Reading my mind

Except for Sherlock and Downton Abby, I don't see the TV - and I know I'm not missing much. Jeff watches movies with the kids on the weekends and I read. Although, I admit, I find myself pulled in by a good movie or by The Brady Bunch or some other 70s TV show that the kids watch (because they don't want regular TV either). But, for the most part, I am with book in hand for entertainment and refueling. And, the great thing about HK is that I am constantly in a taxi or a bus, and I can read in both for long periods of time because it takes so long to get anywhere!

Recently, I came to realize how many times I have finished a book I didn't like or have finished a book I found was somewhat opposing to my own views. Every author needs a chance all the way to the end; and I often find a nugget of something I like. 

More than anything, I find many of the authors I read arrange words and thoughts in such a way that express my very own words and thoughts. Often enough, I read and think to myself, "Yes, that's exactly what has been swimming around in my brain, but I couldn't put it into words." 

I am thankful for the words on the pages and for the organizing of my thoughts by someone unknown to me. I am thankful God gifted people to do this because I feel - once the my thoughts are organized by this stranger who will never know me - as if I wrote the pages myself, listing the thoughts before the action.  Whereas these authors are living the action and then recording the thoughts. It doesn't matter to me the order. 

 Recently, I finished these three books, Love Does, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and Moment Maker (I also finished a couple of great novels, but those don't make my point as well, although I do often find the same thing happens in novels).  All three of these books are essentially about the same thing - living a good story.  They are living the stories (have lived the stories) and they are listing those stories on paper for people like me. I don't want to live their stories any more than these authors want me, or anyone else, to live their stories. But the authors seem to know they are the mouthpiece for so many, the vision that someone needed to see in order to move forward on a life story that is just waiting in the wings for them to take up and call his own.

I sadly read a review of Bob Goff's book, Love Does, and the reviewer stated, "I could do those things if I had his money." Those comments make me sad. It's not the money. Yes, it makes some of his stories extraordinary, but it's not the money.  I wanted to guide that reviewer to the story of Goff in his early years of marriage when he bought land on the water and couldn't afford a boat and a house, so he bought the boat and his family lived in tents for two years until they could afford the house (he didn't tell that story in his book).