There is something unique between a mother and daughter from the time she is born. Mothers look forward to sharing things from their own childhood they love in the hope this precious bundle of joy loves them too. Of course that doesn’t always happen, not every little girl likes ribbons in her hair or tea parties and yet the mother discovers all the details of what makes her daughter a one-of-a-kind little girl. 

Too often the teen years have more bumpy spots and communication is not always easy or smooth for either mother or daughter. If you are familiar with that and wish there was a template for navigating this season, you’ll want to get a copy of newly released Heart to Heart: A  Mother-Daughter Devotional with 50 Devotions for Teen Girls written by teen and mother coauthors, Bekah and Stacey Pardoe. This is the second book coauthored by this teen-mother. In January of 2023 they published Girl to Girl: 60 Mother-Daughter Devotions for a Closer Relationship and Deeper Faith.

Building on their first book, Stacey utilized her decades of experience with teens as a high school youth group leader, teacher, and mentor in conjunction with Bekah to write about challenges and temptations teen girls face every day but don’t always have open dialogue about with their mothers. The big topics of friendship, academic stress, sports, and faith can be found within these pages using a biblical focus verse for each topic while avoiding the pitfalls of preachy dos and don’ts that often shutdown things that can make a major difference to teens choices.

Each devotional is set in an interactive format with mother and daughter each sharing experiences on the subject for that topic and then looking at practical biblical truth to deepen the conversation and understanding between them.

The Table of Contents gives a small glimpse of what you’ll find in these 50 devotions: The Fear of Failure, Can I Mess Up God’s Plan for My Life?, Life’s Closed Doors, Comparing Yourself to Others, How to Set Standards for Dating, Swearing, Sex, and Violence, How to Handle Drama, The Need to be Liked, When Friends Hurt You, When Your Heart is Hurting, Discerning God’s Voice, You’ve Got This!, and more.

With a backdrop focus of 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 Bekah writes:

“Let’s imagine a scenario. You’re hanging out with a close friend. You’ve been friends for a couple of years, but she’s recently started being mean. She’s been rolling her eyes when you talk, correcting everything you say, and talking about you behind your back.”

This day’s devotional goes on with Bekah sharing what she has learned when this happens and what may or may not happen from her choice of response. Then there is a brief “Teen Reflection” where Bekah asked some questions for the teen to reflect on followed by a “Mom’s Reflection”. This portion looks at practical ideas for dealing with friendship drama. 

Then mom is asked to share about a time when she had conflict in a friendship and they make a list together of insights for handling conflict and drama.

This format is used for each of the 50 devotionals as a path to open communication between mother and daughter.

You may not have a teen daughter but perhaps you know someone who does, this would be a great gift to develop that mother-daughter relationship.

My daughter is a mother herself now and her daughters beyond teen years but I wish I would have had this book when she was a teen and I plan to give a copy of this excellent tool to a mother I know who does. Don’t miss this special heart-warming book.

Kristen Neighbarger’s new release, Breathing Again: Finding Peace While Navigating Faith Reconstruction, takes the reader on the author’s journey of an abusive, hurtful church community in which she grew up through her path of courage to discover biblical truth. Her words express the impact of those early childhood and teen years that resulted in the development of performance-based, people-pleasing choices devoid of the truth of biblical grace, mercy, and love. Constantly striving to be good enough to earn Christ’s love was an exhausting way of life creating negative mindsets and emotions.

Ultimately, her immersion in what she describes as “toxic theology” weaving itself into every aspect of her life from her fundamentalism culture resulted in a public implosion that upended her belief system and every relationship in her life. What she wasn’t expecting was how this embarrassment led to a sense of freedom.

Kristen’s life prior to this led to more than a few poor choices based on her religious culture and what it taught and also left out. She began the journey of deconstruction with the help of therapists to dismantle the teaching that was flawed to seek the Jesus of grace, love, and truth.

Her story of this journey lets the reader see the ups and downs of her quest to then reconstruct her faith foundation and belief system as she began to read and study the Bible for herself. She invites readers who may have had their own experiences of spiritual or religious hurt or abuse to consider their own journeys. Each chapter of the book includes questions and statements to reflect upon and tools Kristen discovered to help bring healing and freedom one breath at a time.

