Live Out Light

 2020 may have been one for the dumper, but there were some really great podcasts, books, and blogs that shaped me this year. I thought I would share some of them.   BOOKS: This was not my best reading year. But these were my top reads of 2020: Miracle and Other Reasonable Things , by Sarah Bessey.  This is my number one pick of the year.  It was balm for my soul (as the pandemic unfolded during an election year) while I had an unraveling and rebuilding of my faith and views. Sarah Bessey knows a thing or two about wrestling and holding tight to Jesus even as our understanding of Him shifts.   Maybe You Should Talk to Someone , by Lori Gottlieb.  A memoir about a therapist who finds herself in therapy.  It was sweet, tender, engaging.  The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires , by Grady Hendrix.  80's housewives in Charleston SC have a fabulous trashy book club, and then a vampire comes to town.  Think Steel Magnolias...

  We kicked off 2020 with a word for the year, and I had some aspirations and goals. I am not even sure WHERE those journal pages are, but I do remember that I wrote with so much intention. Our word for 2020 however, was nearly prophetic, and there were many days I sat with it at the front of my mind.  Our word was Behold.  And man, did we ever.  This year we beheld many things, some of them precious, some painful.  In February, we started to hear about the pandemic as it began its slow and menacing spread into our country.  At the beginning of March, Jay’s grandmother died. We found ourselves driving up to Rhode Island as the pandemic ramped up. We drove 16 hours. We visited and laughed and cried. We celebrated a life while mourning a death and we worried about the packed house full of friends and family.  We looked through a lifetime’s worth of photos and belongings.  Sacred objects found new homes.  We took a drive out to Newport and w...