30 before 30 :: the books

I’ve always loved reading but, like many others, college reading and assignments forced me to stop reading for fun. I rediscovered reading in the latter part of my 20s, ironically, when I was working full-time and in grad school full-time. My job required too much of me, and grad school on top of that was depleting my humanness. I ached for time to myself, not having to worry about how 18-year-olds’ choices affected my sleep or how APA citations impacted my grades. 

I started reading again, sometimes waking up at 5:30am to get an hour in before I had to start on that paper or respond to that duty call. It was time just for me, before the rest of the world woke up and required something of me. I have vivid memories of sitting on my couch in my apartment on the 9th floor of Ondine Residence Hall, reading a book and watching the sun rise out my window.

Reading doesn’t feel like fun anymore, like just a hobby or a pastime. Reading has saved me from nights of loneliness, especially in this last year of the pandemic. It’s helped me witness lives outside of my own, pushing me to acknowledge my privilege and power and the shitty systems in our world. And every book, in some way, has stretched me to learn new things about myself. Books are crucial to my life, a requirement that allows me to show up better in the world. It sounds dramatic, but dang — it’s true. Just like I need a cup of coffee in the morning, I’m a better human when I make time to read.

The circumstances of my 20s were the perfect conditions for reading as much as I did: I was single for most of this decade and lived alone for most of it, too. I leaned into my introverted side and preferred Friday nights curled up on my couch with a book. I became a morning person and learned to wake up a few hours before work, with nothing to do except what I chose.

My reading habits will change in this next decade, I’m sure of it. I hope that one day, I have a partner whom I live with, who goads me to put down my book to watch his favorite movie for the fifth time or who whisks me off the couch on a Friday night. I hope that one day, I will have children running around my house who will steal away my morning peace, but give me the opportunity to reread the Junie B. Jones series.

Maybe this next decade will allow room for all of it. The quiet and the chaos, the solitude and the family, the time to read squeezed alongside the rest of life’s big, messy moments. I’ll hold onto both possibilities: grateful for the books I’ve read so far, hopeful that there will be many, many more. 

And so: here are the best books I’ve read in the last decade. Like choosing songs, narrowing these down was hard. If I’ve counted correctly, I’ve read over 330 books since 2011. I only know that fact because I’ve kept track of every book I’ve ever read in a Google Spreadsheet, which made it easy to remember and also reminded me that I’m a little bonkers.

Memoir:

1. Tiny Beautiful Things x Cheryl Strayed

2. Untamed x Glennon Doyle

3. Between the World and Me x Ta-Nehisi Coates

4. Gift from the Sea x Anne Morrow Lindbergh

5. When Breath Becomes Air x Paul Kalinithi

6. The Bright Hour x Nina Riggs

7. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone x Lori Gottlieb

8. How We Fight for Our Lives x Saeed Jones

9. On Writing x Stephen King

Nonfiction:

1. Love Wins x Rob Bell

2. Bird by Bird x Anne Lamott

3. The Crossroads of Should and Must x Elle Luna

4. Attached x Amir Levine & Rachel Miller

5. Daring Greatly x Brené Brown

6. The Road Back to You x Ian Cron & Suzanne Stabile

7. Missoula x Jon Krakauer

8. Eaarth x Bill McKibben

9. Bad Feminist x Roxane Gay

Fiction:

1. The Poisonwood Bible x Barbara Kingsolver

2. Americanah x Chimamanda Adichie

3. The Round House x Louise Erdrich

4. All the Light We Cannot See x Anthony Doerr

5. Gilead x Marilynne Robinson

6. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine x Gail Honeyman

7. Where the Crawdads Sing x Delia Owens

8. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue x V.E. Schwab

Poetry:

1. Devotions x Mary Oliver

2. Milk and Honey x Rupi Kaur

3. Citizen x Claudia Rankine

4. Good Bones x Maggie Smith

i need help.