In one passage in the book, Kristen outlines what freedom looks like as she reconstructs her faith foundation:

“My God loves me just the way I am because He made me on purpose for a purpose. As I’ve said before, and probably will say again another ten times, there is nothing I can do that will separate me from His unconditional love, but also, there’s nothing I can do to make His unconditional love greater either. He’s not going to love me more because of my successes, just like He won’t love me less because of my failures. True freedom, friends.”

Kristen has also written a companion workbook for those who would find that tool helpful in looking at their own wounds or abuse. 

It’s not easy to look at hurt or abuse that happens in the context of a church community. We expect more in our experiences there to be safe places but it’s then that Kristen reminds us of this truth:

“While God is the theoretical head of the church, the reality is that it is still run by man, and it is undoubtedly going to be flawed. Every single church will have flaws because every single person has flaws. I have to discern what flaws I can live with, just like I have to choose what flaws are deal breakers for me.”

You may be blessed to be in a faith community that is nourishing you with solid biblical teaching and loving grace-filled fellowship. If so, this book may be surprising to you but if you have had some level of hurt or abuse in your church or religious community you may find this book a helpful tool to help you heal and rediscover the freedom and hope Jesus wanted for you to know.

Why do we read?

We might have more than one or two answers. It may be for information, for assignments, for enjoyment, for inspiration, or any number of things. A line from the 1993 film, Shadowlands, about the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman Gresham puts it this way, “We read to know we are not alone.”

My husband and I have pondered that line since watching the movie again a few days ago. Perhaps there is no specific meaning or that it is a universal truth overarching all else because reading connects us with the world outside of ourselves and connects with our internal world. How those connections occur can be hard to specify and yet they are undeniable no matter what reason we are reading.

It’s not unlike an author trying to explain how they wrote a book:

“You must not believe all that authors tell you about how they write their books. When the story is finished, he has forgotten a good deal of what writing it was like.”

Patti Callahan

In the scheme of things every interaction we have with anyone or anything we read or take into our hearts, minds and spirits plays a part of experiences that help shape us. And human interactions are eternally important even if we may not recognize that in the moment.

A wee man climbs a tree to get a better look at Jesus and the next thing he knows Jesus is inviting himself to come to his house for a face-to-face connection or a woman comes to a well and meets “a man” who tells her everything about who she is and what she has done in her life.

You bump into a friend that you have not seen in a long time and a spiritual moment occurs that God uses to change your life in ways you did not even know needed to be changed.

Yes, we have choices and consequences for those choices, but a look over our shoulder as we enter the later seasons of our lives give us a different perspective so that we can see God was gently leading us even though we didn’t see Him then. We see that again and again in the great stories we read, even in fairy stories.

As I have been pondering the magical story in Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan, I remember what the 8-year-old George gained from reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that helped him as he faced a weakened heart that would take his life before he ever had a chance to grow up.

There is a scene where a friend of his sister, Megs, (Padraig) observes the following gift of the writing of C.S. Lewis:

“George knows you can take the bad parts in a life, all the hard and dismal parts, and turn them into something of beauty. You can take what hurts and aches and perform magic with it so it becomes something else, something that never would have been, except you make it so with your spells and stories with your life.”

Patti Callahan

The stories we read may not be full of magical spells cast by a witch or elf, but they often change us in ways we cannot explain. They may well give us hope even as C.S. Lewis’s book gave hope to George:

“Mr. Lewis’s kinds of stories – the fairy tales, the myths, the universes all wrapping themselves around other worlds – are inside ours. These stories make us remember something we forgot. They make a young boy want to hop out of bed and see the ruins of a castle. These kinds of stories wake us up.”

Patti Callahan

There are stories like that, books like that, that sit on my shelves that I cannot give away because they changed me somehow, caused me to believe differently and with greater hope amid life’s daily challenges. And if I mistakenly pass them along to someone, I regret losing the companionship they gave me. Stories in the Bible are like that as well. Reading them at a specific point in our lives will speak so clearly that we can be tempted to think they were really written just for us. We get a sense of what it must have been like when Jesus called the wee man to come down out of the tree or asked Peter to leave his nets and go fishing for men.

