist Fiction:

"Silence" by Shusaku Endo

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather

"The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway

"And Then there were None" by Agatha Christie

"The Fifth Season" by N.K. Jemisin

"Our Souls at Night" by Kent Haruf

Top Six New (published last year or two) Fiction:

"A Swim in the Pond in the Rain" by George Saunders ---> I don't usually name a top number one favorite out of them all, because Enneagram 9, but this was my absolute favorite of the year.

"Transcendent Kingdom" by Yaa Gyasi

"Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro

"Piranesi" by Susanne Clarke

"Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr

"The Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles (though be careful of that ending, it might make you throw the book across the room)

Top 5 Non Fiction I'm Still Thinking About:

"Nicea and Its Legacy:  An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology" by Lewis Ayres 

"Breath:  The New Science of a Lost Art" by James Nestor 

"None Like Him" by Jen Wilkin

"Gentle and Lowly" by Dane Ortlund

"12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You" by Tony Reinke

Top 5 Middle Grade:

"The Magician's Nephew" and "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis

"The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin

"The Wild Robot" by Peter Brown

"On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness" by Andrew Peterson

Those are my favorites of the year - let me know what book(s) you loved in 2021!

 

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Longing for Home

Nebraska sunset

As the holidays approach, one of the first things that comes to my mind is the longing for home.  I love my current hometown of Reno (as you may have noticed from my incessant posting on Facebook!), but the holidays bring up so many memories of my home state, Nebraska:  as a kid, seeing snow at the window and rushing downstairs to see what Santa brought; as a young adult, arriving home from college after final exams to Omaha, feeling the relief of seeing the huge skyline and crossing the Platte River as we made our way towards Lincoln; and now, as a middle ager, dressing my kids in matching pajamas and boarding a Southwest plane with a holly jolly flight crew, coming in bleary eyed, past midnight (because these are the times you get when you fly from one smallish city to another), seeing the familiar kitchen and holiday decorations, trying not to wake up the schnauzer.  The common feelings across the stages:  anticipation; excitement; familiarity; relief; belonging; comfort; all is right in the world.  Being known and loved.

The longing is especially strong this year, as we skipped Christmas travel to Nebraska in 2020 due to covid.  We've missed Nebraska over the holidays before - once for sickness, once for weather - but we could always schedule a make up trip quickly.  This time, I haven't been home for a full 2 years, which is approximately 18 months longer than ever before.  I miss morning chats with my mom, my dad's karaoke, the Christmas cookie selection, and sibling night out to a small town bar.  My kids miss breakfasts with their grandparents, play times with their cousins, and visiting Papa at work and playing court in an actual courtroom.  We are all thinking about this trip every single day leading up to Christmas.

As I anticipate our Nebraska trip (and hope I'm not jinxing it by writing this post), I think about how this longing for home relates to Advent.  Advent is the time when we wait, with great longing.  Even when our lives here are going well -  when we have (enough) health and (enough) wealth, and people we love to share life with - there's still a longing, a desire for something more.  (My friend Lexi wrote a great post about this feeling.)

Advent is the time to notice this longing, to lean into it, and to rejoice that there will be an answer to our longing, and that it will be better than we can imagine.  This baby that we celebrate has made a way for us, so we can access this home we all long for.  And in this eternal home, we can experience these feelings - excitement; familiarity; relief; belonging; comfort; all is right in the world, being known and loved - in greater strength than we can understand, for all eternity.

This Christmas season, I'm so excited to return to Nebraska and see my family.  But much more than that, I'm excited for the hope we celebrate, the longing fulfilled, the light breaking through the darkness.  Merry Christmas!

Every Good and Perfect Gift

 

It's the thankfulness month!  One thing that matches with thankfulness like peanut butter matches with jelly is gifts.  If you get a good gift, one that is perfectly suited to you and shows that the giver knows you so well, it causes a burst of gratitude.  During this month of thankfulness, my church group has been studying James, and we came across this famous verse on gifts:  "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." (James 1:17)  The surprise take away for me was how closely this verse is linked to trials. 

(I want to note at this start that this post is not meant for anyone walking through the most difficult points of a trial.  If this is you, all I want to give is love and support, not an additional thing to take on right in the midst of suffering, and I would urge you to save this post for some other time.) 

When I hear about good and perfect gifts, here are the things that immediately spring to mind:  my spouse and my kids.  My extended family on both sides.  Friendships.  Health.  A house, plenty of food, cars to drive, clothes to wear.  Two fun vacations this year.  The Sierra Nevadas.  Spiritually, I would include salvation, God's love, hope for the future, and the peace that passes understanding.  There are so many more things that could be included, big and small.

I often see this verse used on social media related to the birth of a healthy child - a darling newborn arranged in a sweet pose, with this verse as the caption.  I think I may have used it myself when Ivy was born.  Sweet words to go with the happy moment.  But what about my first child, who was taken down to the NICU after birth, intubated and plugged into machines, and eventually air flighted to Salt Lake City?  Does the verse about "every good and perfect gift" belong on that birth story?  I'm not questioning the good gift of my son here - I love Josh so deeply, so fiercely, exactly as he is - but the question is about the experience of walking through surgeries, through hospitalizations, and through the various other difficulties on this path - how does that fit into good and perfect gifts?

There are good things that have come from the difficulties:  deepened compassion for others going through similar trials; increased focus on the eternal; so many answered prayers; so much love extended to us from others.  But these things, while they are undoubtedly good gifts, they don't fully add up in a one to one correspondence sort of way, to explain and illuminate all the suffering that has happened and continues to happen for both Josh and all the people who love him, related to his genetic condition.  

I don't understand it all, I don't see how all of it is good and perfect, and I never will in this world.  In the middle of not understanding, I have the promises that God is in control of everything, God is good, and God loves us.  The good and perfect gift of trials is learning to believe that these promises are true, even when I don't understand how it all fits together, and to experience the maturing and strengthening of faith that can only come from walking through a trial.  

When you read through all of James 1, you see that this is the context, this is a big part of what is meant by "good and perfect gifts" in this verse.  The whole beginning of the chapter talks about how going through trials and persevering in the faith leads to spiritual growth, and that section concludes with this verse.  Certainly God's good gifts include family and friends, material provision, the lovely and enjoyable things in life, and spiritual blessings.  But this year, I'm reflecting on the specific blessing of walking through a trial, not understanding it, continuing to believe that God is faithful through the ups and downs of my (and my loved ones') circumstances, and receiving the good and perfect gift of moving towards being spiritually "perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (v. 4)

This is not to say that once you've read this verse, going through trials will feel like sunshine and rainbows.  Trials still feel like heartbreak and anger and confusion and frustration.  They are still gut wrenching.  But the encouragement, the gratitude point, is that they are not without purpose.  Isn't it great to know that when we go through difficulties - the pandemic times have produced some, all of us will walk through others - this has the potential to be producing some of the very most important things in us, to move us closer to the things that matter in eternity?  

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, and cheers to gratitude in its many forms.