The first is
I also read Bringing Up Girls which was equally good. However, with a son in the throws of boyhood and not having been one myself, I thought this one particularly helpful.
The second
This one has been on my "to-read" list, but as I know the challenge the author would present, I must be honest in admitting that I have been postponing this one for some time. I'm glad I finally bit the bullet. It was actually very encouraging especially in light of some of the challenges the Lord has been proposing to my heart.
The last, I am actually still reading.
The best way to describe it is beautiful. It is a very inspiring and poetic challenge to live every day fully. In the midst of bringing up children, running a household, and all that entails the author writes of her own personal experience through a challenge of recording one thousand gifts. She gives example of how to find beauty in the everydayness of life, and inevitably finding God all things.
Here is a short passage to get you hooked :)
"I pick up the journal. Paul [the apostle] had twice said it, and I mustn't forget it. He said he had to learn. And learning requires practice - sometimes even mind-numbing practice. C. S. Lewis said it too, to a man looking for fullest life: "If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad." It might even be good. So I, too, can be like our children and the everyday training, memorizing of the Latin paradigms with the practicing chants: amo, amas, amat. The washing machine dings and I light. This is why I had never really learned the language of "thanks in all things"! Though pastors preached it, I still came home and griped on. I had never practiced. Practiced until it became the second nature, the first skin. Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation. Practice, practice, practice. Hammer. Hammer. Hammer.
"This training might prove to be the hardest of my life. It just might save my life."
Here are some samples she gives from her gift journal.
243. Clean sheets smelling like wind
244. Hot oatmeal tasting like home
245. Bare toes in early light
457. Brown eggs fresh from the henhouse
485. Hair bows holding back curls
513. Boys jiggling blue Jell-O
526. New toothbrushes
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