Throw Out Fifty Things

This book, Throw Out Fifty Things by Gail Blanke, was surprisingly great.  I chose it (from the NC digital library) expecting a book with tips on how to declutter and organize your house, and the first half of the book did address that, but it was the second half of the book that was more impactful.  These are some notes I took while I was reading and some of the author's advice that stuck with me:

- Throw out things that weigh you down or make you feel bad, like a paper you got a poor grade on, a shirt from an old job you didn't like, etc.  Keep only the things that you need, that you love, and that fit with the person you want to be.

- Throw out the thoughts that pigeonhole you into being a certain type of person (I'm the shy type, I'm not a morning-person type, etc.).

- Throw out needing to be right about things.  Ask yourself: Would I rather be right about this, or would I rather have a great long-term relationship with this person?  Instead say: You're right.  I totally get where you're coming from.  Then give your opinion.

- Throw out the need to have everyone like you.  Some of the greatest people in history were controversial and not liked by everyone.

- Throw out negative interpretations of events.  There are few facts in life.. most of what occupies our thoughts are interpretation of those facts.  Blanke writes, "This is your life, you know.  Not some movie you're watching.  You get to decide how it all turns out.  You get to make it up.  So make it up good."  She advises people to decide what they want and then no matter what happens, you should assign a positive interpretation to the situation.  How much energy have you spent worrying yourself or making yourself unhappy with negative interpretations of events?  Let go of negative interpretations.

- Throw away waiting for the right moment.  This is the life you get to live.  Do what it is you want to do right now.

- Throw away the need to feel secure.  Blanke writes, "Let go of needing guarantees that your lives will evolve according to the plan you devised decades ago.  Given half a chance, your life will evolve into something better than anything you could have imagined- even in your wildest dreams."  Take chances and have adventures.  "Most of the greatest possibilities in our lives are not currently on our radar screens."

- After you've thrown out all of the physical and mental clutter in your life, come up with a vision for yourself and do what it takes to get there.  For example, the author says she has a vision of running down the beach holding the hands of her grandchildren.  So, she gets up early to run around the park, eats healthy, keeps an optimistic attitude, and "throws out" (or eliminates from her life) things like potato chips, getting worked up about little things, etc. to keep her heart healthy enough that she'll be able to do that one day when she has grandchildren.

- Finally, Blanke recommends coming up with a song that makes you feel unstoppable and singing it regularly.

2016 Book Count: 13

Movie: The Fault in Our Stars

This movie was pretty good.  It definitely followed the book pretty well (entire sections of dialogue were exactly the same), but I still enjoyed the book better.  That might be partially because I read the book first and could be surprised by the plot when I read it.  Sometimes I feel like I ruin movies for myself by reading the book first.. but a book takes longer to read than a movie takes to watch- so I'd still rather ruin the movie than the book.

If I Stay

If I Stay by Gayle Forman was a quick read about a girl who was in a car accident with her entire family.  They all died instantly and she was left in a coma but is watching everything unfold from outside her body.  The whole book takes place over the course of a few days, from the morning before the accident to the end of the book when she decides whether she'll stay or go.  She spends her time watching friends and family visit her in the hospital and reminiscing about memories with each of them.  It wasn't necessarily my favorite book.. maybe because it was all pretty predictable.  I do plan to read the second book though.

2016 Book Count: 12

Horngren's Financial and Managerial Accounting (5th Edition)

I read this book, by Miller-Nobles, Mattison, and Matsumura, and filled a notebook with notes on it (partly so I'd be able to help my husband with his accounting class should he want the help, and mostly because I really enjoyed taking a couple of accounting classes one summer while I was in college and took it as an opportunity to brush up what I once knew.  Accounting is almost like a foreign language.. when you don't use it for a while you start to forget how it all works.  One day I think I might really enjoy being the accountant for a school or a small business.

2016 Book Count: 11

Covenant and Kingdom

I read this book with a group of women from church.  In Covenant and Kingdom, Mike Breen is presenting a method for reading and analyzing the Bible by viewing it though the lens of two major themes: covenant and kingdom.  The covenant part of the Bible is the part that talks about our relationship with God and with one another.  In the Bible there are many scenes where a covenant, or promise, is made between two parties.  These biblical covenants tie two people together so closely that their identity is tied up in the other person.  We also have a covenant relationship with God as God's children.  The kingdom part of the Bible are the passages that talk about our responsibility.  In this book, Breen says our responsibility is to make disciples- and the next book that I'm reading with the church group (Building a Discipling Culture) is all about that.

I'm great with the covenant side of things in this book.  I feel like I understand it and agree with it.  I'm still a little shaky on the kingdom side of things.  Personally, I am secure in my faith and know it is right for me.  However, I also strongly believe that other paths are right for other people.  For example, I have several Jewish friends who are secure in their faith, and I wouldn't want them to be any other way.  For a long time I wrestled with whether or not I could really be a Christian when I believed the way I did, and sometimes I still feel that way.  I know a lot of people who would strongly disagree with me, but also a lot who agree.  All I know is that I, personally, don't believe God would exclude people from heaven just because they grew up with, or later identified with, a different system of beliefs.  I know what the Bible says (I've read it) about Jesus saying he is the way, and I don't disagree with that- because he is the way for me.  But, the Bible was written by men.  The Bible also says many other things that aren't taken literally, and it leaves out a lot as well.  I know every word Jesus said was not recorded in the Bible.  Maybe he said something about other religions while he was on earth that would have given me some peace about this internal struggle of mine, and the writers of the Bible just didn't see fit to include it because of their purpose for writing and their audience.

