Growing up in middle America in a suburb of Tulsa, I attended a mainstream United Methodist church. We were fairly involved, attending about every other week. I had a personal faith and a community that loved me unconditionally. I had no experience with a church or personal life that put strict boundaries on what I could do or be due to my gender. As I got older, I began encountering people who had a different view of gender and faith. With the advent of cable, Christian television grew in popularity. As a result, a more fundamental view of Christianity became present in our society. I was shocked to realize that people judged me and my faith harshly and found it wanting.

Fast forward thirty years and we now live in a society where in many arenas women and men are treated equally and given the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities. However, in Oklahoma at least, the debate about women continues. The rise of the idea that a godly woman would reflect the qualities of Proverbs 31. Books and businesses have embraced this with gusto, often distorting the idea until it no longer reflects reality.

Rachel Held Evans grew up in a very fundamental environment. She embraced the lifestyle and community provided by her church life entirely. She provided leadership as appropriate within her tradition and flourished. However, as she grew older and continued to explore her faith, her experiences and education challenged the lifestyle that she had been living. She eventually would grow away from that tradition as she grew towards a new relationship with God. She began to realize that the literal expression of the Bible that she had been taught was actually filtered through the lives and opinions of the church leaders.

In A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Held Evans chronicles the year that she took scripture about women and lived it literally. In doing this she exposes the hypocrisy that is present in the Proverbs 31 culture and challenges others to really look at why they are living the way they do and what the Bible actually says about their lifestyle. Held Evans has faced a great deal of hostility by the Christian community. They follow her blog and other writings with a fervor that borders on obsession. Just waiting for her to say something they disagree with and jumping on her with an intensity that would lead many to flee from Christianity. Having read her previous writings, I looked forward to reading this book and chuckling at her witty insight. I was so disappointed that she was forced to defend her writing on the internet and on television.

I shared this book with a group of women from my church and was so comforted to experience it in a similar way. We all found it educational and enlightening and full of humor. We had honest conversation about what scripture actually says about being a woman and found much common ground. One of the women enjoyed it so much that she is going to present it in a first person book review to other women’s groups this year. I find it slightly troubling that she feels compelled to pick and choose what parts to share in an effort not to offend anyone. I hope that as we grow in our faith, we will be open to reading the scripture ourselves and honestly reflecting on what they mean.

Young adult fiction has recently become a very popular genre. The book store now has an entire section for this genre and a best selling section promoting the most popular sellers. For months I saw the intriguing cover for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children on those shelves. The cover shows a young girl from the 1940’s levitating slightly over the wooded ground. I finally gave in to my curiosity and bought this book and began reading. Ransom Riggs weaves an intriguing adventure of a teenage boy facing his grandfather’s legacy of mystery. His grandfather had told him vivid stories of peculiar children that he knew while growing up in a children’s home during the early days of World War II. The grandfather would leave his home over the years under mysterious and suspicious circumstances. After the grandfather dies a violent death, the boy goes in search of answers. Accompanied by his father, the boy discovers the truth about his grandfather’s childhood and has to make some difficult decisions about his own future.

Riggs develops an entertaining group of children with peculiar talents. This would have been more fun if the impending doom didn’t loom over the story at all times. The open ending promises more to the story. Reading the young adult novel as an older adult reminds me of the time when the future was full of intrigue and promise, as well as uncertainty that can be frightening. Riggs balances the boys story with the story of the children in a way that is believable and intriguing. You cheer for the children to persevere over the circumstances of time and place, all the while suspending the truth of reality.

I just love Florida! The beaches, the salty air, the great food, all fill my soul with something that’s missing back in Oklahoma. Hayley Snow discovered that same love after she relocated to Key West for a man. In An Appetite for Murder Lucy Burdette captures the essence of the Keys. Snow is a bit surprised to find herself unemployed and unloved after her impulsive move. She realizes that she must get busy if she wants to stay in paradise and puts all of her energy into obtaining a job with a start up local magazine. A self professed foodie, she feels she has found her ideal job as a food reviewer. However, circumstances conspire to throw up roadblocks in her path. She gets drawn into a murder mystery that she feels compelled to solve quickly before she has to pay for a crime she didn’t commit. In typical cozy fashion, Snow stumbles upon the answers and narrowly misses harm to herself.

I must admit that the primary draw of this series is the location. Burdette does an excellent job of weaving the island into the plot and making it almost a character itself. As much as Snow wants to stay on the island, I long to return. I relish the fact that there are two more books on my kindle in this series waiting for me to read. A good series, it leaves me hungry for me, just like Snow’s reviews of local eateries.