And guess what? Each of our lives is a story that may never be written down in a book and yet is being read every day by those around us. How are we telling those stories and what do they reveal about what we believe, hope, love, or trust?

One thing is certain, the life of C.S. Lewis changed us if we have read any of his 30 books or taken the adventure to Narnia in his epic series. The things that wounded him in his childhood like the death of his mother from cancer when he was 9 years old and even the death of his beloved wife, Joy, to cancer so many years later influenced his writing and us in ways he could never have known when those things and so many others were happening.

“Maybe…maybe Narnia also began when Mr. Lewis sat quietly and paid attention to his heart’s voice. Maybe we are each and every one of us born with our own stories, and we must decide how to tell those stories with our own life, or in a book. Or…could it be that all our stories come from one larger story? Maybe Narnia also began before Mr. Lewis was even born in Belfast, Ireland. Maybe…Mr. Lewis’s tale already existed in the bright light where every story, legend, and myth is born.”

Patti Callahan

It can be so easy to forget the powerhouse that sits above our neck encased in our skull can grow and change throughout our lifetimes. This powerhouse is often a field of battle between negative and positive thoughts that are often whispering quietly without our notice or at other times loudly screaming at us.

Those thoughts have created a mindset that began developing from our earliest years of life. Unfortunately, not everything that goes into the brew is truth, but we didn’t realize it and took some of those lies as facts. Their impact can affect us for years to come.

Perhaps that is why so many books have been written about how to improve or change the habits of our minds, to spiritually war against the enemy’s taunts that he plays out there. Psychology also seeks to help us with cognitive-behavioral techniques that help us identify negative self-defeating thoughts and tools to help us replace them with truth. No quick fix appears to be listed in any of the resources available.

One of the challenges for us is that our mindset ultimately gravitates into one of two types. These affect how we view every mistake, disappointment, setback, and failure and either move us forward toward hope or cause us to halt forward movement and give up.

Angela Duckworth in her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, identifies these two mindsets as a growth mindset or a fixed mindset.

If we have a growth mindset, we believe we can do better, that it’s possible if we work harder, get additional support, and receive encouragement that we can get smarter and do better. And guess what? We get up and try again!

Research shows that if you have a growth mindset, you’ll be more likely to do better in school, enjoy better emotional and physical health, and have stronger, more positive social relationships with other people. It doesn’t mean we don’t fail or face challenges. What matters is our response to those defeats.

If we have a fixed mindset, we believe that those failures, setbacks, disappointments, and mistakes mean we don’t have the “right stuff”, aren’t good enough. And guess what? We give up. That belief can be so strong that we don’t ask for support, we don’t risk trying, we become resolved to a sense of our inadequate performances. We decide we don’t have what it takes!

One of the keys to determining which mindset we develop is how those around us respond when we slip up and make mistakes. The more powerful the position of authority the person has in our lives, the greater the impact not just of what they say or don’t say but also by the facial expressions they exhibit.

If we struggle with a fixed mindset about our spiritual lives, the enemy is gleeful because he knows that he can defeat our hope over and over again as soon as we get up from praying or reading in the Bible. Too often our spiritual lives also get stalled because of how our brothers and sisters around us respond to our struggle. Instead of real encouragement, we might experience quite the opposite for any number of reasons. Sometimes the person isn’t really accurately listening to us to hear the nature of the struggle. Sometimes the person doesn’t know enough of our story to understand why we were defeated….again!!

All of this reminds me of what I love about Paul’s words to the Corinthians:

“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and  take every thought captive to obey Christ,” 2

2 Cor. 10:5 ESV

What we don’t always recognize is that eliminating negative patterns of thinking will not automatically bring about positive, “can do” patterns of thinking. We need to deliberately replace them with positive truth that we affirm to ourselves.

