Hi friend, thanks for stopping by! I'm Amanda. I am a pastor's wife and a homeschooling mom who has a passion to encourage women to faithfully step every day into what God has for them.
Are you looking for some good book suggestions for summer reading? I’ve got you covered. I chose just a handful of books that I love.
NON-FICTION
Love Doesby Bob Goff. Every chapter in this book is a story, and Bob Goff is a master story-teller. It’s so full of encouragement and inspiration to love others with our whole heart.
2. The Ministry of Ordinary Places by Shannon Martin. Shannon Martin’s books are so enjoyable. She talks about ministry in the city with truth and authenticity. She doesn’t sugar-coat it.
3.Can’t Make This Stuff Upby Susannah B. Lewis. Susannah’s book is full of encouragement and laughs.
4. Unmasked by Matt Manney. This is my husband’s book. It’s about ripping off the mask of shame and learning that through God, I am enough.
5. The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. This book is so powerful. Mark teaches us again the importance of prayer but in a relevant and powerful way.
6. It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way by Lisa TerKeurst. Lisa shares her testimony in this powerful book. She shares how her life was shattered when her husband had an affair.
7. Make It Happenby Lara Casey. This book is an encouragement to step out and do something great for God.
8. Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis. Rachel Hollis is the queen of motivation. Her book inspires us to forget about what others think and go for our dreams.
9. Get Out of That Pit by Beth Moore. This book was an eye opener for me. I loved reading about the different pits in our lives and how we get there.
FICTION BOOKS
10. Of Beast and Beauty by Chanda Hahn. I love anything by Chanda Hahn. This book just came out and is the first in the series. It was so good! It’s a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
11. The Iron Butterfly Series by Chanda Hahn. This series is one of my favorite of all time. There are three books in the series, and they are fabulous.
12.The Traitor’s Game by Jennifer Nielsen. Any book by Jennifer A. Nielsen is amazing! This one is no exception.
Stick it out! How many times have you heard those words before? I have a particular hatred for that phrase. I think it probably comes from years of sports and being yelled at. In high school, those words were yelled at my teammates and me as we ran under the hot Midwest sun in late August. It was preseason, and we had the joy of running outdoors to get “in shape” for the coming sports season.
I remember one particular day. We were running a long stretch. One of my team members jogged next to me. She looked at me as we jogged and asked, “How do you not stop? How do you keep going?” Confused, I looked at her. “What do you mean?” I asked. She said, “Everybody always stops and walks when they need to, but you never do. How do you keep going and not stop to walk?” Her question surprised me. I honestly don’t remember my response to her. It was probably something like, “I don’t want to get in trouble and have to run more.”
In Church Planting
I have thought about that question hundreds of times since then. I think about it when I’m pushing myself to keep jogging, and all I want to do is stop and walk. Sometimes I think about it when I am tired and want to go to bed, but I have a few more things to accomplish. Often I think about it in relation to church planting. The last few years of ministry have brought heartache and failed expectations. There have been countless times I wanted to just walk away from it all.
Too many Sundays with only a handful of people showing up for church, too many months without getting paid, too many hurtful comments from people, too many feelings of failure, and on and on the list goes. I’m sure people looking at our life would ask the same question my teammate asked so many years ago. “Why don’t you stop? Why do you keep going?” One gentleman at a church we were visiting said to my husband, “Most people would have given up by now.”
What was his response? What is my response? “We’re not most people.” While it is true, most people would have walked away by now, we have chosen to stay. We have chosen to continue in what God has called us to do. Why? Because we know this is God’s plan and purpose for our lives. More importantly, the reason we can keep going is that we have wrestled with knowing God’s plan for our lives.
In God’s Purpose
Matt and I have spent countless hours praying, reading our Bibles, journaling, talking to wise counselors, and talking to each other about God’s plan for our lives. We spent a lot of time working through the process I outlined in my last blog post. 6 Steps to Finding God’s Purpose for Your Life. I created a worksheet outlining the process we used. You can get it here. We’ve settled that we are to love and care for the people that God brings through the door of Greater Philly Church. We are both supposed to write. Matt’s newest book Breakthrough: Transforming the Death of Your Dream into the Birth of Your Breakthroughreleases in a few weeks. I am currently writing a book. We both blog. Matt blogs at mattmanney.com. These are the things we know God wants us to do.
In the Future
How do we stick it out when what God has called us to becomes difficult or doesn’t look anything like we thought it would?
Hebrews 10:36 says, “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” (KJV)
The Message paraphrases it this way, “But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion.”
What is the the promise? The answer is found in verse 37.
For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. (KJV)
The promise is that Jesus is coming again. When He does, all of our heartache and disappointments will be wiped away in the blink of an eye. We will receive vindication for all the wrongs we received. He will tell us, “Well done.”
3 Daily Choices that Keep Me from Quitting
After eight years of church planting, there are three things that I have learned that keep me from quitting.
Take it one day at a time. I just have to get through today. Don’t look at tomorrow or the next day. Figure out what I need to do for today.
Stay grateful. I write down several things I am grateful for every morning in my journal.
Choose joy. I once heard Rick Warren say, “Discouragement is a choice.” We have to choose not to be discouraged. If I don’t choose joy every day, the disappointments in life will pull me down.
In conclusion, I need to fulfill what God has called me to do. You need to fulfill what God has called you to do. Together, let’s develop some stick-it-out grit, so we can finish what we’ve started.
Finding God’s purpose for our lives is like finding the holy grail. Pastors preach on it, teachers teach about it, Christians talk about it… but nobody tells you how to find it. It’s one of the most confusing topics in churches. Most people don’t know how to find God’s purpose for their lives, but all of us recognize when somebody else has found theirs.
When you cross paths with somebody who lives their life accomplishing what God created them to do, it’s contagious. You want to be around them. You want to be apart of what God is doing in their life. So how do we figure out God’s purpose for our lives?
Paul’s Understanding of His Purpose
Before we tackle finding God’s purpose, it is crucial for us to understand that everybody’s purpose in life is different. We can absolutely not compare what God wants us to do with what anybody else is doing. Paul understood this clearly. In II Timothy 4:7, he says,
“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:”
Paul says, I have fought a good fight, and I have kept the faith. When he talks about fighting a good fight and keeping the faith, he uses the words a and the. When he talks about his course, however, he makes it personal. He uses the word my. “I have finished my course.” This tiny word makes a huge difference. Paul understood that his course was different from everybody else’s. He recognized that God had given him a purpose and plan for life that couldn’t be compared to anybody else’s, and Paul didn’t. He focused solely on what God wanted him to accomplish.
A Simple Six-Step Process
If we could latch on to Paul’s idea, we would find so much more peace in our lives. God has created us all uniquely and gifted us differently. If we were all the same, God wouldn’t need each one of us. The fact that you and I are still on this earth and not in Heaven means that God has a special plan for our lives. He has gifted you and me specifically for what he wants us to accomplish. Your purpose will be unlike anybody else’s. We can not compare ourselves to anyone else. Even someone who is in the same line of work as you will be gifted slightly different to be able to accomplish their purpose differently than you.
A Simple Formula
If we spend our lives comparing ourselves and our lives to others, we are wasting the gifts God has given us. It’s time to stop looking around at others and focus on looking inside ourselves at how God has gifted us and wants us to use those gifts to accomplish His purpose in our lives. How do we do that? We can use simple questions and action steps to help us figure out our purpose.
How has God gifted me- what talents do I have?
What abilities have I developed over the years?
What is my personality?
What am I passionate about?
How can I take the answers to the above questions and combine them to meet a need in other people’s lives?
Write down your two or three top choices. Pray about those options. Talk to other close family and friends and get their opinion on your choices. What do they see as a natural fit for you?
Now the formula is simple, but the process may take some time. That’s okay. Take the time to really think through your answers. If you find the answer to number 5, you can begin to find God’s purpose for your life. Don’t overcomplicate it. God only gave you so many talents, passions, and opportunities to grow your abilities. He did that to point you in the direction of what He wants you to do with your life.
One of the books that really helped me when I was trying to work through this process was Fringe Hours: Making Time for You by Jessica Turner.
When we find out what God wants us to accomplish with our lives, we become unstoppable. We get out of bed, excited for the day and ready to work. Is every day perfect? No. Do hard days still come? Yes; but we will have the motivation and drive to keep us moving forward.
We have the greatest of comparisons in our backyard. When you stand on our deck and look into our backyard, you can look straight ahead and see our four kids playing in a ten-foot-long, 18-inch deep blow-up pool. If you look just to the left into the neighbor’s yard, you will see an immaculate above ground pool surrounded by a large deck. Their pool is beautiful and always crystal clear. Ours is usually dirty and has grass and bugs floating in it, no matter how many times we empty it out and fill it up again.
