What's on my nightstand? A whole lot of Dan Allender, that's what. I've been reading his book To Be Told. I had partly read it once before, but I picked it up again recently when I re-wrote an outline of my life (something we encourage people to do in our leadership training). It's been helping me identify places in my life where difficult things happened to shape me (as he calls it "Shalom Shattered), how I tried to redeem those places in my own way apart from God ("Shalom Sought") and how God wants to use those things for His glory.
As I'm wrapping that up, I also pulled The Healing Path off the shelf, another Allender book. This one goes more deeply into a lot of the same themes, helping me focus on how God is redeeming me and my role in the process. I feel like both of these books are back in my life at just the right time to help me know and understand my story and my heart.
And as if that weren't enough, as I've mentioned before we have a group of us watching a Dan Allender video series every other Friday night called Learning to Love Your Story. If I don't after all this, I really don't think I can blame a lack of input.