A Year Of Listening: Finding Myself In The Reading Room

With my husband’s parking pass, I spent a few hours on campus. I grabbed a coffee in my keep cup and headed across the brick-lined road to the library, where the security guard greeted me.

“Welcome to the library, where all your dreams come true,” this tall and kind African American man said.

I smiled and told him that I was there to return a book for my husband, but that I’d certainly be reading, too.

I quickly made my way to level three and found it: The William L. Matheson Reading Room.

When we first moved here, Travis brought me to this room, and the Rory Gilmore inside of me had to hold back her whoops of delight.

A room lined with periodicals, a room with a marble floor that every chair scoot bounces noise off of. Long tables with lamps, nooks with chairs.

I looked at a psychology magazine and wondered for a moment what it would be like to be in school again.

My four years of motherhood at home with the boys have been just what we all needed.

And as we continue the journey, I’m being called back, ushered into another world that will bleed into my mommy one.

The boys and I, we are students. We learn together every day, our curiosity overflowing into our little apartment home and our world– sometimes I think those walls can barely contain us.

A few weeks ago, God spoke something to me. It was something like, “Maybe what your boys need to see you doing is following me, as wild as it may turn out to be.”

And so I cried and said, “yes, yes, I know,” and we’ve kept praying and pressing in.

So for the next year or so, we are waiting.

We are processing and looking and examining, and our hope is that I can go to seminary while we’re living here.

We are seeking that we may find, and every day I am inviting the boys along with me– because this journey is ours.

So I sit in the reading room, and remember how He has wired me– to be the curious soul, the hard working student, the diligent learner. It is my joy.

So maybe in this next year of the wait, I’ll come back to this room when I can, and sit at this table and write and dream.

And because it’s quiet, and it’s not a bustling coffee shop or the comfort of my bed at home where I often read and write, it’s a new experience in listening.

At Wednesday night bible study a few weeks ago, our interim pastor Roger Paynter said, “We’re still a part of the story, you see?”

This is my story, and our story.

And it’ll be crazy, and we’ll take one step forward and two back, but they will be our steps, nonetheless.