The first book in a mystery series often spends a lot of time developing the main character and their situation. This tends to make the first book tedious and difficult to get involved with. Barbara Levenson dispenses with this tendency in Fatal February. She jumps right into the Mary Magruder Katz’s life with minimal back story. Immediately Katz’s past life is uprooted and a brand new job and love interest is established. Katz is a criminal defense attorney in Miami and is thrust into the criminal intrigue of her clients and associates. She impulsively jumps into her cases, risking her own security in the process. Her new love interest complicates the entire process. Justice in June continues Katz’s story both personally and professionally. Levenson does a good job of weaving the characters and the plots together with just enough of the unknown to keep the readers involved. Both books were quick and enjoyable reads. I look forward to her next release, Outrageous October.

Over the last few years, I have discovered many new authors on Twitter. Jennifer Weiner is one of those authors whose tweets inspired me to try out her writing that is longer than 140 characters at a time. The Half Life, however, isn’t much longer than the amount of writing she does during the average Bachelor/Bachelorette episode. This short story about a woman on the brink of divorce gave me a taste of Weiner’s fiction writing and inspired me to add her longer works to my list of books to investigate. The main character, Piper DeWitt, realizes that her husband is indeed serious about ending their marriage just as she leaves home for a business trip to Paris. When her flight gets postponed due to volcano ash, she takes advantage of the time in limbo to explore what her new life may hold. A intense romantic interlude with a stranger empowers her to forge ahead with the new adventure. Weiner leaves the reader wondering just what will happen with DeWitt and her husband Tosh.

After reading this novelette, I discovered that it was a part of Redbook’s Red-Hot Read series. I do believe that I will try a longer read of Weiner’s in the future. This was such an easy read and engaged me immediately. I continue to enjoy Weiner’s tweets and her wit.

One of my favorite memories of my son’s teenage years is watching The Gilmore Girls together after school. Our love for Lorelai and Rory Gilmore was shared every day in reruns. Lauren Graham will forever be Lorelai Gilmore to me, even though I do enjoy her on Parenthood as well. Imagine my joy as I sat in the waiting room of the CCU in early May and read that Lauren Graham had released a novel. I immediately downloaded Someday, Someday, Maybe onto my Kindle and began reading. Graham writes about a young actress in New York during the 70’s. Of course, I imagined Graham herself as the main character in the novel. Graham seems to have captured the atmosphere of the city during this time. She expresses the struggles of following the passion for acting while maintaining a roof over her head. She details the pressure that her family exerts on her to come home and live a “normal” life as well as the pressure the industry puts upon a young actress to compromise for fame.

This was a perfect book after the more intense Sue Monk Kidd. It was thoroughly enjoyable to walk the streets of NYC with the main character and her colorful cast of cohorts. I was never fearful that she wouldn’t succeed and enjoyed the many missteps that she made. I later read that the storyline may be made into a television show starring the young actress that portrays Graham’s daughter in Parenthood.

We seem to spend a lot of our time waiting – waiting for the next big event, waiting to get thinner, waiting to have more money or fewer bills. People will tell you that you need to live in the moment and not to live always waiting for a better or different time. In a world of instant gratification, we no have less patience for waiting. We send a text and expect an immediate reply. We make a bank deposit and expect immediate access to the funds. We get hungry and expect our food to be instantly ready. Although we’re always waiting, we no longer know how to handle it gracefully. Sue Monk Kidd writes about a time in her life when she knew there was a transformation taking place, but she had to wait and experience it in it’s own time. When the Heart Waits is an intense depiction of this time.

Over the last few years I have been going through a time of transformation myself. This book appealed to me due to the idea of a heart waiting. It was recommended to me by a friend who knew what I was experiencing. As is often the case, I did not read it right away. It wasn’t until a group at our church began to meet on a monthly basis for a book group that I finally chose to read it. Once again, I found myself reading the book club book during a time of crisis for my family. My father had been admitted to CCU for a serious case of meningitis. Not the very best time to read a book about depression. I had read Monk Kidd’s novels and had devoured them quickly. However, this would not be the case with When the Heart Waits. This was a much more difficult read. She touched on life experiences, theological challenges and her own struggles. Although much of the book was beautifully written, it was a great challenge to complete. I must admit that I completed it with much relief. Although there were many great passages, it was difficult to process.

The main thing I got out of the reading is that it’s ok to wait, but it’s also important to not spend your time always waiting. Give yourself permission to be in that moment, but also challenge yourself to look towards the future as well. I’m still waiting. Waiting for my Dad to be healed, waiting for my son to graduate college and get married, waiting to know how God is going to use me in the future. I look forward to all of these things and hope that I am able to experience more of life as the days pass. To use Monk Kidd’s image – I hope that the butterfly that I know I hold inside will emerge from the cocoon soon.