A Books of Memories

After Piper and I purchased our home out here in North Carolina and moved in, I had high hopes and plans for the corner front room that we had decided to turn into our study.  The room belonged to the young son of the former owners and they had added some accents to the room that I liked and decided to keep.  The walls were a bright blue with white trim.  In one corner they painted on a blackboard so the boy could draw or write notes and the whole room seemed to come together with a bright multicolored fan light.

Since the long window in the room was framed in white, I added floor to ceiling white bookshelves on either side and then moved in my desk and file cabinets.  I decorated the walls with framed pictures of various ministry events, vacations Piper and I took, and of course my favorite 11X14 formal outdoor portrait I had taken of my fiancé two months before our wedding.  I also added a couple of my college diplomas, and various plaques we had received over the years from our service with different youth groups as-well-as our first-place plaque from a fun car rally we had participated in at college.  I was also able to display my fledgling camera collection of almost all the cameras I have owned since high school.

With the ever-expanding role that I had to take with Piper’s care though, I hardly ever got to spend much time in the room, except for a few opportunities when I brought Piper in and read to her during the cold winter months.  Since I had put our old leather loveseat in the room, it seemed to have a warm and cozy feel to it.  My ultimate plan was to move our TV from the living room into the study and upgrade to a 55” flat screen for the home entertainment system there.

Now that I am alone in the house (save for Fiver our Australian Shepherd mix), I have had more occasion to do things in the room.  Sometimes I just go in and sit quietly in the desk chair and stare at the walls as I reminisce about the special events in our lives that are represented by the pictures and plaques.  Yesterday morning I placed my laptop on the desk, plugged in the external speakers, sat on the couch and proceeded to participate in the live-stream service from our home church in Oklahoma.

While sitting there, I leaned over at one point during the sermon to grab one of my 50 plus Bible translations off the shelves next to me.  As I was deciding which one to use, my eyes fell upon two of Piper’s old Bibles.  The first was a 1974 paperback youth version of the new-at-the-time illustrated Living Bible entitled “The Way” given to her a year before we were married by one of the women’s circles at her Baptist Church.  That instantly brought back A LOT of good memories as it was the “hot” translation for us young people at the time!  I had gotten a copy for myself and the two of us practically NEVER left home without them!  I was surprised at what good shape Piper’s copy was in!  The last time I saw mine it was looking pretty worn out!

For a while there, it seemed like Piper’s Bible’s tended to have a rough life!  For years she liked to set her Bible down on the butcher block coffee table we bought with some financial gifts we had received from our wedding.  That table was one of our prized possessions (and one of the most expensive for many years!) and it still graces our living room today!  The only problem with her leaving the book on the table was that the first two Shelties we had LOVED to eat them!  One was totally destroyed while the new one purchased to replace it had the cover and a few pages chewed before Piper took the hint and stored her Bible on a higher location!

The book I found yesterday was the third one that replaced the chewed cover book!  I had bought her a smaller sized, blue NASB leather bond Bible sometime in the early 1990’s for Christmas but as it turns out, she wasn’t too happy with the color, so we exchanged it for the burgundy model that was on the shelf in the study.  This one wasn’t chewed over the years, but it does show A LOT of wear and tear from hours and hours of usage!   She had switched over to a King James Rhema Study Bible that we all purchased for her around 2001 and this Bible was delegated to special study times.

I enjoyed looking through the pages of the book while sitting there on the couch.  So much history!  She loved to underline favorite verses and write notes in the margins.  And while I always carried a note book with me when attending church services, Piper tended to use whatever she could find from the church bulletin, to scraps of paper in her purse or the back and front pages of her Bible… occasionally she would quietly lean over me and gently rip out a sheet of paper from my notebook and then give me that killer smile of hers.  What could I say, I could NEVER resist that smile!

Anyway… I think I am beginning to ramble.  One of the lessons I learned from looking through her Bibles though, was the love and respect we both have had for our personal Bibles.  They’ve always been like a good friend to us!  As I read her notations, it was like I was reading her!  Like I have said many times, the Word of God and Piper were intermixed so closely that when you looked at her you saw God’s Word speaking through her.

Psalm 119:9 seems to sum up Piper’s life to a tee when the Psalmist declared “How can a young person keep his life pure? He can do it by holding on to your word.” (God’s Word ©) That was my wife… full of life, full of God and full of Godly expectation that she freely passed on to others just by walking into the room!  That’s a part of her legacy that I want to continue!

Have a great week.  Remember to get out and vote here in the USA, and when you think about it, say with me: “I am expecting to let the life of God flow through me today!”