My Favorite child

I love to read.  I always have.  I know I have told this story before but the summer before I was in sixth grade I spent the entire summer reading Baby Sitter Club books and eating raisinets on our green rocking chair.  One day I ate too many raisinets and after a period of time in the bathroom I will never look at a chocolate covered raisin again.  My dad told me "You can't just sit around and read all the time....you have to do something"  and then I joined the swim team and the rest is history.

So reading is just something I love.  A friend on facebook named her top 10 books that have stayed with her and said she would be curious what I would say.  I thought "10 books that have stayed with me....not necessarily just my favorites for right now."   I looked at that and thought of 6 books immediately, the other four were harder and given more consideration but for an avid reader to pick her top 10 is exactly like asking her which child is her favorite.  I love so many books for so many different reasons and for different periods in my life but if I can ONLY pick a favorite child then I would have to pick these 10:

1.  Bible.  Yes this is my number 1.  I honestly did not hardly crack open this book until I was 26.  I thought it was too far above my head.  Then God got a hold of my heart and this is easily the book that makes the top of my list.  Some days I have to remember that it should always be in the number 1 spot, I can get distracted and not let it hold its place.  This is the book that has changed my life the most.

2.  Mark of the Lion Trilogy by Francine Rivers.  Kristy.....thank you for introducing me to this series.  I love love LOVE historical fiction.  Francine Rivers is amazing.  I literally felt like I was back in the times when the Gladiators were in the Colosseum.  Hands down my favorite historical fiction books.

3.  Night by Elie Wiesel.  I read this in high school.  I think the book is about 100 pages.  It is a quick read.  It is Elie and his dad's experience in the concentration camps in Germany.  This was the first time I had read a book in which I felt so outraged by injustice that it made me sick to my stomach.

4.  Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls - I put this one in here because I was home sick from school and reading this book for class.  I read ahead and just went on and finished the book.  This is the first book (4th grade or 5th?) that I remember crying over.  I cried so hard when Old Dan and then Little Ann died.  I was Billy, they were my dogs, I had to grow up pretty quickly when they died and learn a few hard parts about life.   I can never remember crying like that over a book before, I was actually glad I was at home and not in school when I finished it!!

5.  Laura Ingalls books.  My third grade teacher read these aloud and I fell in love with them right then and there.  I have loved reading them to my kids this past year.  We are officially done and reading a few of the extra books right now.  Even now I like thinking about how simple, yet hard life was 140 years ago.

6.  Forgotten God by Francis Chan.  I read this on the heals of his Crazy Love book which was great but Forgotten God really stuck with me because I think it was so convicting for me.  It reminded me of the power of the Holy Spirit residing in ME and how often I silence and squelch God's work in my life because I am scared or resistant to His leading.

7.  Not for Sale By David Batstone.  You want to know what is going on outside in the world outside the comfortable bubble....read this book.  This was recommended to me from my friends brother who was just returning from the mission field.  Every chapter is devoted to a different region or country and how people (mostly women and children but not exclusive to) are being trafficked there for all kinds of reasons.  I literally had to put this book down at times, walk away and come back ready to take some more of my naive blinders off.  The stories in the book about helping those who are trafficked are so amazing because most of the time they are done by ordinary citizens who noticed something and then did something about it.  I will never be the same after reading this book.

8.  The Shack by Wm. Paul Young - I read this book at the same time I was reading Forgotten God.  I know there were a lot of liberties taken with how God the Father acted with Jesus, etc but mainly this book made me think about God in a lot more personal way.  I saw Him as more of loving Father, someone who knows me and loves me.  I thought about His relationship with Jesus and how Jesus loved and obeyed His Father even to the cross.  This is a fiction book but it really helped me look at my relationship with my Heavenly Father.

9.  The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  I could not put these books down.  Not for a second.  They were open constantly.  Dinner was peanut butter and jelly for a week.  No vacuums were used in my house, laundry piled up, kids ran around aimlessly.   These were entertaining books!

10.  This one is the hardest for me......I have 4 or 5 written down but I am going to go with Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  I read this book before I was a freshmen for fun because I was cool like that.  I think it has stayed with me so much because it was the first book I read when I looked at injustice that happened on our very soil, it wasn't just a blurb in the history book when I read Uncle Tom's Cabin's....this happened to real people, in the country that I love not so many years ago.  It made me think about how hard it would be to do the right thing when everyone is supporting something else.

Honorable mentions (or my almost made number 10)
Anne of Green Gables, To kill a Mockingbird, The Lion the witch and the wardrobe,

Ok.....I have to post now or I will start second guessing and wanting to add or delete so I am just going with these favorite children at the moment.