Towards the beginning of the summer, during my 5 week break from fostering, I had more time on my hands. Emotions and feelings were on a pendulum: swinging from raw to muted and back again. I wanted to engage with things that helped me feel but also that in their own ways helped me grasp the bigger picture of the journey I was walking. Where I had been, where I was, and where I was going. Something that let me know the story wasn’t ending with me.

I began listening to one fictional story, Jayber Crow, that connected with something deep inside me. The further I read, when I came to the end I was left with an ache inside me for more. I could see the tensions in others of holding the combination of mixed emotions: hurt, tenderness, raw, numb, thankful, humored, guilty, exhausted, relieved, connected. I saw Jayber Crow learn to love through suffering and unmet desires. The Lord of the Rings put words and image to the struggles I was feeling, but also the reprieves I had been given that harkened to Rivendell. Even the friends in my life who are my own Samwise, Pip, and Merry. As healing and closure slowly worked upon me, I found my heart latching onto different pieces of the stories: the determined, persevering, adventurous, hopeful pieces. That cultivated the same in my own heart.

I have found, that truth works more readily upon our hearts when united with beauty. Authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Martin, and others use the creativity and dominion God bestowed us to capture the magnitude of the loveliness of truth. They set that truth in an other worldly story because, in reality, it’s not really of our world to begin with, is it? 

I have said much of my life that I rarely read fiction because there are too many amazing things that have happened in real life I can read about instead. While biographies, autobiographies, and other non-fiction work will still mark my reading, it will be balanced by books that make God’s truths even more fair as it resembles the pattern of the greatest Story, the greatest true story the world has know. 

I would encourage anyone but because of the place in life I find myself, especially foster parents, make time for this! Maybe you don’t have time to sit down and crack open a hard copy of Fellowship of the Rings (or whatever genre you prefer), but I am convinced that even if you have to listen on audiobook in the car between your kiddos appointments, maybe even with them, that it will encourage you. You just may find yourself being brought out of the world that so often can feel like you’re stuck with the walls closing in. God created us to enjoy, feel, and create. Our fallen world would seek to rob us of those good gifts.  So go pick up a book, or buy an audiobook and settle in for the adventure.

P.S. For those like minded and curious souls who wonder what the books were that I have been reading you can find the list from the last few months below. I would recommend every one of them, but my favorites are marked by an asterisk.

1. Jayber Crow
2. Crime and Punishment*
3. The Screwtape Letters
4. All of the Harry Potter Book Series *
5. The Lord of the Rings Series*
6. The Hobbit
7. Unwritten: A Novel 
8. Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery*