As parents we want to safeguard our children from the pressures and influences of the world, but also prepare them for age-appropriate realities. How do we find that balance? Jessica Smartt shares ways to be more aware, proactive, and protective, but also adventurous with our kids. A former English teacher and homeschooling mother of three, Jessica Smartt felt the weight of helping prepare her kids for life, seeking to raise her children with a sense of adventure, self-confidence, manners, faith, and the ability to use technology wisely. Let Them Be Kids is Jessica’s offering of grace and confidence to moms, providing practical ideas to meet the challenge of raising children. Part story, part guidebook, every chapter includes doable parenting strategies and encouragement for the journey, equipping moms with ways to provide a safe, healthy, Christ-centered upbringing for our children. Her well-researched, tested methods, woven together with her personal stories and witty humor, deliver wisdom on tough topics, such as: Managing technology and fostering creative playtime Balancing family time versus sports and extracurriculars How and why to let your kids be awkward Protecting innocence and purity Showing grace when kids disobey If you want to conquer fear and find the truth that transforms entire families, Let Them Be Kids will show you that it’s not only possible but essential to enjoy every special moment of building family values together. And it serves as a gentle reminder that, someday, you'll be very glad you did.

I love spending quiet time with God every day. It centers me. For over 30 years now I’ve been writing down what God has spoken to me during those quiet times with Him. I pray this book encourages you during your own quiet times with Him. This book includes devotions from: Two Weeks with GodExodus: Lessons in FreedomJesus: Lessons in LoveActs: Lessons in FaithEphesians: Lessons in GraceNehemiah: Lessons in RebuildingIsrael: Lessons from the Holy LandThe Top 20 Passages in the BibleRomans: Lessons in Renewing Your MindMaking the Most of the Darkness15 Tips for a Stronger Marriage12 Tips for ParentingPsalms: Lessons in Prayerand the inspirational Christmas novella, St. Nicholas: The Believer

Open Through The Mindflow is a collection of poetry, lyrics, drawings, paintings, and short stories created by John Reeves over the last decade. This body of work is a labor of love and self expression. These words and compilations of art were conceived while living in San Diego, California, Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York. Mostly spontaneous, the art within the pages of this book are heartfelt comments on living and life as the author sees it. John Reeves has spent most of his life traveling the world as a professional skateboarder. With this, and his many life experiences, he has developed an acute and deep appreciation for the arts and everything creative. Along with skateboarding, music, and painting, writing has quickly become one of his greatest passions.

15 inspirational tips to help your marriage be the best that it can be. Also includes 12 tips on parenting! From the introduction by Eric Elder: I was sitting with a couple recently to help them plan their wedding when the bride-to-be asked me to do something impossible: she wanted me to talk at her wedding about marriage and what made my marriage to my wife, Lana, so successful. She said she admired our relationship and wanted to learn whatever she could to make her marriage the best that it could be. Here’s why her request seemed so impossible: how could I possibly summarize 23 years worth of thoughts on marriage in such a short message on her wedding day? Yet her question also inspired me because I loved the idea of being able to pass along to them anything that might be helpful. So I began to think of all the tips I had heard before we got married, after we got married and throughout our 23 years of marriage. I quickly came up with 4 or 5 sermons to share at her wedding! In the end, I only shared 1 simple message with them, based on 3 words, which I felt would help them get through anything they might face in the future. I’ll share those 3 words with you in chapter 6, as they serve as the glue that holds all the other tips together. But I still wanted to share with this couple all the other great tips that God had brought to my mind. The result is this little book that I’m now sharing with you. I wish I could say that if you’ll just put these 15 tips into practice you’ll be guaranteed success in your own marriage, but relationships just don’t work like that. Each one of us is unique and each one of our relationships is unique. Yet I still believe each of these tips can be helpful to you in one way or another, even if it’s just to talk through them with your spouse, or spouse to be, and then adapt and apply them to your own relationship. To make this book easier to read, I’ve divided it into 7 chapters, 6 of which are about marriage, with a bonus chapter at the end called “12 Tips On Parenting.” I wrote this chapter in response to another question by some other friends who asked for my thoughts on that topic. Since this book has 7 chapters, you might want to read a chapter a day for 7 days or a chapter a week for 7 weeks. You might also want to go through this book with a few other couples who are newly married, nearly married or just want to strengthen their marriage, no matter how long they’ve been married. Who knows? This book may be just what they need to make their marriage not just good, but great!Any way you do it, I pray God will bless you through it, both now and for many years to come. In Christ’s love, Eric Elder

An unnatural phenomenon precedes a multitude of events that change the world forever. The battle of the surreal topples the imagination. Take the trip with Belena and travel through the darkness of a demented mind.

Climate anxiety touches nearly everything we do, but perhaps nothing so tenderly as our parenting. What do we do with the fear, grief, and anger we feel? Parent and activist Lydia Wylie-Kellermann wrestles with these questions and argues that while the future remains unknown, we can still join our children in the beauty and hope of the struggle.

Discover how Dutch parents raise The Happiest Kids in the World! Calling all stressed-out parents: Relax! Imagine a place where young children play unsupervised, don’t do homework, have few scheduled “activities” . . . and rank #1 worldwide in happiness and education. It’s not a fantasy—it’s the Netherlands! Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchison—an American and a Brit, both married to Dutchmen and raising their kids in the Netherlands—report back on what makes Dutch kids so happy and well adjusted. Is it that dads take workdays off to help out? Chocolate sprinkles for breakfast? Bicycling everywhere? Whatever the secret, entire Dutch families reap the benefits, from babies (who sleep 15 hours a day) to parents (who enjoy a work-life balance most Americans only dream of). As Acosta and Hutchison borrow ever-more wisdom from their Dutch neighbors, this much becomes clear: Sometimes the best thing we can do as parents is . . . less!

Do you feel like God is angry at you? Or at least disappointed? Our view of God shapes our minds, behavior, and relationships. What happens when we view God as a furious, frustrated deity? What changes when we glimpse a God who looks like Jesus? Building upon personal experience, biblical study, and recent discoveries in neuroscience, pastor and ministry coach Colin McCartney warns of the dangers of viewing God as a judgmental, angry dictator. Such a negative view of God poisons the mind and produces alienation from God and others. In its place, McCartney lays out a strong case, rooted in Scripture, for a more accurate image of a God that is Love. Healing from distorted images of God is one of the primary tasks of the maturing Christian, and McCartney gently leads readers on this healing journey. He also refuses to shy away from difficult topics as God’s wrath, hell as eternal punishment, and violent depictions of God in the Bible. By sharing the beliefs of the early church fathers and mothers and pointing to a Christ-centered hermeneutic, McCartney inspires readers with the truth of a God who is extremely involved and deeply in love with every one of us. ​ What if the boundless love that we see in Jesus Christ isn’t just one of many traits of God? What if that infinite, absolute love is, well, everything?