Category Archives: books

Introducing…

Meet my newest book!

Unlike normal people, I have spent most of the year in Advent. My days off have been filled with Advent wonder and writing. I am grateful to finally share this with you!

Let me introduce you to the book.

Soon it will be Advent, a word that means arrive. Advent will lead to Christmas, when you may gather with familiar people for the holiday. I wrote this book of daily Advent reflections because family gatherings tend to be tricky. Some of you even dread holidays with family. This does not make you a terrible person, it simply makes you human.

Christmas is an advent of the familiar, that is, an arrival right back with the familiar people with whom you started. Christ will come soon, and your family might be coming to your house soon! Wait, don’t panic.

I hear a chorus of the same holiday angst. angst. You are not alone if thinking ahead to Christmas dinner and the familiar faces raises your heart rate.

A main idea in this book is the hard truth that you cannot change the familiar people with whom you gather. You can, however, wait. Before you react, perhaps you change your response to the dread, angst, or irritations you feel when you gather with them. This book is meant to equip you to be your own, honest self with your family, and to rely on the gentle love of Jesus, the one who is to come.

The book relies on a way to understand relationships called systems theory. In a nutshell, systems theory gives you a broader look at relationships and your own part in them. I hope this book makes you a factory of curiosity and wonder about your own self, which may lead to lighter, healthier relationships in your family. Each chapter ends with a reflection question and brief prayer.

The book is kind of available on Amazon. I say kind of because Amazon is stating the book’s status as “temporarily out of stock.” Amazon prints self-published books on demand, so that makes no sense. Maybe by the time you read this, Amazon will have changed the status. If not, you can go ahead and add the book to your cart, order it, and Amazon will email you when it is available again. Within the next week, you will find an e-book on Amazon.

If you subscribe to my blog, earlier this week you received a sneak peek of chapter two! Subscribers will also receive an email when the e-book is free for a day on Amazon.

Advent begins four weeks before Christmas. If you enjoy a daily devotion, you can begin reading on December 1st and continue through Christmas Eve. The book includes 24 daily reflections to slow you down as you wait for the one who is to come, who is mercy in a manger for you.

Why is it So Hard to Choose a Book?

Never in the history of humanity has there been access to the volume of volumes available to you today. Not only are there more libraries with physical books, digital books are multiplying across the internet like rabbits.

I rely almost completely on Goodreads to choose a book. If you are unfamiliar, Goodreads is a social media platform to help you and a good book find one another. Adding friends to your profile allows you to see the book your friend is reading, as well as how much your friend did or didn’t like it.

Once a good book and I have found one another, I rely mostly on the Libby app to read it. I do love visiting my local library, however, I also love reading on my Kindle paperwhite.

With all the books and such easy access, why is it so hard to choose a book? Is it because I overindulged in WWII history and can’t swallow another page? Or because I’m in my 40’s and so over hearing women in their 20’s offer life advice? Or because religious books are too preachy? Or nonfiction books too dismal? Or dystopian books too real?

And so, I go back to Three Pines to savor the last few books of Louise Penny’s masterpiece. Whatever will I do when I catch up to the latest book in her series? Let’s talk about something else.

Three Pines aside, why is it so hard to choose a book? Are all the stories running together in the pages and pages available to me? Am I simply in a reading rut, or is it like life, in which there are moments of comfortable monotony? Is the story of my own life enough for now, without stirring more stories into the mix?

Perhaps later today the book I need to read will appear. Books have a way of doing that – choosing you. Ready or not, you will stumble upon the wardrobe where a world awaits you, grace upon grace. You may discover the story you are living is more remarkable and adventurous than you had once thought. You may get caught up in the greater story of God’s labor and love and your place in it.

Photo by Laura Kapfer on Unsplash

Last Minute Ketchup (and a book recommendation)

We were moments away from a dinnertime-disaster. Special guests who had accepted a last-minute invitation were soon to arrive. The hot dogs and brats were finishing their sweat session on the grill. And we…had no ketchup! A key ingredient was missing.

After double and triple-checking for a sneaky bottle hiding in the pantry, I texted my lovely neighbor who replied, “I don’t have an unopened bottle but you can have the open bottle in the fridge.” Deal. Neighbor to the rescue.

