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WaitingforBoaz -> The PFY Book Club (6/12/2008 1:59:46 PM)


Welcome to the Personally for You Book Club Thread!

Please join us as we read and discuss various books, with the ultimate goal being; to become more and more like the One we love and serve; Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Naturally each of us will get different things out of a book, God is working His will in each individual life and we are all in a different place. Please allow others the freedom to share what God is showing them through the books we read. I hope that this will be a place where we can freely discuss, but not debate the content of our book.

At any point in time, anyone is welcome to join us. If you have the book, just read to the point where we are and join in.

I am very excited and I hope this thread will be a huge blessing to all who come in.

~Blessings~






WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/12/2008 2:08:28 PM)

Our first book is:

When Women Walk Alone
By Cindi McMenamin

Finding Strength and Hope through the seasons of Life.


Discussions for this book start on Friday June 13th.

We will discuss one chapter per week, starting on Friday and ending on the following Thursday.



WalkingwithHim2 -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/12/2008 2:39:50 PM)

Heya Nadine!

I haven't rec'd my book yet but I still hope to join y'all.



uncabeeil -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/12/2008 3:17:39 PM)

Guess us guys will have to wait til you chose a non-gender specific book. I doubt we'd get much out of that particular title.



Tinkerbell_ -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/12/2008 3:19:31 PM)

Aw geez! I hate not knowing genders. *sigh*

I thought you were a chick.

Now I have to reread your posts!! [&o]



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/12/2008 5:01:41 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: uncabeeil

Guess us guys will have to wait til you chose a non-gender specific book. I doubt we'd get much out of that particular title.


The next book will be non gender specific. I have no idea what it will be, but other men have expressed an interest in the book club as well. This book has 10 chapters, so it will will take us 10 weeks.
If you have any ideas for a book choice feel free to post them here with a link.[:D]

~Blessings~



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 1:20:58 AM)

Part One:

A Season of Searching

"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart."
Jeremiah 29:13


Chapter One:

Alone As A Woman
Seeking the Blessing



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 1:49:30 AM)

Father in the name of Jesus I ask Your blessing on our discussions of this book. I pray that you would guide us in all things. I pray that we would bless and blessed. Please help us to be an encouragement to one another. Lord, I pray that each person would glean from the book exactly what you desire them to, and that we will come away from this book knowing that we are never truly alone. In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 10:08:27 AM)

Today is the first day of chapter one. Feel free to post at will. [:D]
I will be posting later after my daughters VBS Finale. They had 350 kids!! WooHoo!!![sm=dance.gif]



Focusing -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 11:06:34 AM)

I loved chapter 1 ... what a wonderful introduction!

The first thing I highlighted in this chapter was the following sentence:

"I've learned not to look for a way out of the desert, but to learn what God wants to teach me while I'm there."

This is something I finally learned only a couple years ago, and it was after going through the same lesson over and over. Oh, it was wrapped up differently each time, but it was the same frustrating lesson at the root. It was only after crying out to God that I was tired of going through this lesson. I had already been there. How come I had to keep going through it?

And God gently told me "It's because you are not understanding the lesson I am teaching you ... I am showing you in so many ways, but you aren't understanding."

Wow!!

So I asked Him "What is it I'm suppose to be learning?" And that's when He showed me. Pointed out the specific lesson I was to understand. Something so simple that I had completely overlooked it.

I went through this process more than a few times, each time with different lessons, and each time I caught on a little quicker ... oh! I need to ask God what it is He is trying to teach me. It has become a little easier each time ... a little quicker to remember to simply go to His feet and ask Him. He is more than happy to help me understand. He is so very patient and kind to me.


So, this was the big lesson I saw in chapter 1: don't be in a hurry to say "okay, I get it" and move along. Because if we don't get what God is showing us, what He desires us to understand, we will find ourselves right back in that desert place wandering around aimlessly.


You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:13


Amen!



Tinkerbell_ -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 11:25:42 AM)

Psalms 37:4 tells us he will give us the desires of our heart. I always wondered how that worked because if I desire something, won't He give it to me? Then I realised what He was saying; He wants our hearts desire to be His desires for us. When we can put aside our own desires and focus on what He wants for us, He truly will give us what we desire: Him.

My favourite passage is, "The secret to our strength lies not in our circumstances, but in who we meet in spite of them, and what we learn about Him in the process." (emphasis mine)



CoeurdeLeon_ -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 12:25:40 PM)

Very cool, Sam & Tink![:D]


I have to admit, I'm having a little trouble identifying with the idea of being 'alone' so far. And I'm only sharing this so that, if I say something really weird in the future, y'all will know where I'm coming from.[;)]

I cannot remember a time when I've ever felt 'alone' and I honestly think it's because I don't have anything to compare to. Or to put it another way, I have absolutely no idea what 'not alone' feels like. I have always been, in one way or another, as I am now so this feels 'normal'. So, if stuff I say doesn't make sense, it's basically because I don't have the same point of reference that other people do.

What Sam shared made me think of something though. I don't know whether it's just the way I'm wired or what but, I learned to stay in the desert a long, long time ago. Sometimes I think I'm just not much of a 'go-getter' or I'm lazy because waiting on God to move is just the way I am. Or maybe I use that as an excuse to cover up that I'm not a 'go-getter'.

Or maybe God mercifully taught me at a young age to prepare me for all the waiting I was going to have to do. I dunno but, either way, it's been more of a blessing than I can say.



elastic -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 12:31:57 PM)

I may join y'all on book 2, but i'll follow along in the thread until then. just wanted to be a part of a book club. neato!



uncabeeil -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 2:43:56 PM)

quote:

I thought you were a chick.
Hmm, guess I'd better grunt or burp in each post to avoid that kind of confusion. FYI, the handle is how my niece used to pronounce my name, "Uncle Bill" = uncabeeil. And the post was made in jest, not as a complaint, in case anybody misunderstands.



Tinkerbell_ -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 2:58:12 PM)

I'm very much a planner, so I have ask Nadine...what suggestions do you have for a next book? Are you looking at another devotional, a novel, comic book....???

And if you say, "Whatever everyone else wants..." I'll have no problems flying to you and choking you. [:D]

quote:

And the post was made in jest, not as a complaint, in case anybody misunderstands.

It's all good...I took it in jest. [:D]



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 5:09:50 PM)

I bought this book one day while I was walking through the grocery store. I saw the title as I walked by, and I just picked it up and bought it. I had just (a couple weeks before) been told by John’s Doctor that he was terminal and had very little time left. One word kept reverberating in my mind over and over again. Alone. I am going to be alone. I have my kids of course, but I had never in my life been alone. I grew up in a family with 5 kids, 4 of us girls. We had one bathroom until I was 14. Believe me, I was never alone. I went straight from my parent’s house to my husband’s home after we got married. I never had my own apartment, never went off to college and lived in a dorm. Never have I lived independent of another individual, until now. I started reading the book right away, I was not alone yet, but I knew it was coming. I read the preface and the first chapter and decided the book was not for me. I honestly do not remember why. So after John died I packed it up with the rest of my books and moved. Almost a year later, I walked into the garage to grab a few things, to put in my Mother-in-laws garage sale, that I had put together for her and I saw this book. I slapped a 1.00 sticker on it and set it out on one of the tables. At the end of the day, I put all of the things that I had brought that did not sell into a box in the back of my trunk. The next day, I got stuck somewhere for a couple of hours and I sat there wishing I had something to read when I remembered the box in the trunk. I pulled out this book and I began to read.



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 5:32:35 PM)

So much had happened since that day I bought, and subsequently rejected this book. I was now alone, and had been for almost a year, and I felt it in every cell in my body. As soon as I started reading this book again, I realized that what the author was telling me was the truth and truth that I need to hear, right then, at that preordained moment.
Fritz may remember me asking her the question, did you ever hear the truth and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is the truth, but you did not want to hear it. That had never happened to me before. I love truth. I rejoice in the truth, usually. This time I did not, but I knew that I needed to hear it and I knew that it was timely and I knew that it was God. I was so angry at myself for not wanting to immediately embrace the truth, that I decided right then that I would need some accountability for reading this book. So I thought of you all, my friends who also walk “alone”. Thank you for joining me in reading this book. It means more to me than you will ever know. [:D]



CoeurdeLeon_ -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 5:34:22 PM)

I remember. {{{{Nadine}}}}



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 5:39:52 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tinkerbell_

I'm very much a planner, so I have ask Nadine...what suggestions do you have for a next book? Are you looking at another devotional, a novel, comic book....???

And if you say, "Whatever everyone else wants..." I'll have no problems flying to you and choking you. [:D]

quote:

And the post was made in jest, not as a complaint, in case anybody misunderstands.

