What’s New in the Cross Reference Library?

Quenched - If you are a woman who has struggled with lust and pornography, there is hope. Though you may feel trapped in a destructive cycle that is keeping you distant from God, you are not alone. Jessica Harris has been there, and she has made it her mission to break the silence, banish the shame, and bring the struggle into the light. In this authentic and honest book, she shows you a road map for restoration that answers the question “Is there grace left for me?” with a resounding and emphatic “Yes!” It’s time to break down the wall of shame between yourself and your God in order to drink from the well of grace, forgiveness, and freedom God has for you. 

Rooted in Wonder - For a generation whose eyes are constantly trained on screens, encountering nature at all is increasingly difficult—much less seeing what it reveals about God. How can parents help children re engage with the natural world that is so full of amazement, creativity, and love? Eryn Lynum is a certified master naturalist, Bible teacher, and mom of four who wants to help families encounter and understand the connection between God and creation. She shares her own story of surrounding her kids with nature, and invites other parents to embark on a similar journey. With practical sections that look at flora and fauna, water and sky through the lens of the Bible and activities to integrate faith and the natural world, Rooted in Wonder equips parents to cultivate an unshakable faith within their kids. Through the art of play, the drive of discovery, and the awe of adventure, children will gain a sense of wonder in their Creator that will last a lifetime. 

Everything You Need - Are you searching for greater confidence, purpose, and peace in your life? Are the distractions and pressures of this world weighing you down? If you’re overwhelmed, there’s help at your fingertips—help that will give you everything you need to walk life’s journey with resilience and strength. In Everything You Need, author and beloved Bible teacher Dr. David Jeremiah uses 2 Peter 1:3-11 to show you the path to spiritual and personal transformation. Dr. Jeremiah also highlights the extraordinary resources God has already provided for your growth: His divine power and precious promises. Filled with inspiring stories and practical truth, each chapter shows you how to take these divine gifts and develop eight remarkable character qualities that will strengthen you to soar above your circumstances and enable you to make the most of every opportunity that comes your way.

What’s New at the Cross Reference Library? "What God Wants You to Know About Him"

I Used to Be______- When you suffer a loss, you enter the realm of "used to be." You used to be married. You used to be employed. You used to be pregnant, secure, healthy, sober, thin. You used to be a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a mother or father. And in that used-to-be space there is deep emptiness, loneliness, and sorrow. It's a place we all dwell for a while. But it's not a place in which we are meant to remain. The path forward includes exploring the unseen elements of grief. With this book, pastor Chuck Elliott and counselor Ashley Elliott light the way to a better future. Sharing biblical advice and proven mental health techniques, they help you learn how to fully feel and face your grief, hold onto your faith, and develop healthy ways to see yourself, your life, and your loved ones. They offer coping strategies for when moving forward seems impossible and guide you toward building new thinking patterns that will result in true healing and growth. If you “used to be” something, it’s not the end of the road. It’s up to you to decide what you “will be” in the future. 

Quiet Conversations - When was the last time you enjoyed a quiet conversation with God? Is that a daunting idea in this noisy, fast-paced world? For some, faith is intriguing and it invites curiosity. Yet so much about God remains a mystery. How does one unravel it all to make sense in a personal way? In her new book, Quiet Conversations, Kim Harvey Brannan wants to guide you toward understanding the unique ways God expresses Himself in our lives. She presents the essentials about God and the ways He chooses to interact with us. Kim believes that Our Creator longs to draw close to us, and that connecting with Him at a deeper level is the key to living a meaningful life of intention. The ideas and concepts she develops in Quiet Conversations are shared with refreshing candor and raw emotion. Her life experiences back up the validity of each aspect of God’s nature. This debut book is a breath of fresh air, offering hope and personal peace amid life’s challenges, disappointments and hardships.

What’s New at the Cross Reference Library? An Inspirational Book by Ike Miller

Good Baggage - We think our baggage makes us less likely to have good, healthy relationships today. But baggage isn’t just the bad stuff that happened to us—it’s the lessons we’ve learned. What we’ve been through has made us stronger and more capable than we imagine. And it’s how we’re going to make our current relationships work. Far from minimizing past pain, pastor Ike Miller shows you how to go through the baggage you carry from a difficult childhood and pull out the good stuff. You’ll find no platitudes or pat answers here. Rather, you’ll discover untapped riches of experience and knowledge you already have that can make your relationships thrive and change the course of your life and legacy. 

What's New at the Cross Reference Library? A new Lauraine Snelling Novel!

Reunion - The Sorenson family has always been a tight-knit clan, gathering every year at Dagmar Sorenson’s home in Munsford, where her children Keira and Marcus also live. This year; the first since Dagmar’s passing, will be bittersweet. Keira dutifully sorts through Dagmar’s belongings, desperately searching for her birth certificate so she can apply for a passport for a much-dreamed-for trip to Norway. Why did her mother hide the document? The fifty-year-old secret shakes her whole world. Who is she? Who is her father? And who was the woman she called Mother? How can she tell her family the truth? Her brother, Marcus, and his wife, Leah, have a devastating secret of their own. Their college-bound daughter, Kirsten, is pregnant. Has she destroyed the bright future she’s earned? Her father’s trust? And what about his ministry? As the reunion draws closer, the secret each family member keeps erodes the solid bonds between them. Will the truth break them entirely?

What’s New at the Cross Reference Library? When The Going Gets Hard

Softly & Tenderly - Happily married and owner of two successful boutiques, Jade longs to begin a family with her husband, Max. But when she discovers that Max has an illegitimate son—who he wants her to help raise—Jade’s life is turned upside down. She flees to her childhood home, a rambling Iowa farmhouse, with enough room to breathe. There—while her mother’s health grows fragile, and the tug of her first love grows stronger—Jade begins to question everything she thought she knew about family, love, and motherhood. In the wide-open landscape, Jade begins to see a future that doesn’t rest on the power of her past, but in the goodness of God’s tender mercies. 

House of Mercy - Beth has a gift of healing—which is why she wants to become a vet and help her family run their fifth-generation cattle ranch. Her father’s dream of helping men in trouble and giving them a second chance is her dream too. But it only takes one foolish decision to destroy it all. Beth scrambles to redeem her mistake, pleading with God for help, even as a mystery complicates her life. The repercussions grow more unbearable—a lawsuit, a death, a divided family, and the looming loss of everything she cares about. Beth’s only hope is to find the grandfather she never knew and beg for his help. Confused, grieving, and determined to make amends, she embarks on a horseback journey across the mountain, guided by a wild, unpredictable wolf who may or may not be real. Set in the stunningly rugged terrain of Southern Colorado, House of Mercy follows Beth through the valley of the shadow of death in the unfathomable miracles of mercy. 

Like Sweet Potato Pie - As a new Christian, former journalist Shiloh Jacobs has plenty of problems. But money, or lack of it, tops the list. Her redneck country house in rural Virginia that was left to her in her mom’s will is the last place on earth Shiloh thought she’d find herself. As soon as the house sells, she can’t wait to flee back to big-city life. But now the IRS is threatening to seize the house for back taxes while her half sister is contesting the will. And nobody’s offering the big bucks Shiloh needs for the house. To make matters worse, Shiloh finds her life unexpectedly entangled with a man who’s all wrong for her and just as financially strapped. Plus, he’s a local—settled in the one place she can’t wait to leave. She wouldn’t have noticed him before, but after giving her life to Jesus, everything looks different. When other more “suitable” men show up, can Shiloh lean on her new faith to see who’s right? Or will circumstances overwhelm her fragile faith and budding romance? 

Where do you go when life punches you in the gut? Perhaps you have lost a family member. Or maybe you’ve been financially tight and there aren’t many options for. Divorce, getting fired from a job, hospital bills after a wreck…The list can definitely be longer, but I’m sure you get the point. You want to know where I go when I’m confused or sad? There will be nights when I just can’t sleep, and I need to clear my head. On those nights, I go out to my front porch and I find a spot on the front steps. When I’m comfortable, I look up at the stars in all their beauty and sometimes I look for the constellation Cygnus (the Swan!). Then I take a deep breath and I talk to God. I thank Him for creating the stars, and for the ways that He has blessed me. But then I ask questions and completely open up to the Father who created me. It sometimes takes me too long, though. Before I find myself on those front steps. But it does feel good when I bring everything to the Father. Our main characters in this week’s books seem to take a while too. In Softly & Tenderly, Jade loses trust in the husband she loved, and upon that discovery, she goes to Iowa and ends up finding God. While in Like Sweet Potato Pie, Shiloh is a new Christian who is ready to serve the Lord. But as the story moves along, Shiloh finds out that being a Christian is one of the biggest challenges of her life. These 3 books actually reminded me of the song, “When Mercy Found Me,” by Rhett Walker: 