Neighbors can be the way to avoid disaster, at least the dinner-variety disaster. Neighbors can offer ketchup, a friendly wave, a kind word, and understanding when your teenager plays his music at an un-neighborly volume. Like ketchup makes a hot dog, neighbors make a neighborhood, or something like that.

I’m nearing the end of the book: “Start with Hello (and Other Simple Ways to Live as Neighbors)”, by Shannon Martin. I have really liked the audiobook, even more because her voice sounds exactly like Angela Martin from “The Office.” This would be a fun book to read in a group and form neighborhood experiments from her stories.

Martin (not Angela, but Shannon), provides an honest picture of what happens when we get to know our neighbors. She names the awkward parts, the fear of rejection, the reasons we talk ourselves out of it.

I appreciate how she explains the “toxic independence” of our culture, which would first encourage a quick trip to the store before texting a neighbor for ketchup. In truth, I am dependent upon my neighbors for more than ketchup.

  • I need my neighbors if my kid is home alone and suddenly requires help from an adult.
  • I need my neighbors to let me know if something fishy is going on.
  • I needed my neighbor this endless winter to scrape the mountain of snow off our driveway with his blessed tractor.

Living independently is not neighborly and also not good for hot dogs. Or for the guests who will be eating them. A neighborhood of neighbors needing and caring for one another looks a whole lot like God’s dream for the world.

Photo Credit: dimitri-photography-jMgoWJKnBcw-unsplash

The Great Eight

As we close the book on 2022, here are my top eight favorite reads.

FICTION

  • “The Lincoln Highway”, by Amor Towles. When a friend recommended this book, the sheer volume of this volume left me feeling afraid! However, a few chapters in and I could hardly put it down. It is written from the perspective of several characters. With its light sprinkling of historical nonfiction, this was a fun read.

NONFICTION – HISTORY

NONFICTION – HEALTH/MEDICINE

NONFICTION – MEMOIR/ESSAYS

NONFICTION – PARENTING/SELF-HELP

NONFICTION – FAMILY SYSTEMS/SELF-HELP

In order to boil the list down to these eight, I had to leave out two series. Karis’ 4th grade teacher introduced her to Kate DiCamillo and Patchett dedicated an entire essay to DiCamillo in “These Precious Days: Essays.” Louisiana, Beverly and Ramie became endeared characters in our lives, along with Inspector Gamache. Gamache, the impressive creation of Louise Penny, has filled my ears (via air pods) these last few months. I am currently enjoying #8.

Photo Credit: Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Book Signings and Other Things I Know Nothing About

Today I will bring a pen to my first ever book signing. What else should I bring with me? Books. Of course! Although, the late arrival of books (possibly tomorrow) from Amazon means I only need to bring the six I currently have. A pen and six books. I travel light.

Faith Expressions, the Christian gift store downtown in my hometown, has graciously carried my books and now graciously invited four authors, me included, to share an afternoon of book signing. Have you been to a book signing? There is usual a colorful tablecloth, candy, business cards, free promotional stuff, and a Square for an author to easily sell books to people with debit/credit cards. I own exactly one tablecloth. Perfect for the Christmas season, it is bright red and embroidered with poinsettias.

In addition to my pen and books, I’ll bring a placemat and a stand for one of the six books, because that seems like something a book signing would have. And chocolate. Chocolate makes up for all those other things!

Sometimes, the basics are enough.

It is enough to wake up and meet the new day. It is enough to look around your home and realize you already have everything you need. It is enough that God has given you the people in your life. And chocolate. That is enough.

Book Review: Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen

One difference between parenting littles and teens is knowing what to say. Littles erupt with questions and deeply desire for their beloved grown-ups to answer them. Teens seem to deeply desire you are there when they need you, but mostly hope you stay quiet. During the teenage years, the eruption of questioning reverses from the young to the old, but the old quickly realize, unlike the young, that questions must be rationed. I find a reasonable average of questions to be 3-5, depending on when they last ate.

