Terribly Interesting

We must teach others empathy for all humanity. View this post on Instagram I read The Diary of a Young Girl and the Hiding Place in eighth grade. I can vividly recall the shock I felt sitting in my desk as our class read the books aloud. I had seen much of the underbelly of humanity at that age, but it was still so shocking. In fact, I am still processing it nearly thirty years later. Over a decade ago, I received a box of my great grandmother’s books. In it was a copy of Corrie ten Boom’s book entitled In My Father’s House. It was my favorite of her works. Do you know that she wrote nearly 50 books as she traveled the world and shared the gospel? One year, I read as many as I could find still in print. I’m still finding them. 20 or so that I’ve read. Her books on her life before the Holocaust are so rich. She talks about how her Papa ten Boom instilled a deep love of Jewish people. She learned how to simply teach the gospel by ...

I've Seen the End of You: A Neurosurgeon's Look at Faith, Doubt, and the Things We Think We Know by W. Lee Warren My rating: 5 of 5 stars I thought this book was going to be more about diseases of the brain. I thought it could help me to understand things going on within the minds of my family members. What I found was something I could barely put down. This is a book about a neurosurgeon who struggled with faith and prayer as he performed surgery on tumors that were almost always fatal. His honesty is compelling. Let me be honest. If you like nerdy scientific information about the brain and your heart being ripped out by story, this is the book for you. This is about a man who started writing as a way to deal with the horrors of war that he saw as a surgeon of war in Iraq. He then kept writing as a way to deal with his feelings on faith as he operated on Glioblastoma, treated trauma victims, tried to save brains ravaged by suicide. Then he used it as a way to sheph...

   A few months back I was sitting in a room attempting to share something deeply personal. The people there started discussing it amongst themselves and formulating opinions out loud about it. No one asked me any questions or dialogued with me about it in any way. My sharing felt completely pointless.   That evening I came home to the first 55 pages of this book in my inbox from the publisher. You’re not listening. Exactly. I read those first pages right then and quickly fell in book love.  I’m a listener. I have fought hard against shyness, introversion, and anxiety to learn to ask good questions. My heart ebbs and flows on people feeling seen and finding healing. I love people. The personality type that I would call the kryptonite to my calling is the no breath, no pause, non-stop talker. If you can’t stop talking, I know you have no desire to listen and I don’t talk. My brain shuts itself off. Dear extreme extroverts, never underestimate the power of ...