Practically the Insulation

Jeff Miller, A dear friend of mine once wrote, "Words are my medicine. My cure. And my curse. And if they have taught me anything it is to tell the truth." I wrote that sentence out and kept it. It was true.

In Mama's eyes reading was non negotiable. Among Papa's passions words had a constant home. In the house, there were too many books to fit neatly in the bookcases, and in the Reading Cottage, books practically functioned as the insulation.

Both of my parents were reading tutors. When I was six, Papa built a small, rustic cabin near the house for Mama to teach in, and they named it the Reading Cottage. It was just big enough for two small offices, one Mama's and the other Papa's, and a main room the size of both offices combined, and ladder rose up to a loft over the offices. At the edge of the loft, Papa placed poles of rebar to keep children from falling out, however, when he finished, Mama said the black poles wouldn't do; they made the loft look too much like a jail cell. So, Papa found a pale bluish-green paint and changed that right away. The loft still resembled a jail somewhat, but Mama approved and we children loved it.

The books in the Reading Cottage were organized according to topic. The art and math books had their home on the left of the south wall, while the history books lived on the right portion of the south wall. Most of the books on the western wall were religious books, but the eastern wall was home to the miscellaneous story books. All of the flower books and bird books were kept with Papa's books in his office, and behind the whiteboard on the big wall was the home for the complete collection of National Geographic's; Papa had inherited them from his grandpa and he kept the legacy going.

Stories. Words. Books. History. Every flat surface was covered with their influence. When my brother and I were little, both Mama and Papa often read to us. As we grew, reading became something we would do by ourselves, but Mama never stopped sitting us down to snuggle while she read a well-written children's book. As a wee one, I remember Robert Lewis Stevenson and A. A. Milne the most, but as time accumulated C. S. Lewis, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and J. R. R. Tolkien began to find their place among the top selections.

Mama encouraged us to read a lot of true stories, so she bought the full set of both of the YWAM (Youth With a Mission) biography series - Heroes of History and Christian Heroes Then and Now. I loved those books, until I began to realize each one was written in the same style. The first chapter began with a snapshot of the hero/heroine during the climax of the story, and the second chapter went back to their childhoods. This style didn't bother me for the first several books, but after a while the predictability began to irritate me.

When I discovered C. S. Lewis my love for words and sentences and argument matured. The styles Lewis used in his books fascinated and delighted me. My appreciation began with The Chronicles of Narnia, but once I discovered The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, and Till We Have Faces I was enthralled by that land of particular words, rich sentences, and powerful argument. Learning to wield my words became a sport for me, nearly as exciting as jousting would have been to a medieval knight. My commonplace book became my dear possessions, and the pages began to fill with colorful words transcribed in colorful in. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.” I took it as a challenge to follow that motto, even if it would take the whole of my life to learn.

Up till now, it has taken the whole of my life to learn how to handle my words with correct precision, and I've only scratched the surface. May each day from here forward, remind me to dig a little deeper, a little more thoroughly, and little more joyfully into the foundation of what it is to love words.