Many women feel isolated, ashamed, or uncertain of how to reconcile this trial with a loving God. The death of the dream of motherhood—whether from infertility, barrenness, miscarriage, or the loss of a child—is one of the hardest journeys women can walk through.In Longing for Motherhood, Chelsea Patterson Sobolik speaks to these burdens specifically. She shares vulnerably about her own journey of childlessness and how she has ultimately come to view her story through the lens of Scripture and our hope in Christ. While remaining tender and empathetic toward suffering and longing, she discusses the comfort we have in knowing that the Lord is sovereign over all, and that His love is sufficient to carry us through any and every situation.A timely book for women struggling with childlessness, as well as for pastors, friends, and family who want to care for them well, Longing for Motherhood is a tender, truthful companion for a difficult journey.

    As teacher and writer Jessica Lahey explains, even though these parents see themselves as being highly responsive to their children’s well-being, they aren’t giving them the chance to experience failure—or the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems.Overparenting has the potential to ruin a child’s confidence and undermine their education, Lahey reminds us. Teachers don’t just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. They teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight—important life skills children carry with them long after they leave the classroom. Providing a path toward solutions, Lahey lays out a blueprint with targeted advice for handling homework, report cards, social dynamics, and sports. Most importantly, she sets forth a plan to help parents learn to step back and embrace their children’s failures. Hard-hitting yet warm and wise, The Gift of Failure is essential reading for parents, educators, and psychologists nationwide who want to help their children succeed.

    We worry about our children, our friends, our careers, our families, our spouses—and the list goes on. We want to be content and trust God with our worries, but it’s a struggle to let go and free ourselves from the burden of anxiety.If you’re tired of worrying about all the what-ifs in your life and want to experience the calm and contentment that the Bible promises, Calm My Anxious Heart is what you’ve been looking for. Filled with encouragement and practical help for overcoming anxiety, this book includes a ten-week Bible study to help you discover what the Bible says about anxiety and contentment and ways to apply it to your daily life. This classic book has been field-tested, revised, and updated for a new generation of readers. A companion journal is also available to record your thoughts as you listen to God’s teaching, embrace the present, and live with joy. With Calm My Anxious Heart, you can let go of anxiety and experience contentment that comes from trusting God.

    The more we interact online, the more we crave intimacy. The more filtered our lives become, the harder it is to be real.It’s time to refresh and rediscover what it means to be “like Jesus” and find true authenticity, a healthy self-image, and compassion for others in an age when we relate to each other so differently than ever before. Groeschel taps into some of the most leading-edge studies on the effects of social media on our emotions and friendships. He offers real-life examples of how we struggle with screens and likes, how these things mask our struggles with who we really are, and how we can reclaim a Christ-centered life.Packed with helpful topics like the “10 Commandments of Using Social Media to Strengthen Your Faith” and “Creating Safeguards for Your Digital Devices,” readers from ages sixteen to sixty will find Liking Jesus to be just the guide to bring balance and real-world engagement to everyday life.

    As she traces the metaphor through Scripture, Beth uncovers how every part of our own lives—even the rockiest, most difficult soil—is used by God to make a difference for His Kingdom.Great for small groups or individual study, the Chasing Vines Group Experience is a journey you don’t want to miss.

    He shares poignant stories of his childhood, including one about rolling pennies by candlelight because the electricity had once again been cut off, and his little sister needed medication. At one point, his alcoholic parents abandoned him and his two siblings for five days, with no food, heat, or electricity in the middle of winter.But as Doug grew, his determination to survive grew with him. Despite being accepted to the Air Force Academy directly after high school, he stayed closer to home so he could look after his younger sister. And as various opportunities opened up to him, he discovered that his heart belonged in the political arena; for it was there, he believed, that he could work for real change and bring help to those who suffered as he did as a child.Rolling Pennies in the Dark reminds readers that it is possible to grow up in the most deplorable of conditions and still find success. More significantly, MacKinnon offers real solutions to our nation’s growing poverty problem. This is an important, essential book.

