Sarah Clarkson and Anne Bogel both so elegantly and beautifully describe the reading life. Any woman that had delved deep into the beauty of reading, the wondrous reality of living multiple lives, the visitation of places I many never physically travel to see, the myriad of people that I may never met but feel as if I know and love... this is a blessed life.
There are many in my life that aren't readers, or perhaps they don't read voraciously. I always wonder if they know what they are missing, but the truth is that I am certain that areas that fulfill and inspire them give them a similar curiosity about others that don't share their passion. My husband is a musician, and I sometimes wonder if he looks at his non-instrument playing wife and thinks that if I just picked up an instrument, I would understand.
I sometimes think how sad it is that non-readers can be content with one life. Readers experience hundreds. I can understand those that are obsessed with story told a different way, such as through film. I get that perhaps reading isn't their thing, but story still touches a part of them deep inside. I think story touches us all in some way, or it wouldn't be such a powerful medium. The news wouldn't have many watchers if no one wanted to know that inside scoop. The blockbuster movies wouldn't be worth the investment of millions or billions of dollars if there wasn't people that wanted to see the story... on a bigger than life screen. And the New York Times Bestseller List would not exist if people weren't drawn to the stories that cause them to want to snuggle on the couch or sit on a park bench in the warmth of the sun and escape into a different reality.
Story drives us. It gives our lives meaning, as we think about our lives as a story. The child that died too soon lives on in the hearts of parents and in the stories that made up his or her short life. In the Christian faith, the Bible encourages us to share our testimonies (Revelation 12:11). Why? Because the stories of what God had done in our lives is powerful. It is inspirational.
No matter how often I write about the importance of reading, I always still feel an urge deep inside to talk more, to write more. My desire is to see our nation once again be a A Literate Nation. I see quality literature as such an encouragement for Christians, and believe that Christians Need Story, need to redeem the art and create such intriguing plots and deep characters that even non-Christians will want to read the works. I believe that quality literature can Redeem the Day when it has not gone well, and possibly teach lessons to young and old alike in a way that is relatable on a much deeper level than an sermon.
I honestly feel like reading has saved my life. There are the countless times that books find me just as I need them, just as I am enduring a struggle and a book comes into my world that changes my perspective or encourages me or lightens my world. That has happened too many times to be a coincidence. But, without books, without the characters that have walked certain paths with me, I don't know if I would have made it through some dark periods in my life.
As a child, I didn't have many friends. I would make friends, but eventually I would move and have to leave them. There was very little stability in my childhood and teen years. I never realized just how much it impacted me until I was older. After all, it was what I knew. I saw that others had different lives, that didn't move every year or two, that had friends "since kindergarten." That was not me. I moved eight times before I turned eighteen. I went to four high schools in four years. It was a special kind of isolation, always being the new girl, never allowed to keep friends.
I turned to books and to writing. I first, in elementary, met the Ingalls family and the Woodlawn family. Laura Ingalls Wilder was my friend. I devoured her books, over and over. I kept thinking that The Long Winter was atrocious, but I would so rather be in the Ingalls kitchen, starving as the bread flour diminished more and more and the blizzards kept blowing across the open prairie, than move one more time. Caddie and I, in Caddie Woodlawn, were tomboys together. At the end of the novel where she got a painful lesson and wanted to embrace being a girl, I was right there with her, wanting to make the changes with her.
In middle and high school, I became friends with Elizabeth and Jessica, the identical twins in Sweet Valley High. I struggled to make friends, moving so often. Eventually, I didn't even want to try very much to make friends and fit in because I knew that I would just end up having to leave them anyway. It broke my heart every time. But Elizabeth and Jessica and their friends and their family in these sweet little books wouldn't abandon me. They were there to stay. I wouldn't have to leave them. Even if I had to leave them, I could rest assured that the next town or school library would have them available. I clung to them, even when the reading level was way too easy. I clung to them even when peers in my class would laugh at and mock me for reading those "kiddie" books. Why? Because they were stable. They were there for me, with their adventures and deep-down love for each other. Their family did things my family rarely did, like go out to eat and go to the movies. When I read, I felt for a brief time, as if I belonged.
School was a nightmare for me. Academically, I did okay, which is a surprise with all the moving. Emotionally, I was scarred from the bullying and rejection. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that I believe homeschooling is such a blessing, because I hated the environment of school... and I had been in several.
Books were my refuge. I remember checking out Little Women for the first time, and falling in love with Jo. And then I met Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables. Suddenly, I read about having a bosom friend, and felt as if she was one for me. We both hated our hair, her the red and me the frizzy curls. We both felt misunderstood. We both had a temper. It was love.
What would I have done without the characters in books to be there for me? Would the constant moving, the instability, the rejection and loss... would all that have left me at the end of any hope? Would I have become full of rage? Would I have become suicidal? I was so lonely, so desperately wanting to be loved and validated, and I didn't have that from the people around me. I experienced glimpses of that love and validation and warm family atmosphere in the firelight of a cabin, listening to Pa play the fiddle. I found it as I journeyed with Laura into teaching, living away from my family for the first time, saving money to help pay for my sister to attend the school for the blind. I found it as I bullied Clara, and was severely reprimanded by my mother, only to be given understanding by a tender father that, in real life, I had not known. For a brief moment, I knew what it was to feel unconditional love and gentle guidance. It had been missing from my life.
I found comraderie when a boy called me "Carrots" and I broke a slate over his head. Well, it happened to Anne, but at that moment, I understood her. I understood how it felt to feel mocked and made fun of at a new school, as the new girl. The next time I was teased for my crazy curly hair, I thought of that moment. I never broke a slate over anyone's head, but I held my head high and walked on. And when I cut my hair and it looked bad, I remember the horror of when Anne died her hair green, and having to live with the consequences.
I met friends that understood the big and small things, and I met them in the pages of books.
As I read Sarah Clarkson's words about how books were so foundational in her life, or listen on Audible to Anne Bogel talking about growing up as a reader and how it impacted the woman she would become, I appreciate each woman's encouragement and validation that books mean just as much to them as they do to me, that the characters and places helped form them as they did me. It is as if only other readers can "get it." I can't imagine my life without books because I feel in many ways they "saved" me. Reading two books at the same time about living a book-centered life, to me, feels like making friends with women I don't know and may never meet in person. They "get" me and "get" it, when it comes to reading. For that, I am so thankful.
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