I am convinced every parent of teenagers only pretends to know what she or he is doing. When I hear a recommendation of a book for teenage parents, I want to hope to find just the right wisdom in that book, but most parenting books seem to me to be aspirational. Raising teenagers is freaking hard and no book has easy answers. Kids are humans and therefore too complicated to be reduced to a manual.

But this book! I cannot remember how I happened upon it, but it is the very best parenting book I’ve read. I borrowed the audio, read by the author, from our local library. In Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen, Michelle Icard guides readers through talks that overwhelm parents like me. Tough stuff: friendship, sexuality, pornography, hygiene, money, how to dress, privilege, and behavior. She is funny and yet grounded, honest that the role of parents is never to protect kids from the world but to equip them to move around the world safely.

Her acronym is easy to implement into conversations with my teenagers and has been a helpful guide. Icard calls her framework for conversation the B.R.I.E.F. Model:

  • Begin peacefully.
  • Relate to your child.
  • Interview to collect data.
  • Echo what you hear.
  • Give Feedback.

If you have kids or grandkids who are teenagers or soon to be teenagers, this book will challenge you. What grown-ups like to do (when we are not at our best) is to apply our own teenage experience to the lives of teenagers today. This is an excellent method to raise defensiveness in teens and immediately stop a conversation.

A better way, provided by Icard, is to be intentional in deciding when to have a tough conversation. And to respect teenagers enough to give them a heads up. “Begin peacefully” is great advice for beginning any tough conversation, not only with a child, but with a spouse or co-worker. Be careful when you enter into a thorny conversation. Don’t do it when you are tired, hungry, or ticked off at someone, including your child.

Even though teenagers are quickly gaining independence, there is so much they are trying to figure out from moment to moment. In many ways, it has never been more challenging to be a teenager. They have access to every kind of yuck on their devices, and so they need a loving and forgiving guide to be there and begin those conversations peacefully, not out of anger or fear.

When I drop off my daughter at school (the only person I drop off anymore) I remind her “Jesus Loves You,” and she does the same for me. I cannot walk with her through the hallways or around the playground, but I can do my best to prepare her for situations she might encounter. And more importantly, we can remind one another that Jesus’ love does not expire, and it is not revocable. Jesus’ love cannot be undone. Teenagers, like all human beings, easily forget this promise. We make mistakes and then make the mistake of assuming our mistake undoes the promise of Jesus’ love.

Although I can attest to how hard it is to raise teenagers, I can also tell you it is much easier when I get to remind them (probably more than they prefer) that Jesus loves them, all the time.

Kelly Corrigan’s Lovely Oh Wells

(Photo by Helen Cheng on Unsplash)

You know those moments when the words find you. When you read a passage in a book that names exactly how you feel. Or a phrase from a song touches you. It happens to preachers, when someone listening thanks you for words they needed that you may or may not have said.

This 6-minute episode of a podcast found me at the right moment. I’m a fan of Kelly Corrigan, author, podcaster, and person who wonders out loud. She also wrote a lovely children’s book called “Hello World!”, calling young humans into the wonder of the world and its inhabitants.

Back to her podcast episode, where she gracefully names some of the disappointments we experience and concludes with the refrain: “Oh well.” These two words are like Teflon for the moments we simply must let go. They resemble the life-giving reminder to be gentle on yourself. And they sound like Jesus’ promise of peace, unlike anything the world gives (John 14).

There are some reminders that never completely sink in, or maybe they do, and they’ve sunk so deep we hardly notice them. As your life changes, however that may be, and the story isn’t the one you had in mind, “Oh well.” The earth spins and we start over. We can cling to regrets and grudges, or we can let them go. “Oh well.”

No circumstance changes who you already are, beloved human of God. “Oh well” keeps us from shooting for perfection. You are you with your flaws and your everything. “Oh well.” You are loved just as you are, and that is well enough.

In Case You Are New Here…

(Click here to order)

If you recently found my blog, welcome! It is exciting to me that you clicked your way here. Let me tell you what you need to know.

