Transition Measured in Books..

I once heard Kay Arthur tell a story about how she sold all her possessions before becoming a missionary when she was younger because she “read in the Bible that ‘where your treasure is, there your heart is also’, and ‘I didn’t want my heart to be stuck in a storage facility somewhere’”J… In person, her delivery was clearly humorous, but I can definitely relate! 

A few weeks ago, I decided that if I didn’t start going through my belongings now to at least majorly minimize, I was going to move to Papua New Guinea in a few months with boxes of things in my family members’ homes that don’t need to be sitting there for years.

So in March, I began with the books! As I swiped at the dust and pages with my fingers and lovingly inspected each one, I realized the books on my colossal shelf go back through a habit of at least twenty years of story-hoarding...   In school, through my most awkward years, books were my escape to incredible places and times, and characters that could understand me more than the people I was meeting in middle school. Though I was mostly a library borrower then, the habit stuck, and I found delight in large vocabulary words and the characters that used them.

College-Mon working
on my Senior Project

By high school, I was a full-fledged Lit-nerd who'd begun the habit of scouring used book stores for the oldest copies of favorites I could find, and becoming an English Major in college only multiplied the "problem" ten-fold! Each semester would bring a new long list to acquire, read, absorb, and analyze, and by the time I graduated, I'd plotted to buy a bookshelf to house "my loves" so they didn't have to live in odd, studious floor-stacks anymore.

When I moved out on my own after college for the first time, I found a used, three-part, mammoth bookshelf that felt perfect and proud to hold them, and when I became a teacher later, I found myself continuing the habit of hitting up used book stores after particularly stressful or rewarding teaching days to mark the momentous occasion J. Later, the well-loved collection even required a fourth build-it-yourself, additional tall shelf! 

So now, as I tried to undertake the minimization of this heap o' books, I found myself quite a sentimental goose over them—over and over again, I found little notes tucked away in the pages, and not the grocery-list kind, but the memory-fiber, weighty kind. I rediscovered a meaningful letter from my village roommate during my time in Ghana in '04, there were cards of encouragement from friends at all different points in my life, and post-its my parents had hidden away for me to find when I was in Italy. There was a lunch-note with doodles my sister and I had passed back and forth over a few days in high school, and some drawings we'd swiveled to make each other smile. Many of the books were given to me as gifts, with heart-words poured out on the cover pages. Some marked epochs in my personal growth, or instantly took me back to seasons of struggle when I'd clung to those pages for comfort.

There was something beautifully cathartic in this sifting process, and when I was finished I had a medium-sized keep-stack, a pile of precious notes, bookmarks, and letters, and several boxes of books to part with! It was fascinating to find that my whole life until this point could be partially measured out in books, and it was also beautiful to learn that these outward shells were not my treasure, but that there are so many deeply lovely memories, lessons, people, and so much unwavering human emotion that I connect to those titles and the words found within them. These things I carry with me, and several oceans won't change that.

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