The date was January 6, 2022.

A new year.

A new season.

And I wanted a new life…or more accurately, a fresh revelation of the God purpose for this particular season of my life.

And I was desperately in need of a renewed grace to put action to understanding.

So I thought about the wisdom of the proverbs and decided to revive a lost passion: reading.

“The wise also will hear and increase in learning, and the person of understanding will acquire skill and attain to sound counsel [so that he may be able to steer his course rightly].

Proverbs 1:5 AMPC

I absolutely loved reading as a child.

The Nancy Drew mysteries lining my grandma’s bookshelf, pages yellowed from decades of use, fueled my interest in travel as the author described fascinating scenes of Eastern towns quite foreign to a young California girl. They also spurred my naturally inquisitive mind to think deeply as I read about the curious clues Nancy and her friends would discover on their adventures.

Summer was filled with reading as my brother and I hung around the library where my auntie worked, picking out stacks of books to check out so we could read them and add them to our lists for the summer reading program. I’m quite certain this fueled my secret competitive streak.

But as an adult, reading had become more demand than desire.

From the required textbooks of my undergraduate semesters to the “every good (wife, mom, woman, leader, Christian, etc) should read this” book list, somehow, reading had lost its allure…and it’s impact.

Of course, the fact I rarely completed a book just created a sense of frustration that further removed me from picking up another one. I confess that the number of books actually read in their entirety in my adult life is…embarrassing. But, I needed a change. And to change, I needed to learn. And to learn, I needed to read. So that’s what I set out to do.

So, January 6, 2022, I made a decision to read twenty-four books for the year. That might seem like a lofty goal for someone who couldn’t easily list a handful of completed titles but, I knew my ability and my passion could help me achieve it with the right reading list. Plus, a set goal is more likely to be achieved than a random desire.

As I thought about why I wanted to do this, fresh revelation and renewed grace, I felt a strong direction to read non-fiction. Specifically, non-fiction books that engaged my interests, passions and desires. I love fiction: it fuels the imagination, touches our God designed creativity and can even teach us through a well curated story but, for this goal, fiction would have to be left to the big screen. (Sorry to my fellow bibliophiles who feel the book is always better than the movie.)

The next step was to establish some ground rules which would not only help me fulfill my goal but serve as a guide to gauge my progress. Here are my simple rules:

• Pick any non-fiction book that piques my interest in the moment.
• Read only one book at a time (except my daily devotion and evening biography).
• Never start a new book until the previous one is read in its entirety.

And that was it: three simple rules.

I followed those little rules all year and on the last day of December I logged my annual devotional which brought my total books read to…thirty-six!

I read books that ignited spiritual fire like, “Why We Need the Gifts of the Holy Spirit” and “Revival Fire.” And books that expanded spiritual understanding like, “How God Sees Women” and “The Making of Biblical Womanhood.”

There were Christian classics that finally graduated from the ‘should read’ list like, “How to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit” and “Sit, Walk, Stand.” And inspirational books that I put on other people’s ‘should read’ lists like, “Find Your People” and “How to Listen So People Will Talk.”

There was lots of practical learning about things like friendship and connection, history, vlogging and writing and even how to be comfortable with small talk. But there were also a couple complete wastes of time that don’t even deserve mention.

Most important, there were life changing expressions of God’s Divine grace upon my soul through books like, “The Relational Soul” and “The Emotionally Healthy Woman.”

The Father is so patient with me, always meeting me right where I’m at but never leaving me there, and I am so thankful.

The fresh revelation and renewed grace that I needed when I began this journey was woven through a beautiful tapestry of inspiration, story and scripture given life in the pages of a book.

My heart is overflowing with a good theme;

I recite my composition concerning the King;

My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

Psalm 45:1 NKJV