Written from Heart to Heart

I always feel a little bit disconnected from people who tell me that they don't really like to read. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with this. I'm sure, say an excellent basketball player, doesn't really get me when I say that it just isn't a game that I have fun playing. It just isn't my sport. I definitely enjoy watching it and loved cheering for it, but the ball and hoop just aren't my friends when I'm the player shooting. So when someone tells me that reading just isn't something they enjoy doing, that's alright. I, however, can't quite connect with that feeling because reading DEFINITELY is my thing. Ever since I was little, I have had a love for books. I can recall my mom encouraging the inner reader in both my brother and me as she lovingly took us to the local library and let me sit in the bean bag chair while reading those books that had very little plot and depth but were very readable for young minds such as mine. As a few years passed, she continued to feed this hobby by agreeing to buy us books at the bookstore if we were reading them. What a mistake on her part. If she still kept that up today, we would have broken the piggy bank.

Sometimes I pick up a book and am challenged by it. Whether it be a difficult plot, characters so unlike myself, or written in an old time style unlike today's language, I may feel that I fight my way through the chapters as if I were in a wrestling match. Now and then I might give up on it and put it down. This past summer I read a book about teaching reading to children so that they can truly learn to love to read. It really spoke to me when the author suggested that we teach kids that it's ok to put a book down and move on to a new one. Every book isn't a good book, and every book is not for me. I like that thought.

Other times though, I pick up a book and feel that I'm reading a letter straight from the author that was written just for a heart like mine. Yesterday as I sat curled up reading little anecdotes by an author about experiences in her life, I found myself laughing, smiling, and almost in tears as I connected with the feelings and dreams that spilled onto the pages. I love reading when you can't help but feel that after spending time in the pages, you've just spent time with a dear friend. I won't say that every book or even the majority of books do this for me, but that's what makes the experience such a treasure. Now and then, I find in the pages of a book a little gift written from heart to heart. It's those moments that make reading my kind of thing.