Home Sweet Library

Once upon a time, some brilliant person decided that there should be large collections of books available for people who want happiness in their lives. Spoiler alert: it was probably Ashurbanipal back in the 7th century BC.

Since then, if you are smart, you too have created a small (or large) library of your own—even if you have to pack up all those books into all those boxes and have all those movers cursing the day you graduated from sounding out words like a battery-deprived robot and became someone with the ability to disappear into the written word and not come out again until your oldest child decides to just go ahead and cook dinner.

If you are even smarter, you have found a public library at every place you have moved so that your husband can stop trying to talk you into just doing the whole kindle thing or, you know, not blowing your entire budget on books every month.

If you are smart but have a book addiction problem (who? me?), you will drag your personal library from coast to coast and back again, and still hit up whatever public libraries you can find while you wait for your household goods to arrive. And here’s why.

Libraries are magical places.

It’s true.

Even the tiny preschool library where I once had a short stint as a librarian, where I found a dead mouse squished behind the bookshelves, where half the books were demolished and cheap, even then, that library had the potential for magic. There were miracles hiding in between the pages, waiting to leap out and transform worlds.

You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.

Libraries are magical places because they hold infinite possibilities: stories, facts, instruction, encouragement, myths, entertainment, knowledge, plot twists, surprises—all these things and more—at the flick of your library card.

And here’s the thing: Libraries hold more than just books. (“Just books”—as if that’s all they are.) They hold librarians. And librarians are receptacles of knowledge.

Need to know what fun events are going on in the community? Ask a librarian. Need to find a music teacher or a sports program? Ask a librarian. Need to make an instant friend? Ask a librarian (and then bring them cookies—that always wins them over—that and giant stacks of books getting checked out and returned every few days).

And if the benefit of an incredible librarian isn’t enough of a selling point for you, please remember that libraries are one of the few places where you can go and sit and be quiet, where you can learn and grow and stretch your mind, where you can just be happy (or sad)—and no one is trying to sell you anything and no one is trying to make you move it along and no one is going to force you to talk if you’re not ready to talk.

There is no dress code for a library—you don’t have to show up with your hair done or your make up on. There is no judgement in a library—you can browse the YA section without feeling like you have to make up an excuse for yourself. There is no social standing in a library—no one cares who you are, what you do, who your family is.

You are a reader. That is enough.

In fact, sometimes when I’m in a library, feeling totally at home, safe and accepted, sometimes I feel that libraries reflect a little more clearly what our churches could and should be (and sometimes actually are): places of safety, places of knowledge and growth and quiet, places where we can show up wholly ourselves and not have anyone trying to sell us anything, places of community and connection. Somehow, it’s still easier to find a library and take it for what it is (even if it doesn’t have the selection of books that I wish it had) than to find a church and take it for what it is. But that’s taking this post farther than it’s meant to go.

Because this started as an ode to libraries, a moment to pause and remember just how wonderful they are, and to take you along with me for the ride.

Before you leave, though, I want to tell you the secret behind my deep and unforgettable love for public libraries: I didn’t grow up with one. Thank goodness, I had wonderful school libraries, but public libraries weren’t a thing in Indonesia, and so I appreciate them even more having experienced fourteen years (give or take a couple statesides) of relying on school libraries and bumming off of friends who let you borrow their books (except for me—no one let me borrow any books because my sister told them all about that one time I forgot her book wasn’t mine and I put a purple glittery Marian sticker in the front).

So if you live somewhere where you have access to a public library, do yourself a favor: get in the car and go. Or if you’re really lucky, walk on over. Then, stroll through the stacks. Let your eyes take in book after book after book. Find one that looks friendly and take it home to read in bed with a cup of tea once the kids are asleep. When you return it, after staying up too late to find out what happened, take a moment to talk to the librarian. Ask them if there are any other books they’d recommend. Take them a couple muffins you baked that morning or a cup of coffee you bought on the way there.

And enjoy the fact that for an hour or so you can be in a place that feels like home, that doesn’t require you to cook or clean or fold laundry or have it together but instead lets you step into other worlds and back again with the turn of a page.

Because finding a place that feels like home, a place that doesn’t require anything of you (other than to return your library books on time), that’s a pretty magical thing.