Showing results by narrator "LIsa Larsen" in All Categories

The bitter conflict between the Union and Confederacy, spanning four terrible years from 1861 to 1865, brought the United States of America to the brink of annihilation. A war based on perceived tyranny and rebellion gave birth to many contradictions, where deceit ran rampant on both sides. Within this environment, it is known that at least four hundred women enlisted as soldiers under the pretense of being men, from both the North and South. Brave men who gave their lives for either side were not the war’s only heroes, and this story is dedicated to these remarkable women.

Glenna Marshall's awakening to God's presence began in the depths of winter. Rereading her journal, she realized that for six months she'd been cataloging all the ways God had abandoned her. What if that . . . wasn't true? Interweaving her own story of faith and doubt amid suffering, Glenna traces the theme of God's presence from Genesis to Revelation and shows what it means for us in our own daily joys and struggles.

Parents and children need a lot of help from the One who is perfect and who understands our need: God himself. Peace and Scott emphasize your family's most important relationship: your relationship with God.

When Lorri Walker’s husband gifted her with a mastiff puppy on Valentine’s Day, she believed he was recommitting himself to their marriage after going astray. Six months later, he left both her and their dog for someone else. Since her recent move to Dalton Mill to unbraid herself from the past, Lorri’s graphic-design business is now flourishing; her growing mastiff, Mister, has plenty of space to romp; and her ex in Raleigh can fade to a distant memory.

As a parent, your heart's desire is to guide your children to love and follow God. Yet so many voices are offering help and advice. Whose voice should shape your children? Sally and Clay Clarkson suggest the answer is as simple as it is powerful: yours. They will show you how to use your own words to shape your child's life for Christ. The biblical principles and wisdom they offer, drawn from their years of raising four children and mentoring parents worldwide, will equip you as a word-giving parent.

As a mom, you want to nurture a strong family, but fear steals your joy. Jennifer Pepito was intent on loving her children well, but fear and worry pushed her around. Ultimately, she found her joy in a most surprising place: the pages of classic literature she was reading aloud to her children every day. These stories helped her reclaim the wonder of childhood for herself and her children. In Mothering by the Book, Jennifer takes you on a fascinating, whimsical journey that will bring freedom and fun to your parenting—one great book at a time.

Too often, fatness has been viewed as a moral failing. Fat Christian women in particular are shamed and marginalized by the message that they are failing God because they can't change their bodies. More of You will challenge that status quo, teaching listeners to resist the shame and guilt that is pressed onto them by the world and instead to embrace their bodies, take up space, and learn to navigate the world in ways that allow them to flourish. With wit and candor, Amanda Martinez Beck compiles her hard-won wisdom to give the skinny on thriving in a fat body.

Horses are sensitive creatures with hearts ten times larger than humans and much more to share with us than meets the eye. Life Lessons from the Heart of Horses offers poignant short stories about the trials and tribulations of befriending horses. Equine expert Kathy Pike brings you on a healing journey that includes lessons a wild horse taught her, how horses teach humans in her equine facilitated learning programs, and personal insights about living off the land and engaging with the dynamics of a herd each day.

After being humiliated in front of her entire hometown of Moose Knuckle, New Hampshire, Hadley Mortimer heads south to lick her wounds—all the way to the island of Devil's Beach, Florida, where she's opened her first business, Give Me Chills, an artisan ice-cream truck. After a couple of weeks, she's living the cream and has even met a gorgeous guy named Zander, who seems to appreciate more than her soft-serve cones. When Zander asks her to bring an ice-cream cake to his great-aunt's funeral, Hadley overhears two people talking about murder. 

"I don't care for vocational books written in the United States; they're too American." When Susan Maros heard this comment from a Malaysian colleague, she was initially taken aback. Isn't the concept of calling universal? Why wouldn't resources with a biblical perspective on vocation apply to everyone? The reality is that each of us encounters our questions of calling from within a particular context.