I can't count the broken roads I've been down

But all I know

Something had to give

Something had to give

'Cause living my life so wild and free

Finally caught up

Oh it left me broken, left me hopeless

But that's where I met Jesus

And in one moment everything changed

Who I was got washed away

When mercy found me

My Savior's arms were open wide

And I felt love for the very first time

When mercy found me

When mercy found me

If you are able, I highly recommend that you look this song up and listen to the whole thing. When you find yourself on those broken roads, tired and worn, go to the Lord in prayer and even open up His word. Difficult journeys are best taken when we have someone along for the ride. Jesus is ready for you to take Him along on that ride with you. So come on in to the Cross Reference Library for heartwarming stories and good morals.

What’s New at the Cross Reference Library?

Searching for You - For years, Sophie Neumann has been running from the orphanages of 1850s New York City. Tasked with caring for two younger children, she’s determined not to let them be taken from her, and not to abandon them the same way her older sisters did her. But times are growing desperate, and when she falls in the wrong crowd and witnesses a crime, she realizes fleeing the state is her only option. Disappearing with her two young charges into a group of orphans heading west by train, Sophie hopes to find safety and a happy life. But when the train stops in Illinois, she faces an agonizing decision as the orphans will be placed in new homes. Afraid she’ll lose them forever, she finds help in a familiar face she never expected to see so far from New York. Reinhold Weiss has finally purchased his own small farm in Illinois. With mounting debts, a harvest to bring in, and past scars that still haunt him, Reinhold is in no position to give his heart away…but can he say no when his long-lost friend shows up on a nearby farm pleading for his help? 

What's New in the Cross Reference Library? A New Karen Kingsbury Novel

A Distant Shore - She was a child caught in a riptide in the Caribbean Sea. He was a teenager from the East Coast on vacation with his family. He dove in to save her, and that single terrifying moment changed both their lives forever. Ten years later, Jack Ryder is a daring undercover agent with the FBI and Eliza Lawrence still lives on that pristine island. Only now she’s the untainted princess in a kingdom of darkness and evil, on the brink of a forced marriage with a dangerous neighboring drug lord, a marriage arranged by her father. This time when Jack and Eliza meet, both their lives are on the line, and once again, the stakes are deadly high. Can they join forces in a complicated and dangerous mission, pretending to have a breathtaking love…without really falling for one another? Sometimes miracles happen not once, but twice…on a distant shore.

We have dreams. There’s the kind that you get when you fall asleep. 

Like, the other night I had an interesting one where I was packing my bag and preparing to jump into a small plane and fly it across the world. 

Then there’s living dreams that can come true. One of mine is to write a novel (and maybe to have my own dog one day!). 

But the opposite of a dream, I would say, is a nightmare. According to Google, the two definitions of a nightmare are #1, “a frightening or unpleasant dream.” 

Once, I had an unpleasant dream where I was being chased down by a bloodthirsty cannibal and my body took forever to wake up. But I was relieved when I finally did, and that it was never real. The second definition of nightmare is, “a terrifying or very unpleasant experience or prospect.” In Karen Kingsbury’s A Distant Shore, Jack doesn’t have the luxury of waking from the nightmare of losing his brother. And unfortunately, it was 20 years before Eliza could escape from her father’s sex trafficking ring. A couple weeks ago, I went to the theater with my family to see the film, Sound of Freedom. It’s the incredible true story of Tim Ballad, a former government agent turned vigilante who embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue hundreds of children from sex traffickers. Before walking into that theater, I knew of sex trafficking and that it was a horrible thing. But the way that film put into perspective the absolute hell millions of children have gone through, literally brought me to tears. A child can be picked up off the street, believing someone to be nice, trustworthy, or good, only to find out later on what horrors were in store for them. But in Karen Kingsbury’s fictional story of A Distant Shore, God uses Eliza to continue to help the FBI, by going and stopping kids from being taken. 

Even though this novel by Karen Kingsbury contains made-up characters, sex-trafficking is very real and very active in our world and in our country. I do recommend A Distant Shore to any of our Cross Reference Library patrons, or anyone who is interested about the story itself. But I will say that it is not for the faint of heart, either. While I’m at it, I also recommend that anyone that can, or feels so inclined, go see Sound of Freedom. Sure, it will make you sad for the children it is happening to and mad at the men who do it to them. But that film is extremely powerful, and one of my favorite lines from the movie is, “God’s children are NOT for sale!” And that is absolutely true. I recommend them both, because, though serious, the themes and occurrences need to be addressed and not ignored.  

