I’ve talked before about how much Dave Ramsey influenced a large portion of the last 12 years of our life. It all started with Mark listening to his radio show on the way home from work, and walking in the house saying “Dave Ramsey says….”

Well these days I’m the one going around saying “Jon Acuff says…” He started out as the funny guy who writes the satirical blog “Stuff Christians Like,” but now he’s a dream-encouraging, hope-making, fear-busting author and speaker. Of course he’s still funny too

Outside of close friends, family and God, Acuff has probably been the biggest influence in my life the last two-years. I read “Quitter: Closing the Gap Between Your Dream Job and Your Day Job” two summers ago right after my book came out and I realized that this writing/speaking thing was my dream. It helped shape how I spent the next year.

Now his newest book “Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters ” is here. The official description:

Over the last 100 years, the road to success for most everyone has been divided into predictable stages. But three things have changed the path to success:

• Boomers are realizing that a lot of the things they were promised aren’t going to materialize, and they have started second and third careers.
• Technology has given access to an unprecedented number of people who are building online empires and changing their lives in ways that would have been impossible years ago.
• The days of “success first, significance later,” have ended.

While none of the stages can be skipped, they can be shortened and accelerated. There are only two paths in life: average and awesome. The average path is easy because all you have to do is nothing. The awesome path is more challenging, because things like fear only bother you when you do work that matters. The good news is Start gives readers practical, actionable insights to be more awesome, more often.

I was excited to get an early copy and I devoured it and highlighted the heck out of it. Now that I’m done I’m going to turn back around and read it again. There is so much wisdom and PRACTICAL application to put in motion.

The “Road to Awesome” that Jon describes involves 5 stages -  Learning, Editing, Mastering, Harvesting and Guiding. These steps are the same no matter what dream you’re working on and want to be awesome at – writing, starting your own business, being a mom, saving the world.

Of course his biggest point is that we all need to do one thing – START! As Jon says “The starting line is the only line you completely control.” Don’t worry about the finish – it’s impossible to predict and may change half a dozen times by the time you get there. If you had told me 15 years ago that I’d get to travel around and speak, I would have checked your forehead for a fever. I never could have predicted this.

The book also includes a whole section at the end titled “What Now? Action Always Beats Intention” that gives very practical, tactical steps you can take. It’s so great and I’ve started working through them already.

“Start” comes out this Monday. But don’t wait til then to order it. If you Pre-Order you get a whole bundle of goodies worth over $250, including the audio of Jon’s Quitter Conference that I got to attend last Sept.

Not sure? You can download the first chapter for free here. It will convince you.

So me? What am I STARTING? I’m going to be more intentional about my writing. Sometimes I feel like if I don’t have a 4-hour block of time to write I might as well not do it. Course that’s ridiculous. So my goal is to just START writing each day – even if I only get 30 minutes, I have to start.

Once you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

P.S. For  a limited time you can download the audio version of “Quitter” for free here.

Last weekend Mark and I went to see “The Impossible” starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor. It is based on the true story of the Alvareza family – mom, dad and 3 sons – (from Spain) who were vacationing in Thailand when the 2004 tsunami hit.

All 5 family members were in the pool area of their resort when the wave hit. Mom and the oldest son manage to find their way to each other shortly after coming up (not before being banged around quite a bit). The movie follows their journey to find medical care (the mom is badly injured). Then you discover that dad and the two small boys managed to stay together. He’s determined to find mom and son. Son is determined not to be separated from his mom while she is in the hospital.

There’s some great lessons in the movie – not giving up hope, loyalty, and enduring the seemingly impossible.

But there was one thing that struck both Mark and I. First the real-life Spanish family is replaced by a European white family. I’m not sure if Hollywood thought a Spanish family wouldn’t have as broad appeal? Then, other than a couple of native islanders who help the mom and son in the beginning, the entire rest of the film focuses on the Caucasian tourists – American, British, German, Scandinavian. Even with the movie being one family’s story – it seems that the filmmakers could have done a better job of portraying the local islanders.

Naomi Watts gives an AMAZING performance and will undoubtedly get several award nominations. Of all the characters in the movie hers has to go through the largest range of emotions – survival, motherhood protective instinct, overcoming the pain of her injuries in the search for help, and then clinging to life through multiple surgeries.

The film is sobering – an realistic portrayal of the ordeal. It’s quite graphic – showing the mom endure multiple injuries while swirling underneath the water being slammed up against branches, debris and furniture. I winced more than once. Of course it has a happy ending as the family is reunited and, oh look, our insurance company wisks us away in a private jet to get medical care.

“The Impossible” is definitely worth seeing. Just know that it’s heavy. Bring tissues.

Read about The Real-Life Family

Plugged In Online review

I’m thrilled to be able to give away a beautiful hardcover copy of my friend Kim’s book “Until We All Come Home.”

I reviewed it last week and Kim wrote a wonderful guest post about why she wrote the book.

You won’t be able to put the book down, I promise. My brother and his wife will vouch for it too.

There’s several ways to enter – comment, like my FB page, Kim’s etc. Be sure you do it all using the Rafflecopter widget below so that you get credited appropriately and are in the drawing.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Author Jennifer Grant tells the story of adopting her Guatemalan-born daughter Mia, in this book from Thomas Nelson publishing.

Grant spends quite a bit of time talking about their family life before Mia. She jumps back and forth a bit between their pre-kids life and accounts of the birth of her 3 children and one miscarriage. It was a bit confusing at times and seemed disjointed.

The parts of the book that were specific to their adoption – how they arrived at the decision, the process, the waiting – all the way through to today when Mia is 8, reads quite well.

Grant did a great job of capturing how frustrating the waiting process can be and the panic that can ensue when there are rumors of shut downs.

From time to time the book seemed to wander into stories that didn’t seemed like filler content. I found myself skimming through some of those sections, a little impatient with them.

I was glad that the book went into detail about how family life was after adopting Maria and the struggles Grant went through wondering if she was a good enough mom. Don’t we all do that?

I wouldn’t add it to my “must reads” for adoptive parents, but many would enjoy it.

Percy Jackson, move over! Jonah Stone is here!

Parents today are looking for fiction that makes Christianity and the Bible exciting for their kids. This series is the Christian answer to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Kane Chronicles, The Secret Series and other middle-grade series packed with adventure, action, and supernatural fights. Son of Angels, Jonah Stone will be the first series in the market to explore this topic from a biblical perspective with content that is appropriate and exciting for middle-grade readers.

With an avid 12-year-old reader, I am always on the lookout for new pre-teen series, especially something that seems action oriented.

Noah loves Star Wars and I’m sure he would enjoy the Percy Jackson series but we’re not completely comfortable with all of the magic in some of those series.

So I was curious to see if Spirit Fighter (book 1 of a series) would be something he would enjoy. As an adult I enjoyed it and it was a nice quick read (which isn’t saying much for me).

Jonah and Eliza are “quarterlings” – 1/4 angel and 3/4 human. When their mother is kidnapped by fallen angels (she’s half angel) they are given the mission of saving her with several angels helping them out.

The kids do have powers (strength & speed for Jonah; shield of protection for Eliza). Once they realize who/what they are, they can suddenly see some of the “dark forces” that are at work around the world.

The book doesn’t deal with a lot of scripture other than the armor of God and a couple other verses. But Jonah is learning to pray when he gets in trouble and see God’s wisdom – to look for answers and help.

The author is fairly graphic in his descriptions of the fallen angels so you’ll need to know your child to know if it will be too much for him to handle.

I’m anxious to see what Noah thinks of the book – I’ll let you know what he says.