#7QT: Vocational Reading

By Brittany Makely

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A little over four years ago, I began a new vocation – wife. Almost three years ago, the vocation of motherhood got added. In preparation for our wedding, my husband and I each chose one book to read on love and/or marriage. I chose Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s Three to Get Married. Best decision ever. I so appreciated Sheen’s gentle but firm exploration of the purpose of marriage and both the beauty and trial most spouses experience sometime between “I do” and “til death do us part.”

Three to Get Married was one of several books that have provided indispensable advice, clarity, and encouragement to me as I navigate the most important callings of my life to serve and love my husband and children. Here are six other equally impactful books that I highly recommend to all spouses and parents. Most of these are not written specifically on the subject of vocations or directed toward spouses or parents, but their essence is.

Shadows on the Rock

By Rebekah Randolph
A Mad Tea Party

Last year, I read Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather. She has become one of my favorite authors, not least because of her attention to life's small things. In this book, I was struck by how the "small things" of homemaking, in particular, became the spine and spirit of a community.

The story follows a young girl in the French colony of Quebec circa 1700. The French settlers have been uprooted from their homeland (albeit willingly) and set down in a place entirely foreign to them. All their comforts derive from the traditions they have managed to carry across the Atlantic.

Quebec's homemakers therefore play a far more meaningful role than is apparent on the surface. They function as guardians of a more refined way of life. Through their everyday duties, they infuse reason, warmth, and stability into a world otherwise marked by ignorance, crudity, and violence.