It's all good...I took it in jest. [:D]

LOL. Believe me I am not a "whatever everyone else wants to do" sort of gal.....I am way to opinionated for that.[:D]

I do not know what book we should do next, yet. I thought that if a few different people came up with ideas we may do a poll. Dude had expressed a possible interest in the book club.. and is a Pastorish sorta guy, maybe he has a suggestion or two. I will probably ask a guy friend as well.[:D]



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 6:22:51 PM)

This is the passage from the book that first struck me:

What does God want to teach us in the deserts we walk through as women? That we can be like Beth and look lonliness straight in the face- through the death of a marriage or the loss of a child or the disappointments in life that leave us feeling barren- and still have hope in our eyes and joy in our hearts? Perhaps it's not what He wants us to see, but who He wants us to see. (emphasis mine)

My mom had a bunch of one-liners that she said all the time. One of them was "Look life straight in face and never back down." So when I read, "look lonliness straight in the face." I thought, I have never backed down from anything in my life and I have faced some pretty difficult challanges, but, I just do not have the strength (or really the desire to accept lonliness)
My first thought was there is no possible way I am going to just accept that I may be alone for the rest of my life. But God is not asking me to accept lonliness, He is asking me to accept His will whatever that may be and to trust Him with the lonliness. Trusting Him is something I have learned to do in the desert place. I think I can do that.[:D]



CoeurdeLeon_ -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/13/2008 8:16:41 PM)

quote:

But God is not asking me to accept lonliness, He is asking me to accept His will whatever that may be and to trust Him with the lonliness. Trusting Him is something I have learned to do in the desert place. I think I can do that.

Excellent point. And, yes, you can do that.[:)]

I think that loneliness is also very much a state of mind (as I expressed earlier, I could be off my rocker in regard to this topic[;)]). But so many things look differently if you look at them from another angle and I think this is one of them. What looks like loneliness from one perspective is going to look like something very different and very awesome from God's perspective.

At least I think so.[:)]



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/14/2008 10:35:10 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: WalkingwithHim2

Heya Nadine!

I haven't rec'd my book yet but I still hope to join y'all.


No Problem!!!![;)]
I hope it comes soon.[:D]



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/14/2008 10:59:13 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: CoeurdeLeon

Very cool, Sam & Tink![:D]


I have to admit, I'm having a little trouble identifying with the idea of being 'alone' so far. And I'm only sharing this so that, if I say something really weird in the future, y'all will know where I'm coming from.[;)]

I cannot remember a time when I've ever felt 'alone' and I honestly think it's because I don't have anything to compare to. Or to put it another way, I have absolutely no idea what 'not alone' feels like. I have always been, in one way or another, as I am now so this feels 'normal'. So, if stuff I say doesn't make sense, it's basically because I don't have the same point of reference that other people do.

What Sam shared made me think of something though. I don't know whether it's just the way I'm wired or what but, I learned to stay in the desert a long, long time ago. Sometimes I think I'm just not much of a 'go-getter' or I'm lazy because waiting on God to move is just the way I am. Or maybe I use that as an excuse to cover up that I'm not a 'go-getter'.
Or maybe God mercifully taught me at a young age to prepare me for all the waiting I was going to have to do. I dunno but, either way, it's been more of a blessing than I can say.


We are wired to avoid pain and discomfort. When we touch something hot we pull away quickly and avoid ever doing that again. The first time I went through the desert place, my main focus was getting out, at any cost. The amazing thing to me now is that he will let us out of the desert sometimes, but, he always brings us back to the same place later. Sometimes over and over again.[&:] Whatever it is he wants to teach us at that time is so important to Him that He will make sure that we get it, however long it takes. I think the most important thing I have learned as a Christian is that the desert stops being so painful once we focus all of our attention on God and whatever it is that He is trying to teach us. This is usually where I grow and change the most. Really the times of refreshing after the desert are almost worth the times in the desert.

Fritz I think the differences in our experiences will make these discussions really interesting. You having always been "alone" and me having never been "alone" (until now)


[8|]I think that I should clearify that when I say alone, I am referring to not having another human in my life. The aloneness does not refer to Spiritual aloneness, hence the quotes on the word "alone".



WaitingforBoaz -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/14/2008 11:19:50 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tinkerbell_

Psalms 37:4 tells us he will give us the desires of our heart. I always wondered how that worked because if I desire something, won't He give it to me? Then I realised what He was saying; He wants our hearts desire to be His desires for us. When we can put aside our own desires and focus on what He wants for us, He truly will give us what we desire: Him.


So true Tink.
Was my hearts desire for my husband to stay here on Earth with me. Absolutely. However, even more than that, my truest, hearts desire is to walk in Gods will, His desires. Feeling that way has actually allowed me to feel excitement for the future, even though I am only one year out from Johns death.



collie1 -> RE: The PFY Book Club (6/14/2008 11:48:52 AM)

Chapter one was a great reminder for me that God has a purpose for my life, He has not given up on me because of my failures.



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