My parents loved the Word and built our home on that foundation. The above picture is the two of them before they were married, holding their Bibles close. And that is how they lived the rest of their lives together. I mean, they LOVE it. My most common childhood memory of my mom is of her sitting on the couch every free moment she had reading her Bible. She had mapped out a schedule in her Bible with little numbers in the corner of the pages, (that to this day I still am not sure what the numbers meant) that would get her through cover to cover in three months, I think it was. My dad would sit the whole family down early in the morning before he left for work and read through with us a few chapters a day. He also put together a yearly reading schedule for us kids to use if we wanted, with little boxes for us to check off as we went. I loved that schedule and wish I still had a copy! My dad regularly engaged us kids in conversation about the Bible, what he was reading, and what we thought about certain words that were used and what the deeper meaning might be. He taught us to dig with excitement like we were on a treasure hunt, and we had in our hands the map.
Needless to say, I was hooked on that book from the moment I was given my very own Bible. It was a gray and silver, leather bound, giant print Bible. 😁 I am not and never was a big book reader like some of my other siblings, but I did regularly read my Bible. I believed in it and wanted to know it because it was my gateway to God. And that much I did know through my parents’ lives. So reading through the Bible, cover to cover, was a way of life for me that carried over into adulthood and never waned. In fact, when Josh and I lived in St Louis, we were a part of a small group that committed to reading through the Bible together every six months, using a different version each time. We made it through three versions.
And then I got pregnant.
After having my first child, the nice, organized, routine reading and, well, routine anything was out the window! I remember asking my mom after a few months of motherhood if a person can actually survive without regularly reading the Bible. She smiled at me and said that this is when I experience how abundant the grace of God really is.
THIRTEEN YEARS later, I have finally made it through the Bible in a year’s time again. We started with a schedule to read through the NT over the summer, starting June 1st and finishing Aug 30th. The schedule split up the gospels with the epistles and was small, doable chunks 7 days a week. Although we didn’t struggle much with it, we found it was hard to stay on schedule through the weekends. So for the OT, we used a 180 day schedule that allowed us to have the weekends off but still get through it during the school year and be done May 31st. Easy peasy!
While I will forever treasure the years of raising babies and “scraping by” with breadcrumbs along the way - because my mom was right: I experienced God during those years instead of just reading about Him - it feels so good to be back reading about Him! And it’s different now. Every page that I read is like I know what it’s talking about. The text is richer. I don’t even have to speculate what it might be saying, I hear it, I know what it’s saying! Such an amazing book, such an amazing God.
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