On My Bookshelf

I haven't been keeping up here on the blog with the books I have been reading, yet this year has been one of the better years of getting some books read. Currently, I've been reading C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. It is a "theological fantasy" about the Christian concepts of heaven and hell. I've enjoyed it thus far, but find that I cannot read many chapters at a time because there is so much to process and chew on.

A "for fun" book I just picked up at the library (I like to browse the stacks of new books and grab some that catch my eye), is Maria Goodin's first novel. It is a story about a young woman's journey to discover the truth about her past in midst of the fantastical stories (lies?) her mother tells. When her mother becomes ill, Meg returns to try to convince her mom to tell her who she really is. I found it fairly quick paced and kept my attention. Although I "figured out" where it was going, Goodin's writing was engaging and I wanted to continue reading the book. 

One passage caught my attention as a way I would want my daughters to think about "falling in love," a counter balance to so much of the "Disney version."

It's not like you said it would be. No bolt of lightning shoots across the sky, and no nightingales spontaneously burst into song. I do not find myself engulfed in a dreamy, magical cloud or swept away in a whirlwind of glittering stardust Instead, I suddenly feel real, as if all the splintered parts of myself have simultaneously come together. I am the child I once was and the adult I am today. I am all of my good ponts and each of my bad. I am brave but afraid, healed but damaged, strong but helpless. I am everything I have admitted and all that I have denied. The personI am right now in this moment is the product of everything I have ever been - the truth, the lies, and everything in between.

When his lips touch mine, I don't feel myself falling, weightlessly, like you promised.

Instead, for the first time ever, I feel myself become me.

The Kitchen of Half Truth, Maria Goodlin

 I found this so appropriate to my story (although written so much more eloquently than I can), especially this month... the month of our 9th wedding anniversary. Thank you, Daryl, for encouraging me to become me!