So Book War readers I gotta tell you…whew!
January was hard.
I did get through it… barely…without buying a book, but it was real touch and go there for the last couple of days leading into February.
So here’s the story…
Every year a group of women from seminary, affectionately called the Irreverent Revs, get together for a retreat. This year we decided to focus our retreat around the Enneagram (if you don’t know what this is, I caution you on googling it as it may lead you down a rabbit hole from which there is no escape….ever).
So away I go to find us a leader for this portion of our retreat and as I am thinking through what I am going to chat with our potential leader about, I begin looking for the book The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery. Within a couple of minutes I find myself scouring the house for this book. I am SURE it is here. I bought it in North Carolina during the Why Christian Conference. I’ve seen it, I’ve used it during a few conversations. I know I have this book…
It is nowhere…I mean nowhere to be found.
So I don’t panic. I loan out books all the time. Usually I remember who has them, but every once in a while I will forget so I think who could I have loaned this book out to? One of the Irreverent Revs, of course! So I send them a message asking if any of them had borrowed it. Heard from them all “nope.” Okay, so I scour my office shelves, behind my books on the shelves and the closet. Nothing.
So I come home and chat with Leonel about it and he says what about your family? Would they have borrowed it? At this point, I don’t think so, but hey, it’s worth a shot. So I email my dad, brother and sister (the only one’s who would have potentially borrowed this book) and they all reply within 24 hours, “nope” they don’t have it either, though my sister remembers I had it while I was visiting her…if that helps.
Now let me explain something. None of this might seem odd or out of character, but at this point I have spent probably 5 days trying to hunt down this book. Normally after not finding it in the first day, I would have just bought a new book. No big deal. No fuss, no muss. Seriously, a 5 minute problem with a simple solution has now led me on a 5 DAY chase, because I can’t BUY BOOKS in 2019!!! This particular “reading resolution” is making me crazy. My normal response to such a situation has been eliminated and my anxiety is ramping up.
What was I going to do? My sister-in-law said I could borrow her copy, but I like to write in my books, particularly this type of book. I could check it out from the library but that comes with the same problem, plus I can’t keep it till our retreat in April. I could try to buy it again by saying it was “required” for work? But honestly, it’s not required. Or I could surrender and do the honorable thing and purchase it with one of my precious Barnes and Noble gift cards because it was a book for me.
Well on the sixth day of agonizing and realizing I needed to make a decision, Leonel moseyed on in with the boys from school and I’m once again regaling him with the latest update on my book hunt, about how I’ve looked high and low, in every bag I’ve traveled with, everywhere and he says, “oh is it this book?” And I’m a little confused as he places on the kitchen counter THE BOOK!
Leonel.
Leonel had it the whole time. I had given it to him to read in 2018 and he had dutifully taken it, put it in his truck…never to touch it again…sigh…
But hey! He found it and he brought it home and I did not have to break or cheat my resolution, nor concede my B&N gift cards, so all is forgiven 🙂
40 days and counting people….40 days and counting…
It’s going to be a long 2019 🙁
Happy Reading Everyone!