Unexpected

Have you ever read a book that wrecked you in an unexpected way?

Some books, you see it coming. You’re reading about the holocaust, you know you’re going to end up in tears. But what I’m talking about here is a book that should be light and easy, maybe even a children’s book, and before you know it, you’re sitting there with tears streaming down your face, unable to read aloud another word from the bunny book your child brought home from the library, because something deeply hidden in your heart just had light thrown on it.

This happened to me years ago when Tiny was actually tiny (well, minus his baby jowls) and we were ramping up for another deployment. Admittedly, I was probably still hormonal and deployments are, in and of themselves, emotional, but I remember—vividly—sitting on our worn brown loveseat with Littles snuggled up beside me, surprised by tears choking my throat as I tried to read Charlotte Zolotow’s If You Listen. I’d picked it because there was a train on the front. I hadn’t expected it to reach straight to my heart and tug hard on the strings of mother-guilt, grief, and loneliness that were woven through it.

I had a similar experience last week with Twinkle and The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward. I was reading out loud and then I was crying. Well, to be honest, I was doing that thing where you pretend you aren’t crying because you don’t want your child to be worried for your sanity. But that one moment where the Easter Bunny commends the little country bunny for her wisdom in caring for her many children and sees her mothering experience as positive when it came to pursuing her dreams instead of a disadvantage…wow, it got me in an unexpected way, resonating in the part of me that struggles to juggle the full heart of motherhood with the celebration of the talents God has given me.

Then, barely a day later, I was finishing up Allie Brosh’s new book Solutions and Other Problems on the back porch when I made the neighbors nervous with my hysterical laughter followed by wrenching sobs. I expected tears when she wrote about her sister’s death (and I got them), but I thought the rest of the book, especially the interludes dealing with her pets, would be safe sailing. Then, in the middle of a story about Brosh’s dog, whose liver problems had people constantly asking when the puppies were due, a single line got me: “No, sorry…the reason she looks like that is because she is dying.” And without warning, I was back in Monterey, my stomach swollen with a pregnancy that would never produce a baby, fielding well-intentioned questions while my heart was breaking. It took one second to go from laughter to tears…and then Brosh took me right back to laughter again, but my heart felt tender for days.

This is why we read, friends. Not so we can hydrate our faces with tears, but because sometimes we need our hearts to remember that we are not just what we do. We are also who we are, who we will be, what we’ve thought, what we’ve felt, and all the hopes we cram into the crevices.

When we go through our days on autopilot, folding clothes, washing dishes, sending emails, etc., etc., etc., it’s easy to forget the state of our hearts. Sometimes we need a shock to the system that only comes through the written word and some unanticipated tears. It shakes us free for the moment so we can come back to our reality a little softer, a little gentler, a little stronger.

And that’s never a bad thing.