    Juli Slattery, psychologist, author, and president of Authentic Intimacy No marriage is perfect. But every marriage can get better. Do you feel like the spark is gone? Like a critical spirit has invaded your marriage? Like you want more intimacy, but something is in the way? You could be suffering from the Perfection Infection. The Perfection Infection happens when we cultivate unrealistic expectations of ourselves and our spouse, gradually leading to intimacy-killing behavior, also known as the “Seven Slow Fades.” That was the case for Jill and Mark Savage, and it eventually led to infidelity. In No More Perfect Marriages they speak honestly about their struggles, how they came back from betrayal, and the principles keeping their marriage strong today. They guide you in everything you need to know to kick the Perfection Infection right out and return to intimacy. In their warm, honest, personable style, Jill and Mark discuss: How the Perfection Infection invades a marriage—even a good marriage How to detect and correct the Seven Slow Fades How to set and communicate realistic expectations What to do if your spouse just won’t change How to guard your marriage from the Perfection Infection for good Hurting marriages can heal, and good marriages can become great. It takes work, yes, but No More Perfect Marriages will give you the insights, language, and roadmap you need for the journey. So start today. “[Replaces] the Hollywood mirage of a storybook romance with a healthy blueprint of a real and rock-solid relationships. If you're looking for an authentic story, practical how-to, and hope to build true and lasting love, you've foundit." — Michele Cushatt, author, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With An Unexpected Life “… Will empower readers to create healthier responses when facing marital challenges… Excited [to add it] to our recommended resources for couples." — Michelle Nietert, licensed counselor “Vulnerable, honest, and helpful… If you want to improve, save, restore, or renew your marriage, read this book.” — Mike Baker, sr. pastor, Eastview Christian Church, Normal, Illinois “Encouraging and very practical!” — Shaunti Feldhahn, social researcher and bestselling author of For Women Only and For Men Only

    It's about raising Moms. . ." says author, speaker, blogger, lunch packer, and sidewalk chalk artist Becky Kopitzke. In a Pinterest-perfect culture, you've likely sensed an accelerated pressure to measure up. Then you either weigh yourself down with guilt or become resigned--desensitized, even--to this so-called failure. The Supermom Myth--with humor and grace, yet all the while maintaining a firm grasp on reality--aims to empower you to become the mom God created you to be. With 8 chapters, each personifying a "dirty villain" of motherhood, including The Grouch on the Couch (Anger), Worry Woman (Fear), and The Calendar Queen (Busyness), Kopitzke offers a gentle reminder to rest in the super power of our grace-filled God.

    Erin Odom grew up in the private schools and neatly manicured lawns of Upper Middle Class America, but was thrown into low-income living during the economic crash. She was a stay-at-home-mom, her husband was supporting the family on a teacher’s salary, and despite the fact that they had no debt to their name, they were scrambling to make ends meet. Suddenly Erin found herself standing in line for food stamps, turning down play dates because she couldn’t afford the gas, and ultimately walking into bankruptcy court in the eighth month of her third pregnancy.More Than Just Making It tells the story of their breaking point, as well as the triumph of their comeback. It took hard work, creativity, and faith in God’s provision to reset their bank account as well as their hearts, but ultimately they found a new way to thrive and freedom from financial anxiety. You can do the same. Learn how Erin and her family saved enough money to put $30,000 down on a home, buy a minivan in cash, and begin sending their daughter to private Christian school. More Than Just Making It will encourage readers to rise above their circumstances, empower them with money-saving tips, and reimagine the good life as God designed it outside the myth of the American Dream.

