There is something magical about a book. After all, it is just paper and cardboard and ink, but those mysterious words on those wonderful pages touch me deeply. They stir my soul. They enlighten my thoughts. They propel me into action. They draw out deep emotions. They convince me of truth and they set me free to ponder, to believe and to hope. I am so madly in love with books, that I even get excited reading quotes about books. If any of these quotes stir something in you, there can be only one explanation. We are reading soul-mates travelling on a sea of thought and imagination together (and let me just say, thanks for joining me!). Here are five great quotes that touched me (all true, all moving, all magical) … 

  • “You are today who you’ll be in five years except for the people you meet and the books you read.” – Charlie “Tremendous” Jones
  • “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” — Haruki Murakami
  • “I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.” – Emma Thompson
  • “I don’t read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.” – Elbert Hubbard
  • “A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.” — W.H. Auden

It is kind of obvious, isn’t it? I love books.

In three weeks, I will retire. You now know my plan. I am going to spend my days reading, walking our dog and drinking coffee. In this series, I am sharing with you the five books I hope to read before the end of 2026 (I can’t promise that I will read all five because it is possible that a bear will eat me when we visit Yellowstone and that would completely put a damper on my plans). Originally, my plan for this series was simply to share what I was going to read, but then it dawned on me: Why read alone when I can have friends join me? That transformed this series from a quick description of five books into full-blown promotion with designs, not only to invite you to read along with me, but to entice you to do so. I want each post to sing: “This is going to be a great book. You will want to read it!”

Now, I say that this would be a great book to read, but remember, I have not read any of these. These posts are not book reviews. A book review should require you to read the book beforehand (although I will admit, I did plenty of book reports in college of books I never read, but no one was any the wiser—including me, I guess). But relax! I am not judging these books to be worthy of our time and effort by their cover, but by their author, their topic, their reviews and by their Dane appeal. Some books just call your name, and you have to read them. In short, these posts are all about why I am drawn to these books and why I hope you will be too. But before we get to book three, let’s have a quote:

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word,
to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.”
(Joseph Conrad)

Book Three:
Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reckoning with and Reimagining Faith
Rachel Held Evans
(HarperOne: New York 2026)

The Author: I will admit it. I cried when I heard that she had died. Jo came into my study and said two words, “She died.” It took me a second to put those words into a context, and when the realization hit me, I cried. I still find it unfathomable. Lots of my “heroes” have died, but I have not felt compelled to attend their funerals, either in person or online. I had to watch Rachel’s. It was something I could do to show my gratitude for her courageous stance where she expressed openly and honestly her struggles with the church and, at the same time, her love for the church. And she expressed those struggles beautifully, winsomely and poignantly because here was a woman who could write, a woman with insight and humor, a woman with heartache and joy, and a woman with a mission and a burden. In short, she was a woman with a story to tell; and in her telling, she spoke for all of us who wrestle with the hot mess that is the church in America today.

My first exposure to Rachel Held Evans was in her book, Searching for Sunday. I had no intention of finding a new favorite author that day, but within two paragraphs, it happened. Let me explain. She begins Searching by quoting Bonhoeffer’s adamant claim that “the early mornings belong to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light, it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind.” I had seen that quote before, but had just let it pass. After all, Bonhoeffer said it. But Rachel fires back defiantly, “This comes as unfortunate news for someone like me who can barely remember who she is at the ‘break of light,’ much less ponder the theological implications of the resurrection. I am not exactly what you would call a morning person and would, in fact, prefer to be the one lying prostrate in defeat at such an early hour.” I knew, at that moment, I had found a friend and not just any friend, but one who understood me. Now, I know there are a lot of us out there who prefer late nights to early mornings, but few us have the courage to broadcast that to the world (especially right after quoting Bonhoeffer!). For a second or two, I was expecting the whole book to be lighthearted banter to make a serious point, but that notion quickly dissolved as I read on. Before I knew it, I was being hammered with statements about doubt and struggle and heartache and loss—and faith. And she addressed each of these topics with brutal honesty and grace. In that first chapter, she said these three lines:

  • “We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask.” 
  • “Even when I don’t believe in church, I believe in resurrection.” 
  • “Try as I may, I can’t be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need the church.” 