Do you know what the biggest difference is though? Our pool is full of life and laughter. The kids play in it all day long, laughing, yelling, and having fun. Our neighbor’s pool on most days sits empty. Once in a while, their granddaughter comes over and swims all by herself in the large pool. Madison invited her to come and play in our pool, but she only stayed for about five minutes. Why would you stay and play in a tiny pool when you can swim in your own huge pool?
A Life Lesson from My Kids
Looking at the neighbor’s beautiful pool this spring when we moved in, I was heartbroken for our kids. They have always wanted a big pool, and we moved in right next to one. I thought they would be sad, but I have been amazed that it doesn’t seem to bother them. They are too focused on their own pool to waste time thinking about the beautiful pool next door. Learning from them, I made a commitment to God to focus on the life I have right now, not the life I want. Sure, we need to bring up our income, we need to move into a larger house before the kids get older and much more. But right now? Right now, I get to stand at my kitchen sink washing dishes and watch my kids hav a blast swimming in a small pool. That’s the life I have right now, and I love it!
I hope you are having as great a summer as we are. If you missed it, be sure to read my 3 Keys to Having a Productive Summer. This summer, love the life you have, not the one you want!
Three out of four taking a break from the pool to eat lunch.
Because I homeschool during the school year, I take summer break really seriously. I look forward to it, probably more so than my kids. I set goals I want to accomplish, projects I want to complete, books I want to read, and more. We only take off the months of June and July for summer break. To accomplish everything I want to, I have to be strategic. I have found three keys that work for me to have a productive summer.
Key #1: Make a List of Goals
Before summer starts, I write down my goals for what I want to accomplish. Summer goes so fast! If I don’t take the time to write down my goals, summer will be over and I won’t have accomplished anything I wanted to. So before summer started, Matt and I used one of our date nights to write down what we want to accomplish personally and what we want to do as a family.
Key 2: Make a Daily Schedule for the Kids and One For You
I know that if I want to get anything accomplished this summer, my kids need to know what to do and when to do it. Otherwise, they will drive me crazy all day with… What can I do? I’m bored. What’s for lunch? What’s for supper? Can we go outside now? We made a summer schedule and placed it on the refrigerator so the kids know what they can do all throughout the day. We are a few weeks into our schedule, and it seems to be working really well for us. Instead of them coming to me every two seconds, they go look at what they should be doing.
If you are interested, you can see our kids’ schedule here and my personal schedule here. You can also print off your own summer schedule to fill in here. If you check out our schedules, you will see that Sunday and Monday are not on there. On Sundays we have church, and Monday is a Sabbath Day for us.
Key 3: Make a Meal Plan
One of the keys to sticking with the schedule is to have my menu planned out for the week. If I don’t, I will spend valuable time trying to figure out the next meal or fielding questions about it. I use this simple menu printable from iheartplanners.com. You can access it here. I printed off several copies on different colored paper. I fill in a new one each week on Sunday. It makes such a difference! Our days have run so much smoother since incorporating a meal plan that the kids and I can see.
These three keys have made a difference already in our summer. Use these three keys to give you and your kids the most productive summer yet!
When I was in college, I traveled around the country on a musical team representing my school. I played the piano for our group, and we performed at a different church every Sunday. One of the leaders who traveled with us had a saying, “Flexibility is the key to ministry.” If she said it once, she said it a thousand times. She desperately wanted us to understand that leaders must stay flexible with changing times, people, and situations. With decades of ministry behind her, she knew all too well that life has a way of changing when you least expect it.
I understood this concept in a small way in college, but over a decade in ministry has helped me to clearly understand what she was trying to teach us. The best leaders are the ones who can adapt and change to the people, times, culture, and ideas around them. They don’t hang on to the past, unable to change and adapt and move into the future.
Allowing God to Redirect Us
Sometimes God completely redirects us. Maybe it’s a career change, a move, a new relationship, a loss, a painful experience, or something else completely. God has a habit of shaking things up in our lives when we least expect it. If you would have asked me a year ago to foresee some of the changes God took our family through last year, I would have been shocked. I had no idea that the bottom would fall out for us both in our ministry and in our personal lives. I had no idea we would go for months on end without getting paid, endure depression and discouragement like we never had before, face the pain of potentially walking away from the church we started seven years ago, and having to sell our home and move.
