I'd meet a guy; we'd plan a beautiful wedding and buy a nice house-not necessarily with a picket fence, but with whatever kind of fence we wanted. I might work, or I might not, but whatever we decided, I would be happy.When I got out of college and my life didn't look like that, I floundered around, trying to figure out how to get the life I had always dreamed of. I went down so many different paths for it. Career. Travel. Friends. Relationships. But none of them were as satisfying as I hoped they would be. Like many twenty-somethings, I tried desperately to discover the life of my dreams after college, but instead of finding it, I just kept accumulating baggage. I had school loans, car payments, electronics I couldn't afford, a house full of mismatched furniture I didn't love but that had become my own, hurt from broken relationships, and unmet expectations for what life was "supposed to be" like.Just when I had given up all hope of finding the "life I'd always dreamed about," I decided to take a trip to all fifty states...because when you go on a trip, you can't take your baggage. What I found was that "packing light" wasn't as easy as I thought it was.This is the story of that trip and learning to live life with less baggage.

    So do our politicians.We're not listening.And no one is listening to us.Despite living in a world where technology allows constant digital communication and opportunities to connect, it seems no one is really listening or even knows how. And it’s making us lonelier, more isolated, and less tolerant than ever before. A listener by trade, New York Times contributor Kate Murphy wanted to know how we got here.In this always illuminating and often humorous deep dive, Murphy explains why we’re not listening, what it’s doing to us, and how we can reverse the trend. She makes accessible the psychology, neuroscience, and sociology of listening while also introducing us to some of the best listeners out there (including a CIA agent, focus group moderator, bartender, radio producer, and top furniture salesman). It’s time to stop talking and start listening.

    The broken and stressed relationships that result from these feelings can overwhelm us. But now there's help. Well-known teacher and speaker Chip Ingram teams up with psychologist and author Dr. Becca Johnson in this encouraging and practical book, showing how many emotions lead to anger, and many emotions follow from it. Their message is clear: as we deal with our anger, we deal with the primary cause for all emotions that destroy. Ingram and Johnson help readers identify whether they are spewers, leakers, or stuffers. Readers also learn the difference between good and bad anger, how to gain control of their anger, and how to direct it toward constructive ends. The authors cover solid biblical principles as well as the psychological aspects of our emotions, showing readers how they can actually be a constructive tool used by God to transform lives and relationships. Counselors, pastors, and individual Christians will find this book a no-nonsense tool for handling destructive emotions in a healthy way.

    Attitudes and behaviors of the adolescent can be unhealthy for him and for the family. However, good boundaries are the bedrock of not only better relationships, but also maturity, safety, and growth - especially for teens and their parents. In order to help teenagers grow into healthy adults, parents and youth workers need to help them experience how to take responsibility for their behavior, their values, and their lives. Dr. John Townsend, co-author of the Gold Medallion Award-winning book Boundaries, is a parent of two teenagers himself. With wisdom and empathy, he applies his biblically based principles to bear on the challenging task of the teen years, showing parents: how to deal with disrespectful attitudes and irresponsible behaviors in your teen; how to set healthy limits and realistic consequences; how to be loving and caring while establishing rules; and how to determine specific strategies to deal with problems both big and small.

    If you're ready to make some serious changes around here, You Are a Badass will help you: Identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want, blast past your fears so you can take big exciting risks, figure out how to make some damn money already, learn to love yourself and others, set big goals and reach them - it will basically show you how to create a life you totally love, and how to create it now.By the end of You Are a Badass, you'll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can't change, how to change what you don't love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass.

    Whether books are your addiction or your phobia, Lit! offers up solid advice to help you think about reading in fresh ways.With all the practical suggestions built on a firm gospel foundation, this book will help you flourish in the essential skills necessary for a balanced reading diet of Scripture, serious works of theology, and moving devotional works, but without overlooking the importance of how-to books from expert practitioners, the storytelling genius of historians, and rich novels written by skilled artists of fiction.Literature scholar Leland Ryken calls Lit! “a triumph of scholarship,” but mostly it’s a practical and unpretentious book about the most urgent skills you need to enjoy a luminously literate life in honor of God.

    Yet so often, we too easily settle for someone else's descriptions, the Cliff notes from another's spiritual journey. We are content for "God-experts" to do the heavy lifting and then give us the bottom line. And like any secondhand information, after enough times through the grapevine, the truth about God deteriorates and crumbs of rumor are all that remain.But when life derails, and things don't go as we had planned, our thin view of God is challenged. In those critical moments, we can choose to walk away from God, or to let our questions lead us home. When we choose to wrestle with God, to engage Him for ourselves, we-like Jacob and Job and David-will see rumors die and revelation come alive.It's time to hear the magnificent, Divine Invitation. It's time to take God up on His offer and embrace the mystery and majesty of knowing Him for ourselves.

    The anticipation to one day get married is a beautiful experience that should not be rushed. In your waiting, purpose to pray for your future husband and what he is enduring through right now that will contribute to your future marriage. This resource takes you on a journey of learning how to pray for his heart through thirty-one specific prayers for him.

    Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.

    Somewhere over the passing years and changing culture, women have lost their way.  This book is written to lead them back home.  Regardless of how you began your marriage or how dark and lonely the path that has brought you to where you are now, I want you to know that it is possible today to have a marriage so good and so fulfilling that it can only be explained as a miracle.Follow Debi Pearl as she takes the wisdom and experience of her own marriage and confirms it with the wisdom of scripture and learn how to be the “help meet” that God created you to be.   You will learn to appreciate God’s gift of a husband with a thankful heart that produces joy and wisdom in you and your home.  Gain a better understanding of who your husband is and how your response to him can make or break your marriage.  See the Bible’s perspective of obedience and authority and understand how you are joint heirs to the promises of God.The miracle of a wonderful marriage is like the miracle of birth, God allows you to be an essential contributor to the miracle.  Read, enjoy and be blessed as over 330,000 other women already have.

    Divorce. Job loss. Estrangement from family members. Broken friendships. The difficult circumstances you are dealing with today are likely being fed by one of four emotional forces that compels you to act in undesirable ways, sometimes even against your will. Andy Stanley explores each of these destructive forces?guilt, anger, greed, and jealousy?and how they infiltrate your life and damage your relationships. He says that left unchallenged they have the power to destroy your home, your career, and your friendships. In Enemies of the Heart, Andy offers practical, biblical direction to help you fight back, to take charge of those feelings that mysteriously control you, and to restore your broken relationships.

    As Dr. Charles Stanley writes, a man of God is a maturing man, a striving man, a knowledgeable man. And the first step in real manhood is spiritual rebirth. In Man of God, Dr. Stanley asks and answers questions such as these: What can we learn about manhood from Jesus’s example?How does a true leader allow God to lead him?Why is a godly man “both velvet and steel”?What does it look like to be a provider?What does it mean to lead with sensitivity? Man of God will challenge and equip you to become a better leader, teacher, father, and husband. What makes a man? The answer starts here. Includes study guide for individuals or groups.

    While many give their lives to Jesus, few then go on to live a life of truly vibrant faith. In this disruptively inspiring book, Chandler offers tangible ways to develop a faith of pursuing, chasing, knowing, and loving Jesus. Because if we clean up our lives but don't get Jesus, we've lost! So let the goal be Him. To live is Christ, to die is gain—this is the message of the letter. Therefore, our lives should be lived to Him, through Him, for Him, with Him, about Him—everything should be about Jesus.