I wanted this post to be published this past weekend and I wanted it to be about something else entirely. I don’t know exactly what it would have been about; maybe about what it’s been like to be single for the last two-and-a-half years or about why we feel that spark with this someone and not that someone or how every day should be Valentine’s Day with yourself. I didn’t have it written or planned because I had arranged my week so I could plan and write it then.

But sometimes the arrangements we make in our new, mostly blank paper planners aren’t what actually happens in life. Last Tuesday night, I came down with The Plague. (Think of every symptom of the flu there is and multiply it by five and I’ve had it for the last seven days.) I’ve spent my last days in hibernation. Without much energy or focus or the ability to be fully present with anything, I’ve done a lot of napping, binge watching ‘Friends,’ and cuddling the cute pup I’m sitting for all week. I haven’t been eating, reading, working, or — as I wanted to — writing a blog post related to Valentine’s Day. I had to miss tea dates with friends, important Leaven meetings, and a huge event at work that I was supposed to supervise. The Plague put my life on hold.

But even though I wasn't able to follow through on my responsibilities (or move far from the couch), things still needed to get done. I needed to put some calories in my body. I needed to take this 6-month-old, energetic dog for a walk every day. I needed 40 college students to be supervised as they sold cotton candy around campus all weekend. The rest of the world—even my world—wasn’t stopping just because I was. I needed things to get done without actually being the one to do them.

I needed to ask for help.

Even writing that sentence makes me cringe. I needed to ask for help. I hate that phrase, and specifically that word—“help”—more than most. I have always equated “needing help” with being incapable, incompetent, or inferior. I have nailed the cycle of agreeing to do something I know I actually shouldn’t agree to do, doing it without asking for help from anyone, and repeating this cycle with high frequency even though at the end of each one I tell myself, “Never again.” But then there’s the part of me that feels weirdly proud when I’ve gone “above and beyond” (although, behind the scenes, I’ve worked on a Sunday night, stayed up until 2:00 am, or sacrificed time to practice a little self-care and Sabbath); I feel like I’ve won a contest that I shouldn’t have signed up to compete in at all. I’ve always prided myself on being able to do it on my own, to take on that extra task, to put in the extra effort—and to do it all without any complaints. By not asking for help, I prove to the world that I am a capable, competent, and superior being. That I am, in fact, SuperHuman. That I can, and will, do it all, thank you very much.

But with my nose running and my head throbbing and my body shaking, I let go of that high-pitched, self-assured voice that lives in my brain and says, “I can, and will, do it all, thank you very much.” I knew that I couldn’t, at least not this week. If I had tried, I would have half-assed everything, including my recovery, which would have probably restarted the cycle of The Plague and left me utterly hopeless in all parts of life for an additional week. Anne Lamott, my spiritual director from afar, writes all about this in her book Help Thanks Wow. She says:

“When we think we can do it all ourselves—fix, save, buy, or date a nice solution—it’s hopeless. We're going to screw things up. We're going to get our tentacles wrapped around things and squirt our squiddy ink all over, so that there is even less visibility, and then we're going to squeeze the very life out of everything.” 

I didn’t want that. Even in my stubbornness of not wanting to ask for help, I still wanted things to be done—and done well. So instead of trying to half-ass my life for the week, I gave up and delegated parts of it. I asked for help.

Can you bring me over a Jimmy John’s sub sandwich, because it’s the only food that sounds appetizing to me right now? I can’t go get it myself, and I need help.

Can you stop over and take the dog for a walk and feed her lunch so I can go to the walk-in clinic? I can’t do it, and need help.

Can you supervise a huge, three-day work event in my absence? I can’t be there, and I need help.

Those were hard texts to send. But after pressing send, after seeing they were delivered, after waiting for those three little dots to stop typing, each text was met with the warmest, kindest, grace-iest response:

Yes.

Yes, I will bring you over a sandwich. And I will get your sandwich order correct without even asking you what it is and I will bring you two drinks to choose from and also a chocolate chip cookie for dessert or for breakfast tomorrow. Yes, I can help you.

