A Book List for When You are Feeling Sick of the World

When the Covid lockdown was announced, I don't remember booking it to the grocery for sanitizer and toilet paper, but I do I remember heading straight to the library. Walking in felt surreal, as if we were in a movie. People were running and panicky. My mom was with me and we admittedly were both hurriedly determined to cram our arms and bags full of as many books as possible. The shelves were already looking bare and the doors were imminently closing. 

 I rely quite heavily on the library for my homeschooling and I absolutely love to visit. I view it as my mental health day and honestly don't own a vast amount of books.

 That day, I recall looking at my mom and laughingly apologizing for all the times I complained when she drug me to library as a kid. 

The uncertainty and fear in the library was palpable but seemed that everyone there knew that having books on hand would be a true commodity in the coming hard months.

 I once heard a story of a mother that endured several hardships and when others asked her how she and her children were surviving she would calmly respond with a simple statement: "oh, we read good books." That same mom had a son that grew up and joined the military. When the mother called to ask him how he was handling the strenuous training, guess what he said?" Mom I'm doing fine, I'm reading good books."

Books are a healthy way to escape. To renew our minds. To transport and to be transformed. If you are like me, COVID revealed how hungry I was for peace and truth to calm my anxious mind and heart.

I love what author Sarah Mackenzie quotes: If you want a child to know the truth, tell him the truth. If you want a child to love the truth, tell him a story.

Aren't we are all just big kids in need of a story, to lead us to the truth?  Here's a (deduced) list of my favorites to escape the woes of the world.

 

Fair Warning...This book will make you somewhat wanna go. You know, leave this world for the one we were really created for. I love that this book is full of riveting stories but it's also so well documented and congruent with the biblical teachings on heaven.  Imagine Heaven helped me evaluate what I was worrying about, what I was investing in and how incredible it will be to just be home. Home with the babies I never held, my Labrador retrievers whose lives seemed so short, my grandparents, my mother-in-law whom I never met and my good good God. 

The part of this book that has always stuck with me? When they exemplified true gratitude. For fleas. In a concentration camp. And God shows how He is always working. I just don't even have a category for that kind of suffering. Lord may I always have the courage to love You and others like Corrie Ten Boom. Thrilling, sad and moving true story.

Can't forget a good fiction book! If you don't mind a romance novel you'll love A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers. A good reminder for me of how modern day, wealthy Christians really have so much. I'm not telling my kid to "remember the Lord" before she's fed to the lions.

Like all of Strobel's books this one is well written and thoroughly researched. Did you know that 93 million people have claimed to witness a miracle? And 3 out of 4 doctors also believe in the miraculous? This mainstream, anti-supernatural bias percolating the media? I tell you, it has gotta go. Read Strobel and consider if believing in miracles is actually um, unreasonable.

Love me some A.W. Tozer. This book is excellent. Truly comforting to gaze upon God and His Holiness. Nothing better to do when feeling over the world than to grow in learning about the One who made the world, our sustainer and redeemer. 

A gorgeously well written and illustrated devotional. I read this when our fourth baby was born and the pandemic was still relatively new and challenging. A perfect devotional to help dwell on the good, true and the beautiful every day.

Authored by 9/11 hero Todd Beamer's wife. I had heard the story of the man that pioneered the re-taking of flight 93 and how he courageously and selflessly saved so many other lives. But the wife's perspective is both heartbreaking and inspiring. I couldn't put the book down. She is just as courageous as her husband. These kinds of stories are good reminders that when the world turns upside down we don't check our bank accounts or our Instagram followers, we call our loved ones and communicate how much they mean to us.

Ok you have got to read this book until the very end(I say this because my husband did not). Seeking Allah Finding Jesus blew my mind and gave me a heart for the Islamic community. I read the entire book and didn't know the story outside of the story. And I cried like a baby. God is good.

T

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." Enough said.

                       To Read with Older Kids (6 and up)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Penderwicks series. Awakened a sense of gratitude in me for good dads, big families and the shenanigans that accompany them. This book changed my relationship with my oldest for the better. There's no way I'm building it up, it's that good. Ok maybe it was just slightly reminiscent of my childhood, but regardless it is worth the read.

For the whole family(My 2 year old boy too!)

Hilarious, endearing and beautifully illustrated. You can't go wrong with the Mercy Watson series. A lot of the quotes have become inside jokes for our family.