Another step…

I began this blog to share my journey through recovery after several health disasters. Little did I know how many aspects of life would become involved in this process. Recovery began with attention to self-care, migrated to reconditioning and exercise, and then moved into the area of “changing your lifestyle,” which is where I am at the moment.

Changing lifestyles began with food and intake. Needing to be healthy, I became aware of the unhealthiness of much of the food we were consuming. Over the months, we have drastically reduced the amount of sugar and salt we consume, as well as reducing the fat content of the food we eat. Changing lifestyle choices led us on to consider our future needs so far as dwelling space is concerned. That segued into the prospect of moving, and thus to ponder the type of community we would need in a few years. See what I mean? You never know where one concern is going to lead you!

The issue of moving at some point led us to reflect upon the possessions we would want to move, and this led us to…our book collection. We own…and shelve, several hundred books of all kinds – largely theological. The local Library won’t take them, and two Theological schools will only take what they want after we make a complete inventory of the books – author, title, publisher and date. Life is too short for that.

There was a large meeting of clergy at our church today, so we spread a pile of books out, with a “Free Books” sign. A good deal of tem went. I left, mostly because it was so painful for me to watch some of those “old friends” walk out the door with someone else. If I have to put the books in the recycling bin, that will be even more difficult.  It never occurred to me that I could become so attached to books. Many of them I have read, but haven’t looked at for more than a dozen years. Yet I feel their loss keenly. In some way, I define myself in terms of the books I own, and have read, even if I have forgotten much of what I read. I mark books when I read them, so that my underlining is like a trail of my attention to what is written. Weird, right?

Anyway, this process, part of recovering and “moving on” – as the world says – is very stressful. And it continues…