    Raised in the company of the lively Anne of Green Gables, the brave Pevensie children of Narnia, and the wise Austen heroines, she discovered reading early on as a daily gift, a way of encountering the world in all its wonder. But what she came to realize as an adult was just how powerfully books had shaped her as a woman to live a story within that world, to be a lifelong learner, to grasp hope in struggle, and to create and act with courage.She's convinced that books can do the same for you.Join Sarah in exploring the reading life as a gift and an adventure, one meant to enrich, broaden, and delight you in each season of your life as a woman. In Book Girl, you'll discover:how reading can strengthen your spiritual life and deepen your faith, why a journey through classic literature might be just what you need (and where to begin), how stories form your sense of identity, how Sarah's parents raised her to be a reader--and what you can do to cultivate a love of reading in the growing readers around you, and 20+ annotated book lists, including some old favorites and many new discoveries.Whether you've long considered yourself a reader or have dreams of becoming one, Book Girl will draw you into the life-giving journey of becoming a woman who reads and lives well.

    Perhaps nowhere does this impact our lives more profoundly than when we think about raising children--especially teenagers. Where parents often see a sweet boy or girl who has morphed into an incomprehensible bundle of hormones and angst, what we really ought to be seeing is an amazing young adult whose brain is under heavy construction. And changing the way we see our teens will revolutionize our relationships with them. Organized by what we hear teens say--things like "I'm bored," "You just don't understand," "Why are you freaking out?," "I hate my life!," or "Hold on . . . I just have to send this"--this book helps parents develop compassion for their teens and discernment in parenting them as their brains are progressively remodeled. Rather than seeing the teen years as a time to simply hold on for dear life, Dr. Jeramy and Jerusha Clark show that they can be an amazing season of cultivating creativity, self-awareness, and passion for the things that really matter.

      What do you do when God dies? It's a question facing millions today, as science reveals a Universe that's self-creating, as American culture departs from Christian social norms, and the idea of God begins to seem implausible at best and barbaric at worst.   Mike McHargue understands the pain of unraveling belief. In Finding God in the Waves, Mike tells the story of how his Evangelical faith dissolved into atheism as he studied the Bible, a crisis that threatened his life, his friendships, and even his marriage. Years later, Mike was standing on the shores of the Pacific Ocean when a bewildering, seemingly mystical moment motivated him to take another look. But this time, it wasn't theology or scripture that led him back to God—it was science.    In Finding God in the Waves, "Science Mike” draws on his personal experience to tell the unlikely story of how science led him back to faith. Among other revelations, we learn what brain scans reveal about what happens when we pray; how fundamentalism affects the psyche; and how God is revealed not only in scripture, but in the night sky, in subatomic particles, and in us.   For the faithful and skeptic alike, Finding God in the Waves is a winsome, lucid, page-turning read about belonging, life’s biggest questions, and the hope of knowing God in an age of science.

    It always involves earning our children's trust. Whether we are overwhelmed at being parents, planning to be parents, reacting to our parents, or learning to stand with our kids as they now parent, we need to know there is always a way home, convinced God is in the middle of every stage of our family. Find yourself in this story as you ride along with the Clawsons on vacation. Go inside the episode as each part of the story unfolds, and find the freedom and truth that God offers us as we build trust with our kids, and discover insight and hope for our own painful patterns. This book is filled with joy, insight, wisdom and maybe a fresh way of seeing our families and ourselves. Enjoy the ride.

    She is barely an adult when the trials of motherhood and marriage put her on an unexpected collision course with Jesus. After finding her faith at a suburban megachurch, Jamie trades in the easy life on the cul-de-sac for the green fields of Costa Rica. There, along with her family, she earnestly hopes to serve God and change lives. But faced with a yawning culture gap and persistent shortcomings in herself and her fellow workers, she soon loses confidence in the missionary enterprise and falls into a funk of cynicism and despair.

Nearly paralyzed by depression, yet still wanting to make a difference, she decides to tell the whole, disenchanted truth: Missionaries suck and our work makes no sense at all! From her sofa in Central America, she launches a renegade blog, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, and against all odds wins a large and passionate following. Which leads her to see that maybe a "bad" missionary--awkward, doubtful, and vocal—is exactly what the world and the throngs of American do-gooders need.