That voice shows up in all her other books, and that’s the voice I am hoping to hear once again in Braving the Truth. It is a voice that makes me cry on one page, laugh on another, and challenge and convict me on the next. But Rachel was so special; she often did that all within the same paragraph. And while many of my favorite books challenge me at the core of my being, Rachel’s books have the particular habit of reading me (see the Auden quote above). And even if she wasn’t addressing an issue with which I personally was wrestling, she gave people I love deeply the words to voice their heartache. And even if they never picked up her book, I now had new eyes to see their struggle and new ears to hear their pain. And yet, what I admired most about Rachel was that, while she struggled with what the church had become, she never gave up on Jesus’ church. She would lament what the church had become, but she would never lose sight of what the church should be.


The Book’s Big Idea: The book is a collection of Rachel’s writing from years ago (mostly from her blog posts and other publications). The amazing thing (sad thing?) is that her words are even more relevant today than they were back then. This collection addresses six main topics: First, faith, doubt and questions; Second, patriarchy, white supremacy and religious nationalism; Third, the church; Fourth, gender and sexuality; Fifth, Scripture; Sixth, essays on life in the midst of it all.

There are also short reflections interspersed throughout the book written by other authors, friends and family (I read one, and it brought me to tears). The Atlantic called Rachel “a hero to Christian Misfits.” If you struggle to feel totally at home in the church in America today (and I sure do), this is a book that offers lament, wisdom, hope and a whole lot of Jesus.


Some Quotes from the Book:

  • “Do I want a church that fits me, or a me that fits the church? God makes sense to me under the trees, and God makes sense to me in poetry and prayer, and God makes sense to me in Eucharist and Baptism and community and even creeds . . . but not in the offering plate, not in the building campaign, not in the pastor-who-shall-not-be-questioned, not in the politics, not in the assumptions about what a good Christian girl ought to be.”
  • “I don’t want an easy faith. I want a brave faith.”
  • “‘I am a Christian,’ I concluded, ‘because the story of Jesus is still the story I’m willing to risk being wrong about.”’
  • “Perhaps the most radical thing we followers of Jesus can do in the information age is treat each other like humans—not heroes, not villains, not avatars, not statuses, not Republicans, not Democrats, not Calvinists, not Emergents—just humans. This wouldn’t mean we stop disagreeing, but I think it would mean we would disagree well.”
  • “God is not a man. God is not white. God is not American. God might not even be a ’Bama fan. (Too far?) And as a woman, referring to God as she or Mother serves as an important, liberating reminder that I am indeed created in the image of God, not as some lesser being who exists in perpetual subordination to men, but as an expression of God’s very self. If that makes me a heretic, guilty as charged.”


Two Great Editorial Reviews from Glennon Doyle and Sarah Bessey

  • “I don’t know how Rachel did it. Day after day, year after year, I watched her deepen and widen the definition of Christian.” – Glennon Doyle (author of Untamed)
  • “Rachel gave permission to an entire generation to quite simply tell the truth. She was a prophet in a cardigan, a friend to the misfits and wanderers, a hopeful voice, and an unrepentant questioner. . . . If you want to understand the Church today, you need to understand Rachel Held Evans.” – Sarah Bessey (author of Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith)


Why You Should Read this Book with Me: Because if you struggle at all with faith, because if you struggle with where the church is today, because if you have more questions than answers and have more fear than confidence, or if you have people close to you who could easily be described in these ways, this book will speak to you. And Rachel will do it in a way that will make you laugh and cry and think and pray. 


If you’re not into Braving the Truth, what else can I recommend? Anything Rachel wrote is spectacular, so take your pick.

  • Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church (a spiritual travel guide for religious runaways)
  • Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions (80 years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, Rachel Held Evans faced a trial of her own about her faith)
  • A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling her Husband “Master” (a radical life experiment to discern the true meaning of Biblical womanhood)
  • Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again (one woman’s journey back to loving the Bible)


Last Words: When Jo gave me this book for my birthday, I was excited. I truly looked forward to reading it. I don’t know why I wasn’t caught up in my emotions because I sure am now. This post reminded me of an old friend I hadn’t thought about recently, but now the floodgates of emotion are open. And if this post didn’t convince you that this is the book you want to read along with me, that is okay, but it convinced me that this will be the first book I read. In fact, I might even start tonight. And if on Sunday, my eyes are red from crying, you will know that, in fact, I did start reading it.

As always, thanks for reading!