Legalist...what, if it wasn't for the grace of God, I would most certainly be. (Life isn't about me and what I do, it's about GOD and what he does!)
Love...in all its wonderful forms. Of God, of my husband, of my family and friends.
Light...of Christ--and living in it. For obvious reasons.
But this afternoon I did something I haven't for a long time, and as a result I realized what I wanted to write about.
Literature.
As a child and teenager, I would often spend hours at a time reading--historical fiction, inspirational novels, books like Little Women and Pride and Prejudice and the entire Mitford series by Jan Karon. One of my favorite historical-fiction series was the "Dear America" series. These books were written from the point of view of fictional girls who lived in real historical places and experienced major events in history. I owned three, and the rest I got from the library. In these books I could experience the life of a girl traveling the Oregon Trail, another girl who lived through the Revolutionary War, one who was on the Titanic and survived, and a Black girl moving to Chicago from down south in the 1960's. At our school's annual Scholastic book sale last week I bought a new one, about a girl living in California in 1880, during the gold mining era.
This afternoon, after coming home from work and getting some groceries with my hubby, I spent a bit more than two hours reading all the way through this book (a little over 200 pages long). Granted, it's pretty easy reading, and I'm a really fast reader. But my husband was impressed. :)
It's been a while since I got that lost in a story--completely unaware of what was going on around me, immersed in the lives of the characters. The story has already burned itself into my mind so that thinking back on what I read, it feels like my own memories. Like they're people I knew, having experiences that I shared. And when I put that book down, it was almost like I was saying goodbye to friends I wouldn't see again for a very long time.
Have you ever experienced anything like that? The magic of good literature? I'm so glad that I was exposed to many good books as a child. As a result, my life has been fuller, my imagination has been enlivened, and my knowledge of the world enriched--just through the power of books.