Holding Loosely to My Plans
I have learned over the past several years that the best way for me to succeed in life is to find what it is that God wants me to do and follow it wholeheartedly. View the talents and abilities, dreams and desires He has given me as a compass to point me towards what He wants me to accomplish. The struggles of this past year taught me that I also have to hold on to those plans and dreams with a loose hand and allow God to change my direction and plans at any time because He will do that when we least expect it!
King Solomon teaches us this principle in Proverbs. Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” (KJV) The Message paraphrases it this way, “We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it.” (MSG)
Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” (KJV) The Message paraphrases it this way, “We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it.” (MSG)
3 Ways to Stay Flexible and Allow for Change
How can we accomplish our goals and dreams and yet be flexible enough for God to be able to move or redirect us?
Keep a tender heart. Keep a clean heart and conscience before God. Forgive people who do you wrong. Don’t get a hard heart with people or situations that disappoint you. God may be allowing those painful situations in your life to move you in a different direction. If Matt and I hadn’t battled every day to keep a tender heart, we would have walked away from ministry this past year.
Develop a consistent morning time routine. Spend time every morning praying, reading the Bible, and journaling. We can’t expect God to direct us if we aren’t spending time with Him. He will use His Word and time in prayer to show us and direct us into what He has for us. My morning time was a lifeline for me this past year. If I hadn’t spent years developing the habit of reading my Bible every morning, journaling, and praying, I would have given up. If you would like some ideas for developing a consistent morning time, read my best tips for an effective morning time.
Continue growing and learning. Spend time reading good books, listening to podcasts, and growing. So many times a podcast I listened to or a book I read helped me to stay faithful, keep moving forward, and make the changes I needed to. It is so much easier for God to redirect us and change us when we are in the habit of growing and learning. If you need book or podcast suggestions, here are a few of my favorites.
Staying Flexible and Be Ready for Change
If we keep a tender heart, spend each morning connecting with God, and allow God to change our thinking by reading good books and listening to good podcasts, we are as ready as we can be for God to interrupt our life and send us in a new direction. Don’t hold so tightly to your ideas, your plans, or your dreams that you can’t let God redirect you and point you in the new direction He wants you to go.
If you follow me online, you have probably noticed I have been absent online since Christmas. Let me catch you up on what we’ve been doing. We started out the year with a bang! In January, we decided it was time for us to make a move. We took a really heavy pay cut last year in the middle of the year. After several months of scrambling, cutting back, picking up extra hours, and more, we decided we needed to bring down our mortgage payments. Our goal was to cut our mortgage in half. So with that in mind, the second week of January we decided to begin the process of selling our home and moving.
We made a call to a realtor friend of ours, and we were off. Our house needed a ton of work, so we got to work. We painted everything in sight. I told Matt if the kids stood still too long, they would get painted. We redid a bathroom, ripped out carpet, put in new carpet, redecorated and staged the house, cleaned out our basement, and packed up most of the house. It was a crazy six weeks. We headed into open house weekend with lots of prayers and our fingers crossed.
Selling Our Home
Selling Our Home, Moving, and a Wedding
After a Saturday and Sunday open house with around sixty people showing up, we came away with multiple offers and a bidding war. We officially accepted a bid on Monday night after the open houses. Then all the craziness started with looking for a new house, inspections, appraisals, paperwork, and all that messy stuff. We pushed through all of that and began the moving process. We moved into our new home the second week of April. After just a few days of settling in, we hit the road to head to Illinois for my younger sister’s wedding. We got to spend lots of time with family and friends, laughing, having fun together, and helping to decorate for the wedding.
Here’s a few pictures from the wedding…
My beautiful little sister marrying her best friend.Our four kids all ready for the wedding.My older sister and I getting ready for the wedding.
Back to Normal Life
After that, we started the trip home and stopped in Pittsburgh for a few days for some much-needed downtime to relax and have some fun together. Now we are back home, finishing the year homeschooling, and looking forward to summer break!
Do you ever feel like the holidays fly by without fitting any meaningful family time in? I have in my mind all the things I want to do as a family for the holiday season, but all of a sudden January hits and we didn’t get to any of it.
A few years ago, Matt and I talked and decided to do something about it. We decided to be more intentional about the holidays. I knew if we were going to fit more into our schedule, I had to find ideas that were simple and easy. I started trying to find ways to incorporate more quality family time in during the holiday season. We have several things now that we do as a family each year that I want to share over the next few weeks. Here we go!