The way I see it, when Jesus said to go and make disciples, I don't think he wanted people who would blindly follow him.  I think he wanted people who would wrestle with and sometimes question their faith, because that causes it to grow and change and strengthen over time.  So, I disagree with the way "making disciples" is often treated in the Christian church- to scare or guilt people into believing a certain way... specifically, trying to "save" as many people as possible through whatever means necessary (although, that's not a Lutheran thing, thank goodness).  Jesus didn't try to scare or guilt people.  Jesus spent time reading the Bible and praying to God.  He talked with people in small groups and he did a lot of good while he was here.  Instead of going wide, he went deep.  I think of disciples as being people who live their lives in a similar way, spending time learning, growing, and getting to know God by asking questions and wrestling with their faith.

So, I guess it's not that I'm "shaky" when it comes to the kingdom side of things.. it's just that I'm not sure whether or not I agree with Covenant and Kingdom because I'm not sure if what the author says about our responsibility to make disciples is in alignment with what I believe.  Maybe the book I'm reading now will clear things up a little.

2016 Book Count: 10

**Off Topic: If you are reading this blog, please forgive any typos.  Writing helps me to think through things (much better than talking about them), and a lot of times my stream of conscious thoughts don't flow perfectly.. but I'm choosing not to edit them.  Also, I have a seven month old- there's just no time for that right now.

The Fault In Our Stars

So far this is my second favorite book of the year: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.  In a nut-shell, it's about two young cancer patients (Hazel and Augustus) who fall in love.  Mostly, I love how honestly the author writes.  He gives really great insights into what his characters are thinking, putting into words things that I have thought about before too.  These were some of my favorite quotes from the book (*page numbers may not correspond to the actual text because I was reading this online through the digital public library):

"Isaac and I communicated almost exclusively through sighs.  Each time someone discussed anticancer diets or snorting ground-up shark fin or whatever, he'd glance over at me and sigh ever so slightly.  I'd shake my head microscopically and exhale in response." (27)

Hazel describes this as the one redeeming part of her cancer support group meetings.  As a pretty quiet person, I can definitely relate.  I typically didn't speak up much in class when I was younger.. and later- in staff meetings at work, I would communicate how I felt about what we were discussing through  looks or "microscopic" head nods to friends.  And in some of those situations, the unspoken communication was the best part of the class or meeting.

"I paused a second, trying to figure out if my response should be calibrated to please Augustus or his parents." (49)

In this scene, Hazel is meeting Augustus's parents for the first time and they ask how the support group meeting went.  If she answers truely honestly, her response would probably make Augustus laugh.. but would also most likely be considered rude by his parents.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like even the most honest people "calibrate" their responses for their audience.  It doesn't mean they lie, but they choose which part of the truth to tell.. and when you have a split audience it becomes even more apparent that you are choosing what to say.  For example, when I'm with a friend and we talk about cooking, I say that I can follow recipes and the things I make are easy.  When I talk about cooking with my mom or grandma, I tell them about some of the more interesting recipes I've tried lately or experiments that have turned out well.  With my friends, I don't want to seem like I'm bragging; with my mom and grandma, I want them to know that I can feed myself fairly healthy foods.  The completely honest truth is somewhere in the middle: I can follow recipes.  I can make things up and sometimes they turn out well.  I eat lots of vegetables and not much fruit.  I often have hot chocolate for breakfast, and sometimes I have Oreos and milk for dinner.

"...they were good songs, but because I didn't know them already, they weren't as good to me as they were to him." (58)

I also prefer to listen to songs I already know.  When I was dating a musician, this was probably not his favorite thing about me.. but you can't sing along unless you know the words!

"And then the line was quiet but not dead.  I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone." (99)

I like this image!

"The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with.  It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before." (305)

To me, this is one of the hardest things about losing a friend, especially when it's a friend you had for a long time or with whom you shared a lot of interesting experiences.  Once that friend is no longer a part of your life, you don't have anyone to reminisce with about your shared experiences.. and as those memories start to fade, it does make them feel less real and important to some degree.  It's a sad thing.

2016 Book Count: 9

Movie: The Book Thief

I saw the movie The Book Thief, and it was so much better than I expected!  I absolutely loved the book, so I was prepared to be disappointed by the movie.  There were a few differences (it didn't show the scenes of Liesel and Rudy stealing food, a few secondary characters were eliminated- like Hans and Rosa's children, and in the movie Rosa was toned down quite a bit).  But, the changes made sense.  In a movie there just isn't enough time to develop characters the way there is in a book, and by toning down Rosa's character (and eliminating a scene when Hans was hard on Liesel), it kept those characters truer to who they really are in the book.  Death was still the narrator, but he only interjected a couple of times, and I thought the casting decisions were fantastic.  Hans was lovable; Liesel was complex; Rudy was adorable.  It's definitely a movie I'd watch again!