Yes, I will take care of the dog. And I will bring you some pretty flowers, some delicious tea, and some kind words to help you heal. And I can come back tomorrow, too. Yes, I can help you.

Yes, I can make sure that tables are set and volunteers are there and money is counted in your absence and I can even let you know how it’s going if you’d like that. Yes, I can help you.

There it was. The words I was the most scared of sharing because I was worried that people wouldn’t want to help, that people would think less of me for needing help—those were the same words that elicited responses and actions and words of love. They were Jimmy John’s subs and vases of pink flowers and successful fundraisers. They were encouragement and support I didn’t know I needed until I asked, and they were encouragement and support I wouldn’t have received unless I asked.

There were plenty of other things that I could have, and probably should have, asked for help with this week. I’m learning the balance of what I can do alone, what I should do alone, and what I don’t have to do alone even though I can. 

So while this isn’t a Valentine’s Day post, it kind of is. Asking for help can be vulnerable and hard and downright scary when we live in a world that says that doing so makes us weak, inferior, and second-rate. But asking for help can lift us up; when we ask those we love, and who love us, to carry some of our weight when we cannot, we enter into a relationship that allows both parties to feel a sort of trusting, quiet love. A long-lasting, sturdy love. A I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine-too kind of love.

And is there a better kind of love than that?

gratitude is hard.

"But grace can be the experience of a second wind; when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on."
-Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow

"I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.
Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever."
-Excerpts of Psalm 30, NRSV

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It started when I gave up chocolate for Lent.

It was my sophomore year of college, and 19-year-old me didn't think that Jesus cared too much about my abstention from Snickers or cupcakes. But I liked the idea of doing something that marked the season of lament and silence. Of looking through the world, and my life, through a different lens. I wanted to do something that showed God's love, especially to those about whom I cared so deeply - friends, family, mentors, past connections. So, after a purchase of some cute notecards on sale from Target, I decided to add something to my Lenten practice: letters.

Letters of thanks.

For 40 days, I removed myself from the typical millennial method of communicating and physically scripted letters of gratitude to the people and world around me. Sometimes I’d write as soon as I woke up in the morning, excited to remind my grandmother just how much her constant reminders of love lifted me up. Sometimes I’d write before I went to sleep, the last thoughts of my day a written prayer to my 10th grade English teacher, who inspired and mentored me to read books that challenged my perspectives.

The first year was easy. My expressions of gratitude were nice and neat. I wrote to friends who loved me, teachers who supported me, family who believed in me. The next few years were a bit harder. Have you ever written a thank you letter to the sun? How do you tell the the Earth beneath your feet, “Thank you for being there"? Can I ever fully express my love and appreciation and utter amazement for the woman who raised me on her own, my mother?

But then, this year. I felt the lament and pain in the world in a much deeper way than I had before. I wondered and often doubted how I would express gratitude every single day. There seemed to be more things that I grappled with and debated being thankful for than what I actually was grateful for. So, I called on that.

I wrote to my absent father. I wrote to the Church that caused (and sometimes still causes) me confusion. I wrote to myself. Not letters of anger or blame or revenge. Letters of gratitude.

Gratitude isn’t always easy. It isn't always nice and neat. Sometimes, the only way to encounter gratitude is to cry out, "Help!" and accept God’s healing—in whatever way that shows up—and to try to be thankful for what appears. 

Gratitude is hard. It is messy. But it is there.

These letters forced me to call upon grace. The last thing I wanted to do was write, “Thank you, Dad, for giving me life. Thank you, Church, for opening a space of questioning and discovery. Thank you, me, for being.” But those were the prayers of gratitude I needed to speak and share. They were my reality; they were my life. Like it or not, I was able to find something in the muck that caused me to say, "Thanks." It might have been buried deep down under great lament, and it might have required a little imagination, but it was there.

I had found my second wind. 

God doesn’t always answer our desires to express gratitude in the way we want. Sometimes God uses our cries for help as opportunities for unexpected gratitude. To channel the stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on. The weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. God turns our mourning into dancing. Maybe not in the way we expect, but in a way that only God can.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.