A Book That Changed My Life

I am an avid reader.  Books are on my list of Top Ten Things I Have To Have.  They may even be on my list of Top One Things I Have To Have.  Close, in any event.

Fiction, non-fiction, biography, sci-fi, children's, history, religion, classics, I read them all.  Well, except horror.  I don't like horror.  Some books are just bubble gum for my brain; some are seriously thought-provoking; some are dry and informational; but the only One that has fundamentally changed my life is the Bible.  There is much to be learned from books, even some of the more unlikely ones, but every life lesson I have learned from any other book I have found as well in the Bible.

I have always been a seeker, something my mom apparently recognized, because she bought me my own Bible when I was around the age of five or six.  This was long before the days of special kids' Bibles in 14 different versions, and what I got was good ole' hardcore King James in a faux leather white cover with print so fine I almost had to have a microscope to read it.  But I was not deterred.  The day she gave it to me I sat myself right down on the kitchen floor and started in Genesis 1:1.  When bedtime rolled around I was almost done with the first chapter, so I was allowed to stay where I was until I finished.

That's how my Bible reading began.    I wish I could say I read it faithfully every day.  I could say that, I guess, but it might not quite be truthful, which kinda goes against the whole concept.  But I do get it in more days than not, so there is that.

How my Bible reading ends...I haven't come that far.  So far, so good.

A Friendship I Wish I Had

I once had the Friendship I Wish I Had.  She was the friend who loved wholeheartedly and absolutely unconditionally.

It was a pretty unlikely friendship.  She was in her 50's; I was in my 30's.  Her life was all put together; mine was a big, fat mess.  She was all empty-nested; I had a house full of kids.  She was so much fun; I was a stick in the mud.  She was young in her heart, younger than I was; I was so swamped in my dailiness, it was all I could do to get by.  I'm not sure we had anything in common, except that we both loved to laugh, and we laughed at the same things.  That was enough all by itself.  My sense of humor has always been rather skewed, and she got it in a way hardly anyone else ever did or has since.

Once she brought my newborn baby boy a gift of a pink outfit.  Not what one usually brings to a boy, but, as she explained, it was too cute to pass up, and pleeeeeze, would I allow her to give it to him?  We both had a good laugh about that, and I laugh about it still.

Every so often I and a couple of my kidlets would collect a batch of the local freebie newspaper and take them up to her house where we would sit around her table and pick out the typos and other errors and laugh til we cried.  Just thinking about it cracks me up all over again. 

My life was rife with problems; her life was perfect.  Ok, maybe not.  Looking back now from an age beyond where she was then, I suspect maybe she did have, or at least had had, a problem or two.  But she had learned how to cope, and she kindly and generously shared her wisdom and her self with me.

I don't remember its exact Beginning.  But I perfectly remember its sad Ending.

R.I.P. my friend.

1st Day Of Endings/Beginnings...Letter To My Younger Self

Dear Younger Me,

You are born.  The biggest Beginning of them all.  You think being a baby will be boring, since you can't do a thing other than sit around. You are wrong.  Being a baby is exciting!  Every day is is full of discoveries and new thrills.

The firsts come quickly:  your first time to roll over, your first tooth, your first time to sit up alone, your first step, your first boo-boo, all Endings of your total dependence and Beginnings of your eventual self-sufficiency.

The stakes get bigger.  School Begins, school Ends, work Begins, and just like that, Z-I-P!  The Ending of your childhood and the Beginning of Personal Responsibility.  Aaahhhh!  Now you can really start living.  PSYYYCH!

There are many Endings and Beginnings along the way, all generally involving a certain amount of the bittersweet.  Sometimes things don't exactly suit you, and you can't wait to see them in your rearview mirrow.  When that happens, you are ecstatic!

Then again...sometimes you like things the way they are, and you wish they would never change.  But you can be assured they will, sooner or later, one way or another, because to hold the note is to ruin the song.  When that happens well-meaning comforters tell you when God closes one door, He opens another one, and this is often true.

At this point however, my feeling runs to the sense that sometimes when a door is closing, it's just a door slamming in your face.  Because from this End of things, I can see that in the Beginning, life is full of possibilities, but when all is said and done, in the Ending, it is just full of improbabilities.

Love,
Older Me

2nd Day:  A Friendship I Wish I Had

3rd Day:  A Book That Changed My Life