If you could repeat one year of your life, what would you do differently? This heartwarming and hilarious novel features three best friends who get the chance to return to the year they turned 40, the year that altered all of their lives in ways big and small - and get the opportunity to change their future. But it doesn't take long for all three women to learn that reliving a life and making different decisions leads only to new problems and consequences and that the mistakes they made may in fact have been the best choices.

Pastor Tara Beth Leach continues, "I hated that I was marked by fear," reflecting on how fear and anxiety can plague a Six - whether they are pulling back from or diving right in to the things that feel threatening. She explores what it means for her to be a redeemed Six who is allowing Jesus to transform her a little at a time.

Connection is the antidote—yet, many of us don't know how to connect to ourselves compassionately in order to enhance self-discovery. Without this gift, we cannot connect—in a meaningful way—to a higher purpose or engage with others to ignite inspiration. With the help of Hardwick's connection architecture, we can transform. By utilizing her strategies of connection, we can empower workplaces and relationships through the grace and grit, resilience and empathy that occur when our connection wiring is activated in healthy ways.

Emmy Kegler has a complicated relationship with the Bible. As a queer woman who grew up in both conservative Evangelical and progressive Protestant churches, she knows too well how Scripture can be used to wound and exclude. And yet, the stories of Scripture continue to captivate and inspire her - both as a person of faith and as a pastor to a congregation. So she set out to fall in love with the Bible, wrestling with the stories inside, where she met a God who continues to seek us out - appearing again and again as a voice, a presence, and a promise. 

 We live in an age uniquely attentive to the problem of mental illness. More than half of us will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in our lifetime. It has been easy, for centuries, to relegate persistent emotional and mental struggles entirely to the realm of a failed personal work ethic ("Just don't worry so much!"), not enough faith ("Just pray harder!"), or, in recent years, a chemical imbalance in our brains ("Just take this pill!"). 

Cynthia Ruchti and Becky Melby know all too well how adjusting to a new, all-the-time closeness can cause the bliss of marriage to form blisters. Drawing from their experiences, and from men and women across the country in the same situation, the authors take a deep breath and dive into the root causes of the discomfort. They dig into the ways God's word addresses the topic, and they offer practical tips for learning the spiritual, emotional, relational, and even physical steps that can help listeners replace irritation with peace. 

Many LGBTQ people face overwhelming challenges in navigating faith, gender, and sexuality. Christian communities that uphold the traditional sexual ethic often unwittingly make the path more difficult through unexamined attitudes and practices. Drawing on her sociological training and her leadership in the Side B/Revoice conversation, Bridget Eileen Rivera, who founded the popular website Meditations of a Traveling Nun, speaks to the pain of LGBTQ Christians and helps churches develop a better pastoral approach.

Tension in our personal relationships are at an all-time high. Dialogue - when it happens at all - is heated. It isn't that we've lost hope in what faith and politics can accomplish in our world. It's that in our polarizing times, faith and politics seem to be leading more to rage than actual change. It's discouraging, disheartening, and disappointing. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Civility is not a pipe dream. Nuance is not unrecoverable. Peace is possible. And it can all start right here, right now, with us.  

What propels some individuals to reach extraordinary creative heights in the earliest years of life while others discover their passions decades later? Are prodigies imbued with innate talent? Do late bloomers reveal their talents because their skills require life experience and contemplation? Through engaging storytelling and intriguing historical and cutting-edge scientific research, best-selling author and acclaimed journalist Claudia Kalb explores these questions to uncover what makes a prodigy and what drives a late bloomer.

If your answer is "No", you're not alone. Many Christian parents feel the same. But here's the good news: Talking with Your Kids About Jesus will give you the confidence you need to have the conversations that matter most in today's skeptical world. In a friendly, parent-to-parent voice, Natasha Crain will walk you through essential topics on Jesus' identity, teachings, death, and resurrection. Each chapter clearly explains what skeptics are saying and provides a concise, easy-to-understand response you can discuss with your child (one that can be tailored for any age).