Weekly Links: some good reading from around the web

wouldn't mind heading back here...

SOME interesting links FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, FAMILY, AND FICTION...

Faith 

-"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread...": a good poem for Sunday.

-"A Commendation of Leviticus": a helpful guide to a book that often stymies Christians in their Bible reading.

-"15 Proverbs for Social Media Users": much-too-applicable to real life!

-"Some Things You Should Know About Christians Who Struggle With Anxiety": yes, this.

-"On Daughters and Dating: How to Intimidate Suitors": I loved this. I loved the implication that the truly admirable men are the ones who look at strong, godly, content women and say, "Oh, yes please". And that the best way to protect your daughter is to raise her into a woman who is competent and who knows her worth and who knows her family and her God love her, support her, and have her back.  A snippet:

Instead of intimidating all your daughter's potential suitors, raise a daughter who intimidates them just fine on her own. 

Family 

-"McMansion 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture": I fell down this rabbit hole thanks to Anne Kennedy, and I don't regret it. This was fascinating.

-"How one family is sending 13 kids to college, living debt free - and still plans to retire early": inspiring stuff!

Fiction

-"Where Her Whimsy Took Me": a love letter to Dorothy Sayers' excellent novel, Gaudy Night.

-"The Writing Tricks We'd Be Naked Without": a good round-up of tips for my fellow writers.

-"The Unofficial Rules of the Starship Enterprise": This hilarious list-style bit of fanfic confirmed my secret theory that life aboard a REAL starship would inevitably involve a M.A.S.H.-style illegal still...


I hope you have a good weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

a prayer for bill-paying day

Two things I asked of You,

Do not refuse me before I die:

Keep deception and lies far from me, 

Give me neither poverty nor riches;

Feed me with the food that is my portion, 

That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the LORD?” 

Or that I not be in want and steal, 

And profane the name of my God. - Proverbs 30:7-9

Grateful to have enough,
Jessica Snell

p.s. If anyone else is pondering money and the sufficiency or insufficiency thereof, may I recommend this post by Simcha Fisher? It sure helped me today.
p.p.s. I should note: we're fine. We're even blessed. (Really, truly, tangibly.) We're just a family of six living on one income in a high COL area and today it was throwing me for a loop, and I needed to go back to this passage of scripture in order to get my head on straight. I'm so grateful to have the Bible! God is good, all the time.

links: nursing twins, Harry Potter, Advent and more!

Shannon Hale wins at the internet. This may be the best blog post I've ever read.
Next, christianaudio.com is having their biannual sale, and all of their books on mp3 are $7.50. Our family got a bunch of great mp3s the last time they did this, including this awesome recording of The Count of Monte Cristo (47 hours for less than 8 bucks! that's a lot of dish-washing time well spent!) and this of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, both produced by Blackstone (Blackstone's work is consistently excellent). They also have Peter Dennis' recording of Winnie-the-Pooh, and I can't tell you how many times over my kids have listed to that. (Be sure to check out his readings of the Milne's poetry too, which my husband and I both love.)
Okay. I don't usually link to sales, but my family has benefited so much from their last audiobook sale that I just had to pass it on. Now, to other things!
Starting with the terrifying and infuriating: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners.  This is one amazing piece of journalism. Not just a copy of something from the AP wire (not to diss the AP), but some real anecdotal-yes-yet-compelling journalism. Pretty amazing stuff, and not in a good way. Also, a very lucid explanation of the foreclosure mess.
Even though it looks like (looks like!) Advent's going to be celebrated more faithfully in our house this year than it's been the last couple of years, I still was really encouraged by And Sometimes Tea's post "Confessions of a Domestic Church Slacker".
Check out this cool and easy pajama pants tutorial over at Learning As We Go. Great for Christmas gifts for the kids.

If you go read this day-in-the-life post by Susan Wise Bauer from 10 years ago, you are going to want to retroactively buy the excellent woman a drink. And then you're going to feel like falling onto the couch in sympathetic exhaustion - until you realize you are already on the couch due to your own real exhaustion and that, unlike her, your four children under the age of nine are still four children under the age of nine.
I thought this post positing the question: "what if an unschooler's parents found out their child was accepted to Hogwarts?" was hilarious.
That's it for tonight - enjoy!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell