In October of 2018 I stepped on the scale. 172 lbs. It had been two years since I'd seen numbers that high. One year since I'd proudly announced to the world that I'd finally reached the mid 150's. All of that progress, gone. I would spend the next 8 months never able to dip lower than 162lbs. And it wasn't until I was finally diagnosed with and medicated for ADHD that I would finally start to see my body begin to resemble the one I had missed. The only body I was able to recognize as my own. But I wasn't prepared for the ways it would be different.

One of my more personal goals for the year is to dedicate a good amount of time to really diving into the faith I've held my entire life. This is the first book of many that I'm using to assist me on that journey.

Rebecca McLaughlin is an engaging writer, seamlessly blending vivid narration and story telling with a treasure trove of information ranging from group studies to evolutionary science to history.

Regardless of what you believe, if anything, this book does an excellent job of tackling common questions people have about Christianity both within and without the faith, such as "Doesn’t Christianity denigrate women?" and "How can you take the Bible literally?"

While I almost exclusively prefer books to be hard copies in my hands, I happened to listen to this one as an audio book narrated by McLaughlin, and I can honestly say that it's the first time I've actually enjoyed listening to one!

I found the answers to the questions posed at the beginning of each chapter to be both well written and well sourced, making complex topics easier to understand without oversimplifying anything. Overall, a great addition to my (virtual) library.

As you may know, I've been contributing to The Financial Diet's blog intermittently for a couple of years now. Recently I received an email from the editor that was a literal dream come true.
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TFD has an awesome series on their YouTube channel called "Making It Work" where they take some of the essays off of their site and re-purpose them as a short narrated video designed to help certain messages reach a broader audience. I was lucky enough to have one of my articles selected to do just that! 

As I write this I'm only about 30 minutes out from having finished reading this book. When I finally picked it up this morning, having had no idea what it was about when I borrowed it from the library I was not prepared for what I would find inside. 

Paul Kalanithi is, or was, in my opinion, one of the greatest writers of this century. That we will never receive another book from him is a great loss, one that you feel all the more deeply as his writing, his story, and his life come to a close before your eyes. 
If you can find a way to read this, do. 

I do not buy books often anymore, though of course the urge never really goes away, but this is a book that will soon have a permanent place on my shelf. 
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I'd tell you what it's about, but, to be honest, Going in blindly made it that much more powerful for me, so I'd like to leave that option there for you as well.

I am a goal setting fiend. Give me an idea, I'll set a goal for it. Unfortunately, I am not a goal accomplishing fiend. Quite the opposite. And one of my most recent goals is already looking to be one of the goals I'm pretty unlikely to see through, but not because I don't want to.