Month: December 2013

For Advent this year we are reading a book by Ann Voskamp, The Greatest Gift, and while I love her concepts, I don’t always enjoy her writing style. Her phrases are poetic and flowery and at times she dismisses traditional grammar rules and just goes with the flow: “So the whirl can hush and the spin can slow because He will bless, and He will bless with Himself come down.” So, yeah. Opposite of how I would write.

I knew her style going into it from a slog through a previous book, but decided it was worth it because she has gems like, “The present is His presence, and the greatest present you always have to give is His presence — looking into someone’s eyes as you listen, refusing the wrong of rushing, lingering long enough to really listen  — to everything. ” Or this one: “Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.”

Trust me, it’s even better in context. So I compromise and read her book aloud to the kids at night, but I paraphrase and sum up the bits where I think the boys will get lost in the words and miss the point or when I don’t feel like saying 20 words when it could be said in 5. Kind of like reading The Message instead of the King James Version.

Anyway, it’s been a good read for us and to her credit, I haven’t had to do nearly as much “smoothing over” as I thought I would. And if you like that style, you will love both of her books (especially 1000 Gifts).

Tonight’s reading was about being a blessing and how we have to accept God’s gift and let him fill us before we are able to give it to others. One of the ways I see it happening in my own family is with my two older boys who help out with the children’s Bible club after school one day a week. They help walk the kids over from school to base (I’m not usually there, but I happened to be there today) and assist where needed.

I read The Hunger Games before they were a thing, before talk of making a movie, before all the JLaw hype. Before Team Peeta vs. Team Gale. When talk of “the reaping” meant you were probably falling asleep in history class, listening to a lecture on farming. It was the first book I ever purchased for my brand new Kindle, a very thoughtful “I’m sorry you were evacuated” present from my father in law. Upon arrival, the enclosed note said we would be able to take all of our books all over the world with us, and not have to leave any behind. True and funny.

I bought the book on a whim because I needed something to read during a long car ride and one of my Facebook friends who has never steered me wrong with books (she told me to read The Help before it was a thing too) mentioned that she had just finished the third book in this trilogy after waiting forever for it to be released. We got in the car, I turned on my Kindle and started reading and at the end of the first chapter I looked up and said to Josh, “I’m going to read this out loud to you while you drive.” And then I started over at the beginning. And read for the next 6 hours.

I probably found it at just the right time in my life, because the story of the oppressed districts rising up against the wealthy Capitol rulers and fighting for freedom hit all of my “wishing I was back in Egypt witnessing history firsthand” buttons and I could feel the struggle, feel the angst, feel the pain of everything getting worse and losing hope that things could be better in the future and this fantasy/futuristic novel felt more authentic than anything I had read in a long time.

Now 3 years later, we’re living in Bahrain and I just took the boys to see the second movie, Catching Fire. My favorite book of the 3, I think. Josh leaned over in the middle of the movie, the scene where Katniss and Peeta are on the train for the tour and they enter District 11 with all the graffiti and police in riot gear and he whispered, “It’s like Bahrain.” And then I realized we live in the Capitol.  My freedom and justice loving self is one of the well-fed ridiculous capitol peeps that is totally oblivious to the suffering going on around them.

We are groomed to be part of the capitol. We are restricted from traveling to the villages/districts, we are told the lies that they are dangerous, that we need to stay in the capitol to be safe. We see a puff of smoke here or there and cops in riot gear if we venture out to the edges of our zone, but for the most part, we are shielded from it all. We buy our $5 cappuccinos and wave off the raggedy car washers because they’re always asking for money and it’s an irritating disruption to our otherwise happy lives. Meanwhile, in the districts, people are living in graffiti covered burned out neighborhoods and every night the molotov cocktails fly and the riot police come in with their beat sticks and rubber bullets and sometimes kids die, but that’s what happens when you fight back against the capitol.

And there is nothing I can do about it.