Summer Reading List: Hands Free Life and Girl Meets Change

Two friends release books into the world today: Rachel Macy Stafford’s Hands Free Life: Nine Habits for Overcoming Distraction, Living Better, and Loving More and Kristen Strong’s Girl Meets Change: Truths to Carry You through Life’s Transitions. I want to share them with you!

Hands Free Life

{Oops! I jumped the gun a week on Girl Meets Change, which actually releases next week on September 15. It’s available for pre-order!}

Rachel Macy Stafford and I met as cast members in the Atlanta Listen to Your Mother show in May. I’m thankful that God brought her into my life and blessed me with her friendship. Rachel shares a powerful message for parents in today’s over-connected world: take time to unplug.

She explores 9 areas in her new book Hands Free Life: Nine Habits for Overcoming Distraction, Living Better, and Loving More.

Rachel Macy Stafford’s 9 Habits for Living a Hands Free Life:

Fill the Spaces … by being fully present during those little pockets of time in your day ? meals at the table, caring for pets, walking around the block, morning send-offs, afternoon greetings, nightly tuck-ins ?all hold great potential to be all there.
Surrender Control … by resisting the urge to micromanage your life and those lives around you. From time to time, choose to feel the joy of carefree living and allow everything and everyone to simply be.
Build a Foundation … through our daily rituals of presence, communication and faith, we have the power to stay connected to what matters in a culture that often leads us astray.
Take the Pressure Off … by making the choice to live by your heart rather than societal standards. When we embrace being “good enough for today,” we free ourselves from the constraints of unnecessary pressure and unrealistic expectations.
See What is Good … by looking at the flipside of our “weaknesses” and seeing the silver lining in challenging situations, we are able to find hidden strengths and garner unseen hope.
Give What Matters … by offering your most precious commodity, the gift of yourself, despite the pressure to give elaborate, “picture perfect” gifts.
Establish Boundaries … by creating healthy parameters that provide the structure, motivation and insight to say no to the things that can harm what is most precious to you.
Leave a Legacy … by choosing to become a living, breathing example of a life well-lived using meaningful measures of success.
Change Someone’s Story … by offering spontaneous gestures of compassion ? a smile, a helpful hand, a word of encouragement ?to those you may or may not know. In that one simple gesture of kindness, you have the potential to change the entire outlook of one person, one family and one world.

Girl Meets Change

Kristen Strong and I have written together at (in)courage for years. She’s one of the most welcoming women I’ve met—she’s gifted at the art of friendship! As a military wife (her husband retired from the air force), Kristen also knows a lot about change.

In Girl Meets Change: Truths to Carry You through Life’s Transitions, Kristen shares her insights and hopes that her perspective will help you fear less and trust more in the face of life changes.

Don’t you love the title?

Whether chosen or unexpected, all change brings stress. Kristen Strong knows about change–especially the kind you didn’t choose. Over the years, she’s fought hard to learn an important truth: change is not something to be feared but something to be received as a blessing from God who works through it, not in spite of it.

In this hope-filled book, Kristen invites you to see all the ways you are loved and cared for in the midst of change. She walks alongside you as a friend, gently ushering you toward a new view of change, one that meets you at the crossroads of your own sense of anxiety and God’s sense of purpose. With practical advice for coping in every part of life, she draws from her own experiences, the stories of others, and stories from Scripture to help you find contentment, purpose, and renewed strength.