Inlets

Writing is an outlet. No clanging bells or dramatic light shows are likely to accompany that statement. But in the last twenty-four hours I've spent a lot of quality time purging bookshelves, and it has caused me to relive my entire adult life. If you are not a reader of books you may not get it, but I experienced something akin to an epiphany today as I realized that books have been the channels through which the shape of my whole life has been formed. They are my inlets.

Through books on marriage I have been presented with truths that have shaped my thinking and my decisions and my behavior in the most important human relationship I will ever have. Through books on parenting I have been exposed to principles and creative ideas that have guided me mostly unscathed through the minefield of childrearing. Books on knowing God and living out my relationship with Jesus have enlightened me, instructed me, encouraged me, excited me, convicted me, and challenged me. Books on educating children who are gifted, children who are resistant, children who have special needs, children who love to learn, children who do everything in their power to sabotage your efforts - well, as I wrote in my last blog, I made it to the finish line where retirement awaited, thanks in large part to the wisdom gleaned from these books.

Of course, the deepest and widest and purest of all inlets has been God's Word, and the truths that flow on the currents of that Living Water will always have the most immediate, profound, and lasting effects because they go straight to the spiritual veins. But as I handled hundreds of books with my life history clinging to them along with prodigious amounts of dust, I realized that there is no way to humanly sort out what parts of me came from where. The inlets run into each other. Their waters mingle together and morph into brand new life-giving substances as they wash through the unique qualities of who I am and the life I have been given to live.

If the inlets are the feeders of my soul, then I am reminded to choose carefully where I paddle. Evidence of pollution is all the sign I need to stay out. I am what I read.