What’s New at the Cross Reference Library? A New Jody Hedlund Series

With You Always - One of the many immigrants struggling to survive in 1850s New York, Elise Neumann knows she must take action to care for her younger sisters. She finds a glimmer of hope when the New York Children’s Aid Society starts sending skilled workers to burgeoning towns out west. But the promise of the society’s orphan trains is not all that it seems. Born into elite New York society, Thornton Quincy possesses everything except the ability to step out from his brother’s shadow. When their ailing father puts forth a unique challenge to determine who will inherit his railroad-building empire, Thornton finally sees his chance. The conditions to win? Be the first to build a sustainable community along the Illinois Central Railroad and find a suitable wife. Thrown together against all odds, Elise and Thornton couldn’t be from more different worlds. The spark that ignites between them is undeniable, but how can they let it grow when that means forfeiting everything they’ve been working toward?

Together Forever - Determined to find her lost younger sister, Marianne Neumann takes a job as a placing agent with the Children’s Aid Society in 1858 New York. She not only hopes to offer children a better life, but prays she’ll be able to discover whether Sophie ended up leaving the city on an orphan train so they can finally be reunited. Andrew Brady, her fellow agent on her first placing-out trip, is a former schoolteacher who has an easy way with the children, firm but tender and friendly. Underneath his charm and handsome looks, though, seems to linger a grief that won’t go away—and a secret from his past that he keeps hidden. As the two team up, placing orphans in small railroad towns of Illinois, they find themselves growing ever closer…until a shocking tragedy threatens to upend all their work and change one of their lives forever.

What's New in The Cross Reference Library?

Doing Life With Your Adult Children - If you have an adult child, you know that parenting doesn’t stop when a child reaches the age of eighteen. In many ways, it gets more complicated. Both your heart and your head are as involved as ever, whether your child lives under your roof or rarely stays in contact. In Doing Life With Your Adult Children, parenting expert Jim Burns helps you navigate the toughest and the most rewarding parts of parenting your grown kids. Speaking from his personal and professional experience, Burns offers practical answers to questions such as these: 

• Is it okay to give advice to my grown child?

• What’s the difference between helping financially and enabling? 

• What boundaries should I set if my child moves back home?

• How do I relate to my grown child’s significant other?

• How can I support my grown children when I don’t support their values?

Including positive principles for bringing kids back to faith, ideas on how to leave a legacy as a grandparent, and encouragement for every season, Doing Life With Your Adult Children is a unique book on your changing role in a calling that never ends. 

God’s Not Like That - A faulty view of God will always be a barrier to a satisfying spiritual life. In this interactive book, Bryan Clark takes us on a step-by-step journey to help us understand: 

• Why even a loving and faith-filled family can inadvertently pass on false representations of God. 

• Specific ways our childhood influences our beliefs today. 

• The difference between a grace-based value system and a performance-based value system. 

• How to distinguish truth from fiction when it comes to personal beliefs. 

• What the Bible says about how God intended Himself to be depicted in the home. 

Abundant life starts with a right view of God: a God who sustains, comforts us, and satisfies us through every season.

What’s New at the Cross Reference Library? Books 1 & 2 of the Wingfeather Saga

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness - Andrew Peterson spins a riveting tale-for-all-ages, following Janner, Tink, and Leeli Igiby, and their trusty dog, Nugget, as they escape from the vicious Fangs of Dang who seek the lost Jewels fo Anniera. Quirky characters and their world of wonders—from the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness to the deadly Glipwood Forest and beyond—set the stage for this epic adventure. 

North! Or Be Eaten - Janner, Tink, and Leeli Igiby thought they were normal children with normal lives and a normal past. But now they know they’re really the lost Jewels of Anniera, heirs to a legendary kingdom across the sea, and suddenly everyone wants to kill them. In order to survive, the Igibys must flee to the safety of the Ice Prairies, where the lizard-like Fangs of Dang cannot follow. First, however, they have to escape the monsters of Glipwood Forest, the thieving Stranders of the East Bend, and the dreaded Fork Factory. But even more dangerous are the jealousy and bitterness that threaten to tear them apart, and Janner and his siblings must learn the hard way that the love of a family is more important than anything else.