Happy Reading to You

I love the morning sun. It shines down on the deck outside my bedroom door signaling the start of a new day. It’s so refreshing and calming. The start of a new day, whether yesterday was a good day or a bad one, today is a new day. I don’t get to choose whether the sun shines down on the back deck or if there is rain but I do get to choose if my attitude is one that is like the sun or like the rain. So…what will it be for this new day? What will it be for this New Year?

“Remember a mind that feeds only on itself soon is undernourished, becoming weak and incapable of creative progressive thought.” David J Schwartz, Ph.D “The Magic of Thinking Big”

“…be made new in the attitude of your mind.” Ephesians 4:23

Is my mind undernourished and weak? What does the attitude of my mind look like? The New Year is a time for evaluation and New Years resolutions. This year I want to encourage you mothers to really evaluate your mind. We often will make New Years resolutions to lose weight, be more consistent in our exercise or do better financially but this year I think a challenge for the mind is in order.

Reading…. something many are happy to leave behind when they graduate. But why? There is so much a person can get out of a book. You can take the experience of someone else, apply it to your own life and miss out on some hard lessons. You can use someone else’s experience to improve as a wife, as a mother or a friend. You can learn the history of your country. You can travel to another country in your mind. It expands your imagination, your capacity for thought and creativity. It expands your vocabulary and improves your conversations.

Take the time to think of some areas that you would like to see some improvement in this year. If you are not a big reader think of a couple of areas that you would like to read up on, a parenting book, a marriage book or a spiritual book. If you didn’t read a single book this last year and you read 3 books over the next year, you just exercised your mind and that’s 300% more than what you read the year before (my engineering husband said that this number isn’t technically correct…something about not being able to quantify an increase from zero…blah blah blah, maybe you other mathematicians will understand that too, but for us simpletons this works, right?). I once heard that if you read 15 minutes a day for 1 month you can finish an average size book. That doesn’t seem so bad does it?

I am encouraging reading for 2 reasons: one, because if you pick the right books they are such a benefit to your own mind and heart and two, because it is so good for your kids to see you reading. In the culture we live in there is such a focus on televisions, movies and video games…. People are loosing their ability to think and to lead. As a parent it is our responsibility to train our children up, to teach them and to lead them. How can we do that if we don’t know how?

We spend 4 years, often longer, getting an education and learning how to do a job. How much time do we spend learning to be a mother, a wife, or a child of God? The most important jobs we will ever have…and the majority of people just “wing” them. This year make a decision not to “wing” it, educate yourself; it is worth it for you and your family.

I asked Maggie, our fellow blogger, to share with us a little of how her new found love of reading has come about:

"When God lead me to start home schooling my boys, I was naturally a little nervous. Millions of questions and concerns went thru my head but the biggest feeling I experienced was that I felt I was missing something. I began to ask God what the source of my insecurity was and to help me. Courtney recommended a book that I felt answered my question. “A Thomas Jefferson Education” got me excited about continuing my own education by reading different classics. At first I was doing it for the sake of my children and their education. After finishing one book however, my eyes were opened and I began to see how vital reading was for myself. This was the missing link. I didn’t feel adequate to educate my children because I wasn’t educating and growing myself. Reading the Bible, yes, but these books added a depth I had not expected. They are stories with usually very high morals, filled with examples of how people deal with hard situations and consequences that follow. They encourage me, force me to take a stand, to think and drive me on when I’m faced with hardships. Most importantly, they expand my ability to connect with God because they keep me focused on things of greater value than my daily grind sometimes. Because these classics only deal with issues of great substance and inspire greatness, they are a breath of freshness in our current culture. I found myself growing immensely and loving education for the first time ever, for it’s own sake and not for a grade or even for my children. I know they will benefit naturally from the overflow."

Here are some suggestions for those of you have no idea where to start:

Parenting: Personality Plus for Parents by Florence Littauer
Making Children Mind Without loosing yours by Kevin Leman
Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp
Boundaries with Kids by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Spiritual: Becoming a Woman Who Listens to God by Sharon Jaynes
Humility by C.J Mahaney
Loving God with All Your Mind by Elizabeth George
The Shelter of God’s Promises by Shiela Walsh

Marriage: Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Becoming the Women of His Dreams by Sharon Jaynes

People Skills: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Wooden by John Wooden
Becoming a Person of Influence by John Maxwell
Balcony People by Joyce Landorf Heatherley

Classics: A great classic to start with is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Also here is a great blog full of great tips for raising readers: http://terribradyblog.com/2011/12/19/raising-readers/

Happy reading to you!