  1. I am a full-time pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). While writing is one of my loves, my main gig is serving St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Dickinson, N.D. You will see a new blogpost about once a week.
  2. You can subscribe to my blog and be among the first to read my latest posts. On the right (if you are on the homepage), type your email and hit the SUBSCRIBE button. A monthly Sabbath Moments newsletter will also hit your inbox, with an exclusive blogpost and extra photos, and encouraging words as we follow Jesus together.
  3. I post two-three memes weekly on Facebook and Instagram. To follow me on Facebook, search for @lewtonwriter, and on Instagram, @lisa.lewton. You will know you are in the right place if my book is the profile picture.
  4. Thank you to Kaylee Garling for her article in the August Heart River Voice publication! You can read our conversation inspired by my book. On the next page, you can also read a review of the book written by my friend and fellow voracious reader, Audrey McMacken.

Peace be with you through the ordinary days, as we start over again and again firmly in the grip of Christ’s mercy.

DELETED BOOK CHAPTER: Shoes

(Photo by Tamas Pap on Unsplash)

The book I wrote is a mere 1/4 inch tall when it lounges on its back. I kept it brief in order to be more accessible to women whose lives leave little margin to pick up a book. In the year it took to write all the words, with my audience in mind I may have deleted as many words as I kept. One chapter I nixed had to do with shoes.

Before exiting the hospital with a baby, I had no idea the plethora of pairs of shoes required per set of growing feet per year. Soft-sole shoes for learning how to walk. Hard-sole shoes for walking outside. Shoes for soccer, baseball, basketball, gym, and dance. Boots for hunting. Boots for winter. Shoes for running. Sandals for summer. Shoes for church and other such occasions that require looking spiffy. I can NOT remember needing so many pairs of shoes when I was growing up! Perhaps feet have gotten needier?

Growing feet belong to growing bodies belong to human beings who are constantly changing…growing! And requiring shoes that fit their feet. A child puts on a pair of shoes and notices his toes are pinched. And finally, you rest your eyes on the teenage human with size 11 shoes who fits in the driver’s seat of the car where his giant feet push actual pedals!

Each time the shoe size increases, so does all the stuff they can do in those shoes. Drive a car. Walk into high school, college, a job. Judging from the growth of their shoes alone, kids experience a steady and astonishing stream of change. Just when their shoes get broken in and comfortable, they are suddenly too small.

“It’s okay,” loving adults around them say with words and sometimes cookies and also hugs (whenever allowed). “No matter what changes you are still you. You are so loved in each and every shoe size. You are a wonder in that growing body God made. You are expensive, you shoe wearer-outer and out-grower! Even so, you will never outgrow God’s love, wrapped more tightly around you than a too-small shoe. Which…I can see you have going on there.”

Thanks for the Who

(Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash)

In the book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, authors Amelia and Emily Nagoski suggest two lovely gratitude practices.

  1. WHO: Give thanks for someone(s) in your life.
  2. WHAT HAPPENED: Give thanks for something that happened that day.

These two practices are inspiring and avoid an icky result of most gratitude practices. Giving thanks for a who and a what happened prevents us from giving thanks for things. Giving thanks for things leads us to be thankful that we have things. Then we notice people in the world who don’t have things, which leads us to feel guilty that we do have things while others don’t. And gratitude becomes an exercise in guilt.

I am excited to practice giving thanks for some of those who are who in my kids’ lives. (You made it to the end of that weird sentence. Good for you.)

*Thank you, Lord, for Driver’s Ed instructors. What were they thinking? Keep them safe.

*Thank you, Lord, for coaches who set aside a ginormous amount of time for an often thankless job. Keep them sane.

*Thank you, Lord, for grandparents. May the trade-off of too-much sugar for so-much sweet grandparent love all work out in the end. Keep them smiling.

*Thank you, Lord, for gracious strangers who reveal comforting kindness at just the right moment, such as when a kid on a bike needs to cross a busy street. Keep them plentiful.

*Thank you, Lord, for the moms who are absolutely real when my kids come over to hang out. For the way they feed my kids with food, hospitality and an honest glimpse at the truth that all our homes are often hot messes. Keep them real.

*Thank you, Lord, for Faith Formation Directors (Christina Jorgensen) who mail my kid a cute card after an amazing week at Bible Camp, who promise that faith in Jesus is cool both at camp and everywhere else. Keep them in that particular job for a very long time. Please.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you.

The End.