For the past few years, I’ve shared the books I’ve read on Instagram. I save them in a highlight, occasionally offering commentary on the book or mentioning who it would most benefit. Often, I get comments on how much I read in response.

I remember a reading competition in elementary school (Did they combine reading with a competition? You know I was there.) that I won by reading over 100 books. It shocked people and I felt judged. Either it seemed they did not believe I had read the books or it was impossible that I could have read them or didn’t I simply have something better to do?

It’s entirely possible that the commenters meant nothing besides congratulations and a teeny bit of shock. But we pick up shame and wear it as an undergarment, hidden under other clothes, from a young age and that’s exactly what I did. I’ve always felt a teeny bit embarrassed at how much I read.

I do a good job shrugging it off now most of the time. I love to read. I read quickly. I choose to read over doing other things. This habit has been a great benefit for seminary which comes with a part-time job of reading.

I’ve talked about getting my nose pierced all year.  Actually-hold that-in spring of 2017 I went to a homeschool conference with a friend and we had a long conversation about my getting my nose pierced. Another friend and I tossed the idea around at the beginning of the year because she wanted to pierce her ear cartilage. But I let it drop even though I’ve wanted to do this for three or four years.

I hadn’t thought about it seriously in months. The day after Christmas I walked by the mirror while I was picking up the bedroom and “you should go pierce your nose” seemed to be written in all-caps on the mirror. I stood and stared at my reflection in the mirror and, for some reason, felt certain that if I did not go pierce my nose then, I would never do it. And if I never did it, it would start a trend of not doing things and I would have a long list of regrets when I was an eighty-year-old woman looking back at my life. I grabbed my friend and went two days later.

Sunday night I came home from church and started playing basketball with the boys. Justin had taken the two older boys to Kingsport with him the day before to drop off some furniture and pick up the goal, and I had kept the two smaller boys home (one was sick) and cleaned up the office stuff in the hallway. And the craft/homeschool/extra snacks/toys closet. And the boys’ dresser drawers.

Sunday afternoon was the earliest the goal was ready to use. They played out for a couple of hours and went back to it as soon as they piled out of the van after church. I grabbed a ball and joined in. I went in for a layup, watching the shot to see if I made it (I did, by the way), and landed with my foot mostly off the concrete pad. I went down fast and sat down on the base of the goal. 

I colored the pirate with a chunky blue crayon and rarely looked my friend in the face. I paid careful attention to the coloring sheet as if it mattered to the structure of my life, as if I weren’t sure that I could hold it together without the finished picture. I still ended up wiping away tears. 2016 has been the year that involved crying over a doctor at Toddler Time.

In January, we rolled off the ambulance after two and half hours and entered the children’s hospital through the back doors to the emergency room. It was not the way I planned to spend my weekend but nevertheless, at seven on a Friday night, I thanked the ambulance workers and took Micah down the hall to the bathroom. We rounded the corner and the ER doors burst open as Micah’s metabolic doctor came in. He took a long look at Micah and started asking questions, giving orders, and hunting down the nurse. That’s why we transferred to the children’s hospital.

As we were settling into our room the ER nurse commented how unusual that was: genetics never comes to the ER. I breathed a prayer of thanks for how, once again, Andrew had gone above anything I ever expected him to do.