Every birthday and Christmas since I was fourteen has been a week-long string of celebration, resulting from my family's split. The days of the week vary between mom and dad, mailed gifts from grandparents in Bradenton and packages delivered from grandparents in Akron and lunch dates with grandparents from Mansfield. In the day or two before Christmas, my siblings and I usually managed to plead my mom into allowing us one early present apiece, our choice. My sister would go for cd-case-shaped presents, my brother would go for the biggest bag addressed to him, but what I would look for were those hard rectangular gifts carefully wrapped with my mother's neat handwriting printed on the paper.
In my deeply-devoted Star War days in middle school, I had requested a certain book that was one of many spin-offs from the series. When the time came for early present selection, I had already scoped it out under the fake 3-foot tree on the sidetable and ripped into it immediately.
My father is the writer of my family, having received a degree in Journalism from the same university that I am attending right now, yet it is my mother who diligently nurtured my love for reading. As a child, we made almost weekly visits to the library for a couple of videos and a sack full of children's books. As a pre-teen during those library visits I would start selecting chapter books myself, one of those being the first of the Harry Potter books at the very beginning of the craze, and sometimes when I couldn't come along she would pick out a couple of books that looked promising for me. When she was still living at home I remember coming downstairs in the morning before school, and she would be curled up quietly on the couch in the front room with her Bible, halfway through her year-long reading plan. And for the past six years, she has worked at Barnes & Noble part time, putting her 30% employee discount to good use for my benefit. She supplied the fuel for my love of Brian Jacques as I ripped through his "Redwall" series in high school. When Harry Potter books came out over the years, all copies bought before the boxes had even hit the stores, my mother would reserve a copy with her privileges and her discount; she would always let me read it first, and I would stay up all night to read as much as I possibly could, the new adventure a delectable treasure.
I have never outgrown my love for books, and my mother has continued to faithfully provide for it. I adopted her sincere love for C. S. Lewis and Phil Yancey, and over the years she introduced me to wonderful Annie Dillard, the loose Christian thoughts of Don Miller's "Blue Like Jazz", sweet books like "Beauty", and anything written by "Wicked"s Gregory Maguire.
Very recently, I've been trying to get an understanding of what a writing ministry would look like. I emailed an older guy in my church who's known for his heart for arts ministry; he's a painter, not a writer, but his reply gave some sort a starting place: "Well, I've heard it said that good writers read a lot of good writing and they write a lot. And for a believer in Christ, our motive is even more important than our topic: to glorify God, that is to being honor to Him. It is important to pray that God shapes and refines in this way."
Praying about it, the best I can think of this particular season is a time of preparation, to build a consistent habit of reading and writing, and be ready for an opportunity to practically develop my writing as a ministry. And I've got a good headstart on the reading part.
Hey mama --
Thanks for afternoons at the library, books under the tree, and a love for reading.
In my deeply-devoted Star War days in middle school, I had requested a certain book that was one of many spin-offs from the series. When the time came for early present selection, I had already scoped it out under the fake 3-foot tree on the sidetable and ripped into it immediately.
My father is the writer of my family, having received a degree in Journalism from the same university that I am attending right now, yet it is my mother who diligently nurtured my love for reading. As a child, we made almost weekly visits to the library for a couple of videos and a sack full of children's books. As a pre-teen during those library visits I would start selecting chapter books myself, one of those being the first of the Harry Potter books at the very beginning of the craze, and sometimes when I couldn't come along she would pick out a couple of books that looked promising for me. When she was still living at home I remember coming downstairs in the morning before school, and she would be curled up quietly on the couch in the front room with her Bible, halfway through her year-long reading plan. And for the past six years, she has worked at Barnes & Noble part time, putting her 30% employee discount to good use for my benefit. She supplied the fuel for my love of Brian Jacques as I ripped through his "Redwall" series in high school. When Harry Potter books came out over the years, all copies bought before the boxes had even hit the stores, my mother would reserve a copy with her privileges and her discount; she would always let me read it first, and I would stay up all night to read as much as I possibly could, the new adventure a delectable treasure.
I have never outgrown my love for books, and my mother has continued to faithfully provide for it. I adopted her sincere love for C. S. Lewis and Phil Yancey, and over the years she introduced me to wonderful Annie Dillard, the loose Christian thoughts of Don Miller's "Blue Like Jazz", sweet books like "Beauty", and anything written by "Wicked"s Gregory Maguire.
Very recently, I've been trying to get an understanding of what a writing ministry would look like. I emailed an older guy in my church who's known for his heart for arts ministry; he's a painter, not a writer, but his reply gave some sort a starting place: "Well, I've heard it said that good writers read a lot of good writing and they write a lot. And for a believer in Christ, our motive is even more important than our topic: to glorify God, that is to being honor to Him. It is important to pray that God shapes and refines in this way."
Praying about it, the best I can think of this particular season is a time of preparation, to build a consistent habit of reading and writing, and be ready for an opportunity to practically develop my writing as a ministry. And I've got a good headstart on the reading part.
Hey mama --
Thanks for afternoons at the library, books under the tree, and a love for reading.
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