I love Mondays! I know for the majority of the world, Monday is actually a day of dread....the first day of a new week of hard work (which I guess says a lot about the kind of world we live in)...but for me, Mondays are my day off...a time to relax, rest, re-center. I LOVE it! This Monday in particular has been really nice as I've gotten to do something I haven't spent a lot of time doing in the past year. Today I read...and read... and read some more. I use to love to read....after I left school and could choose what to read for myself, that is! There was even one year I challenged myself to read 52 books because I saw the importance in learning from other peoples life stories (of course I only got thru 48 books that year...but hey, it was a personal challenge so who really cares)!
One of my favorite authors is Don Miller. I first heard about Him when I was living in California about ten years ago! I had been living in this rooming house and the floor I was staying on with one other person got robbed, so the boys living in the apartment above us, graciously invited me to move in with them (I think it helped that I was a girl and that one of the boys was dating my former housemate, at the time). Anyway, I got to know those boys pretty quickly and it was the older one who introduced me to Don Miller.
For weeks this particular roommate kept commenting on the book "Blue Like Jazz" and how it was the first Christian book he'd read that didn't make him feel like he was "doing it wrong". In a way that book had connected him back to God and he wanted to share it with everyone. So I finally gave in and borrowed the book. I read the whole thing in one night...then a few nights later I read the whole thing all over again. After that I read "Searching for God knows What" and "Through Painted Desserts". Then a few years ago I read "A Million Miles in a thousand Years". So to say I am a fan, might be putting it lightly!
Then the other day I saw on another authors blog that Don has a new book out. Now I try to make it a rule of thumb that I don't start a new book without finishing the current one I am reading (otherwise I might never finish a book!) and so, although I already broke that rule on Friday by starting a second book on the bus to Loja (cause who wants to take an Ipad on a bus to go grocery shopping), I decided I couldn't start Don's new book without finishing the other two. I finished both other books in the last 24 hours just so I could start this new one by Don Miller!
The funny thing is, the second I started reading it, and shared that I was reading it on Goodreads, I started freaking out about it because I didn't realize this was a "relationship" book (thankfully the more into it I've gotten, the more I've discovered it's so much more than that)! The thing is, over the years I have successfully warded off the fear that I may never get married, by telling people and myself that I don't want to. Whether or not that is actually true (which more and more in my life it's proving to be a lie), I immediately worried that reading a book about "intimacy" would automatically make people assume that I'm all of a sudden "looking for something more". I started worrying that maybe I was putting a big target on my back that says, "I have issues....and here's what they are"!
The awesome thing about Don Miller's writing style though is that he seems to be so authentic. Even though throughout this book he talks about himself being an "actor" and "putting on a show" to "entertain" people, I have often felt so comfortable reading his works because of the honesty he pours out in them. I'll sit down and read something he's written and feel like I've sat down to chat with a friend. And then, just like I normally feel like when I'm talking with a good friend, I try to keep the conversation going (or in this case I keep reading) cause I don't want that feeling of being understood and not alone to ever end. So as I started his book today (a book that I might quite possibly finish before I go to bed tonight), I started to relax...remembering and resting in the comfort of an old friend that gets it.
The funny thing is, one of the other two books I've finished in the past 24 hours was all about grace and how the ability to love people unconditionally comes from the overflow of understanding how loved we already are by God. Here I had been thinking for the past week or so as I've been reading it, that yes! I FINALLY get it! I don't have to live up to other peoples standards or be anything other than who I am because who I am is already acceptable! And then no less than 2 hours later I start worrying about what people will think of me because of my enjoyment of this new book!
I guess that just goes to show how much more growing I still have to do and how much more I need to understand God's undying love for me. I guess in part that's why I enjoy reading though...it reminds me just how much I don't have it all figured out...and that I'm not alone in that! So yeah, maybe this blog post doesn't make a whole lot of sense....in some ways I am way more of a reader than I am a writer...but it's days like today, when I get to sit alone and be myself, doing something I love...that allow me to see who I am and how much more growing I have left to do. I know that may sound like a bad thing, but for me it's encouraging....it means I've got a lot more life left to live and much more of this journey to discover....and that makes me want to get out there and live it!
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