Idea #2: Looking at Lights
This idea is super easy. Load all the kids into the car, turn on the Christmas music, and drive around looking at Christmas lights. We try to do this several times during the Christmas season. Sometimes we drive through McDonald’s and get hot chocolate for everybody.
It doesn’t sound spectacular, but it’s so much fun for the kids, especially when they are not expecting it. We love to surprise them. Sometimes we wait until the kids are in pajamas and ready for bed; then we tell everyone to grab a coat and put on their shoes. Chaos ensues. Everybody runs around grabbing coats and shoes. We all pile into the van and take off. We don’t stay out long- maybe about twenty minutes or so. It’s just long enough to spend some meaningful time together as a family.
Creating family time in the midst of a busy season doesn’t have to take a lot of time or money. It just takes a little creativity and planning to sneak it into a busy schedule. We won’t ever regret the effort it takes to spend more time with our family. Our kids won’t be with us forever, so we have to create the memories while we can!
Do you ever feel like the holidays fly by without fitting any meaningful family time in? I have in my mind all the things I want to do as a family for the holiday season, but all of a sudden January hits and we didn’t get to any of it.
A few years ago, Matt and I talked and decided to do something about it. We decided to be more intentional about the holidays. I knew if we were going to fit more into our schedule, I had to find ideas that were simple and easy. I started trying to find ways to incorporate more quality family time in during the holiday season. We have several things now that we do as a family each year that I want to share over the next few weeks. Here we go!
Idea #1: Christmas Reading Basket
Create a Christmas reading basket. I got this idea two years from Sarah Mackenzie and her podcast, “The Read-Aloud Revival.” I love this idea! We created a book basket for the month of December. I like it so much, we might continue it into next year.
Our Christmas book basket
Place a large basket somewhere visible and fill it with Christmas books. I went to my library and checked out all the best Christmas and winter books I could find! Lots of our books are by Jan Brett. We just love her books, and she has several winter and Christmas books! Whenever it’s time to read, I choose one child to go pick out a book from the basket and we get to read it together as a family.
Some of our favorites from our last library run
Finding Extra Time to Read
We try to find extra time each day to read. We might read the book before bedtime, after dinner at the table, in the morning after breakfast, in the car as we travel somewhere, or at some other random time. I love the time we spend reading a good book together as a family. Sometimes the kids sit and color and listen as I read. Other times, they just sit and look at the pictures.
We have enjoyed so many great Christmas books together as a family! It’s an easy way to fit in extra family time. Everybody enjoys it and it only takes a few minutes to pull off and absolutely no prep time! That’s a win in my book.
It’s fall! That means beautiful days, trees bursting with color, pumpkin lattes, apple picking at the orchard, apple cider donuts, and all the wonderful things fall brings.
Last week, we were crazy busy. I had more to accomplish on my to-do list each day than I could possibly accomplish. But as I looked out the window, I saw it was an incredibly gorgeous fall day. The sun hadn’t been out in days, but now it was shining and the trees were full of color.
I looked at my phone and saw that we weren’t going to have another sunny day for over a week. I started wondering if we should cancel our plans for the day and go outdoors and enjoy the great fall day God created.
Wisdom from My Morning Time
I was undecided until I had my morning time. I read in Ecclesiastes a few verses that encouraged my heart.
And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. Ecclesiastes 3:13
Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. Ecclesisastes 9:9
For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God:… Ecclesiastes 9:1
3 Lessons from Solomon
1. The gift of God is working hard and enjoying the fruits of our labor. What’s the point in working hard every day if you never take a day off? What’s the point of earning money if we can’t spend it doing something together as a family?
2. My spouse and children are gifts from God to be enjoyed in this life. I have to choose to spend time with them while I still can. We are not promised tomorrow, and our children won’t be with us forever. In the blink of an eye, they will be out of our home and on their own. We have to make conscious decisions to spend time putting into them, noticing them, and having fun with them while we can.
3. Our lives are in God’s hand. Our jobs, our pay, our careers, everything we work so hard for is in God’s hand. Taking a day off isn’t going to change that.
Choosing to Spend Time Doing What Really Matters
So, what did we do? We packed the kids in the van and drove an hour and a half away to beautiful Lancaster, PA. We went to our favorite orchard and bought pink lady apples, we discovered a new park surrounded by the most gorgeous fall trees, and we found some leaves to play in. But mostly, we simply enjoyed spending time together as a family.
Sometimes we need to step away from work, take a break from the never-ending to-do list, and just choose to spend time together. We will never regret the time we spend together as a family!
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