I am a lover of books, it's true.
I don't exactly know when or how I learned to read, but I did it myself and when I was very young. I recall tucking myself into a nook of my room, sometimes under the bed, and reading my sorrows and lonliness away. You see, I was the daughter of a single-mother at a time when single-motherhood was still shocking. As a result of the abandonment which left her marked by shame, my mother was a deeply wounded woman by seventeen years of age, and I received the bounty of her pain through emotional neglect. From as early as I can remember, I spent hours and hours alone in my room and books were often my only friends.
Books nurtured and guided me through many years of murky waters, and I love them for it.
Books continue to nurture me, broadening my mind's horizons and deepening my heart's connection to this world and the next. There isn't a cranny of my life that a seriously good book cannot touch.
And so, I read. Not as often as I once did; I just don't have that kind of time anymore, and, most thankfully, I don't have those deep wells of sorrow anymore--not since Christ. And I set goals for each year, both spiritually and intellectually, leaving myself room to add just one more recommendation from a friend or something my Lord firmly hands me. It's my way of actively partnering with my own Author as we together change my life by bits and slivers to look a wee more like His.
Reading Goals for 2011
Age of Opportunity by Paul David Tripp
Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas
Treasures of Encouragement by Sharon W. Betters
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyun
...by E.M. Forester:
Where Angels Fear to Tread
The Longest Journey
Howards End
A Passage to India
...by Evelyn Waugh
Brideshead Revisited
Men at Arms
Officers and Gentlemen
Unconditional Surrender
TELL ME: Has a book ever changed your life? I know ONE continues to change me as I read and reread it ... can you guess?