Archilbald Hart has written seven paraphrases of such truth based on scripture that gives a picture of what I mean so let me share them with you:

• “God loves me more than I can ever imagine, and I can never travel beyond the reach of this great love.” (Rom. 8:39)

• “No matter what my sin, God forgives me if I repent, confess, and return to Him.” (1 John 1:9)

• “There is nothing I can do that will cause God to turn away from me.” (Heb. 13:5)

• “Whatever I attempt to do, if it is God’s will for me He will give me the strength and wisdom I need to accomplish the task.” (Phil. 4:13)

• “If I seem to fail because circumstances are against me. God will always give me another opportunity if I return to the starting point.” ((Psa. 37:24)

• “God never wants me to give up. Never, never, never, never.” (Josh. 1:5,7,9)

• “Hating myself doesn’t make God love me more; it just makes it harder for me to see his love.” (Psa. 103:10-12)

God has created our powerhouse brains to be resilient and adaptable. If we have had a fixed mindset, replacing lies and negativity with truth from God’s Word can change it. We also can choose to spend time with those who encourage us and believe in us even when we don’t believe in ourselves and remember that it is those very struggles that God can and does use to produce more endurance and resilience in us.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ² Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Rom. 5:1-5 ESV

I confess that I love GPS and cannot imagine life without it now. I was never (and am not now) a very good map reader like my husband is. The newest GPS devices or apps appeal to my best learning style – auditory – and combine it with seeing the path I am to take.

Older ones we have used are already eclipsed by much better tools as technology grows. My car does not have the screen displays that will allow it to be projected for me, but my smartphone can certainly do that with ease. My favorite choice when I am heading to someplace new or going on a trip is to input the address in the Waze app.

I have other options that work, but I find this app suits me since it not only points to and tells me the way but also gives me additional information. It will let me know if there is an obstacle or pothole in the lane ahead as well as cars that may be stopped along the road or where the police are. It tells me when construction or an accident has brought traffic to a crawl or stop and if there is an alternative route to get me out of that mess. (That latter one has saved us a great deal of time when traveling on various interstates on trips.)

I know I should not hesitate to use a map, but it is hard to do while driving and doesn’t give me as much information as the latest devices or apps. I somehow feel that knowing all this additional information can not only help me get to my destination the easiest and best way, but also help me do it more safely.

One downside to my preference is how much I now depend on this new technology to make my travel easier.

Sometimes I think we would like to have a GPS like this to do life, something to let us know in advance what is ahead of us and how to avoid accidents, potholes and obstacles in the path. But that is not how the Lord designed us and I have no doubt He has excellent reasons.

You see the Lord has the advantage of knowing the beginning as well as the end of the journey we take and sees the long view instead of our more short-sided approach to much in our lives. He also knows where He plans to lead us and despite all that we may have planned or hoped, his design is the one that matters. His wisdom knows that the easy straight path will not develop maturity, trust, or strength of character for the end game.

Little by little from birth until we return home to the Lord, He designs the path for the task or goal. He may give us a glimpse of the path ahead, but not a clear view and not very far.

All along the way the Lord allows persons, places, and circumstances to intersect us in preparation for what lays ahead. We never see that when we are younger and sometimes not even in mid-life. As we age, we can better see how one thing built upon another to equip us for the next thing and to get us to our destination.

Corrie Ten Boom spoke to this in her well-known book, The Hiding Place, in the following quote:

“Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future only He can see.”

Unlike the GPS that is designed to get us to our destination the fastest and easiest way, the Lord knows that will not serve us for that “future only He can see.”

It is easy to think of people along my journey who have encouraged and affirmed me and give them due credit for that. But I am persuaded that when I think of those who have been most challenging or critical, most difficult or disappointing, I know they have been used by the Lord in powerful ways to prepare me for now and maybe beyond now.

A simple illustration to consider that is looking back at the teachers we had in our school life. Hopefully we have had many great ones and we recall them with fondness, but those we tend to recall the most are those who were the toughest and often demanded the most of us. They gave us no quarter with their expectations or grades and accepted no excuses for not doing what was required or asked of us.

We may not love this latter group of teachers, but they prepared us for college professors and bosses who thought they were working with adults who followed directions and understood the requirements. They recognized our weaknesses and cared enough to help strengthen them instead of being overly concerned about being liked by us.

Good parents, loving parents, understand that training and discipline of their cuddly adorable babies and toddlers are needed for them to succeed. And there is no greater nor loving parent than God, our Father. He has purposed to lead us back to Him and bring us home one day. He knows our favorite GPS will not get us there.

^“ There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!”

Romans 5:3-5 (MSG)