Books Shape Us

We have a lot of books in our home. I did a quick tally of the bookshelves, and we have between 10 and 12, depending on how you count. I think it is safe to say we are in the thousands when it comes to books. A mini library, I guess.

Several weeks ago, I noticed that the shelves on one of the bookcases in our room were starting to sag. It is an inexpensive unit that came from a big box store years ago, and over time I added a second row of books on each shelf. Clearly not meant to carry that load, I started to brainstorm where I could put all of those extra books.

I thought about our built-in shelves in the living room and how they were full of books, many of which were from 30+ years ago. I knew that on those shelves there were books that we no longer wanted, but I also knew it was going to take a minute to sort through them.

This past week, we did just that. There are 18 shelves of books, and I removed nearly every book from them over 3 days. I dusted them all and then sorted them into three piles: toss, keep, and donate.

Each night we’d sort through what we wanted to keep, stack the donations into a box to drop at Goodwill, and fill a trash bag with the books to be tossed.

After all of that, I was able to move the extra books from our room to their new home in the living room and still have some room left over for whatever new books we order this year and probably next.

What struck me during this process was how much we’ve grown and changed. We’ve been married 26 years. Some of our books came with us into our marriage, and some were given to us or acquired in the early days of figuring out how to be married, how to be parents, and how to be pastors and leaders.

Some of the ideas in those books were deeply life giving and invited us toward flourishing, while other messages were immensely life draining and led us toward languishing.

When I read a book in my 20’s, I assumed that the author was an expert. I assumed that the words they had written were researched, tested, and true. I assumed that they were writing with my best interest, as the reader, in mind.

Over the years, I have come to terms with the reality that authors do their best. Sometimes they get it absolutely wrong, but often I think they are still working out their own views on a matter, and we end up with their thoughts at that moment in time.

I have come to appreciate my ability to question what is written in a book and my comfort with making notations in the margins to dialogue with the author, even if they never see them. I have come to see the value in rereading books and in seeing how my thinking has changed, how my ideas have grown, how I, too, am on a journey of learning, knowing that each year my capacity to hold the tension of what is written in a book expands. 

Some books deserve to be thrown in the trash. There is just no way to justify the faulty narrative they perpetuate or the harm that they cause.

But usually, I think books invite us to consider another person’s wonderings. I think they open us up to stories we might not otherwise encounter, and they challenge us to sit with our own ideas and wrestle with how those ideas have taken root within us.

The best books, both fiction and non-fiction, expand our compassion, deepen our capacity for love, and leave us changed forever. These books should be talked about, argued about, cried over, laughed at, and shared.

Everything is forming us. The books that we read are no exception.

~  Melissa