Winsome Wednesday "What Things are True"

Can I confide in you, Internet? Can I insert my truth into your gaping silence and before a million robotic eyes? In the hours after I clicked "publish" on my last "Winsome Wednesday," I regretted and fretted. I felt ashamed. The atmosphere in my heart was the polar opposite of what I've intended to create with my weekly campaign to follow Paul's advice in Philippians 4:8 to fill my thoughts with things lovely, true and winsome-- all around me and even in me.

Hatmaker's "For the Love": my new favorite book

The first thing you should know about this book and this author is that she's hilarious. If you're tired of boring and dry, this is the antidote. However, if you're like me and consider yourself a serious thinker, you might worry where the opening humor, light hearted self-deprecation and self-helpy prose are leading you. Happily, there's depth and wisdom and maturity bubbling beneath Hatmaker's big personality.

What's striking about pastor and popular blogger Jen Hatmaker's newest book For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards is that she blends personal stories, theology, humor, and practical tips for child rearing, marriage and Christian community so seamlessly. There's even recipes for Roast Lamb and Pad Thai in there. In this way, it's somewhat like a blog. Yet all the parts send a cohesive message, which I think is summed up in these freeing words Hatmaker gives to her five children: "God measures our entire existence by only two things: how we love Him and how we love people. If you get this right, you can get a million other things wrong" (189).