List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

There’s good and bad to being a diagnosed hoarder. Ok, mostly not great, but there’s some good sides.

Before 2020 I was an avid reader. I’ve read every book on the shelves in the photo several times, from Narnia and Lord of the Rings through about 20 Max Lucado books, John Eldredge, six different translations of the Bible and all the pre-2020 Alex Cross series by James Patterson.

Spending 3 months in a coma in 2020 didn’t affect most of my higher functions, but my ability to concentrate was impaired – not great for someone with ADHD to begin with.

I’ve switched to “reading” through Audible, a very different experience, but one I’m relieved to say enables me to enjoy books again – albeit not as rewarding as the full tactile and olfactory experience of a bound volume.

At 53, picking 3 books of the hundreds I own that have impacted me isn’t easy. Not just because of my age, but because in some cases I’m not sure if the book or the person who introduced it to me is what created the impact.

So I’m going to go with these…

Anyone who has read anything I’ve written shouldn’t be surprised that the first on my list is actually a collection of 66 books written by over 40 writers over around 1500 years, in three languages – each with a different alphabet – on three continents. Not all the writers had access to all the other books contained, yet the collection contains 63,779 cross-referenced quotes internally.

Obviously (I hope) I’m referring to the Bible. And as to why, read some of my other posts.

My second book is also a collection. The CS Lewis Narnia series. The seven stories captured my imagination as a child and by the time I was 8 I’d read all of them. My son is six and loves them as much as I did, even reading them himself.

Narnia is one of those rare collections in literature that carries a different meaning each time you read it. As a child it was a simple story about a magical land. As a younger adult I revelled in the beauty of the allegorical weaving of the story, the parallels of the journeys each character travels with different people in the Bible and their journeys. Reading them with my son is a new experience again, and one which I’m delighted is helping the problems I’ve had for 5 years finally heal. Seeing him fall in love with the Pevensie children, Caspian, Bree and Shasta, and especially Reepicheep the mouse nearly fifty years after I did is a very special experience for me.

My final book is Bruce Wilkinson’s The Dream Giver. Part parable, part sermon it helps me see how the seasons of my life are part of a single story, not disjointed events of happenstance lost in time, and that nothing that happens is meaningless if I give the events to God and let Him show me the Truth through them.

Life is a funny experience. There are hundreds of other books that have hit me. Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, Six Hours One Friday by Max Lucado, the Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher and more than I can list.

That’s the advantage of hoarding books – I’ve got enough to keep me going another fifty years!

Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.

Where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good tilled earth…

I’m not sure if it’s in either Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, but the quote is certainly in the start of Peter Jackson’s movie Fellowship of the Ring.

I think I’d have been happy as a hobbit. Maybe not the pipeweed, but certainly I have a love of things that grow.

The past year has seen some major upheavals in my life. The loss of my wife, my son moving from Kindergarten to Grade School and by the end of this year (hopefully, although not planned) the sale of this house and a move to somewhere we can be debt free and start fresh.

Over the last few years I’ve been researching if I’d be able to make my joy into something more practical.

So now I’m looking for a smallholding – which in South Africa can be 40+ acres/20+ hectares – where I can, literally, put down roots.

There’s very little that brings me joy more than seeing something I’ve planted as seed growing and becoming fruit or vegetables I can put on my table. Admittedly 20 hectares is a tiny bit bigger than my garden with two tomato plants and a herb bed this year, but having looked at the pros and cons I’m optimistic about getting it off the ground.

It’ll also give me an opportunity to focus a bit on my writing and build a small retreat to host small-scale conferences aimed at refreshing church leaders – those men and women who give 52 weeks of the year and are often burned out by 50.

So I’m aiming to kill two birds with one stone. Produce more food than I need so I can sell it locally, including meat and eggs, and to provide a refuge for weary Shepherds to be refreshed.

For starters I just want the joy of working the earth. I’d like to use horses instead of diesel and do it at a slower pace than the insane tempo of the world.

Over the years I’ve only had two out of the last 35 when I’ve not had a small crop of tomatoes, peppers or other vine plants. And that was because I didn’t plant them.

It’s a simple pleasure, moving at the speed of the seasons instead of the speed of click.

Losing my leg in 2020 actually helped me focus on this passion. I couldn’t read the way I used to. But I could listen. So I listened to hours of lectures on farming, preservation without electricity, and a lot about how farms ran in the late 19th century. Worked with horses or traction engines powered by steam.

Growing food and talking about my Faith both bring me Joy. Simple, slow-paced joy that can’t be taken from me.

Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.

October 16th 2024 is a day that will be with me for the rest of my life. It was the end of my marriage.

My family.

The future we’d planned.

Rene had been in intense pain for over two years. In October 2023 it had reached a point where she stopped working to try to find answers and healing. She sold her medical practice – another far more complicated story I won’t get into here – and for a few months she rested. Physically she was getting stronger, but things are never that straightforward.

She took classes learning to sew, something she became passionate about and was developing a real gift for it.

But the pain still overshadowed her. By early September she was struggling both emotional and physical agony.

She’d seen 17 doctors in 14 months. Nobody had an answer. She’d found different issues including a tumour – benign, but agonising – in the nerve in her knee. But nothing to explain why she was falling frequently, her memory issues and anything else.

But the last was the hardest.

She went to sleep on 16th October in the afternoon and slipped away.

I’ve lost people I love before. My brother, four grandparents and my dad for starters. This is different. I wake up expecting her to be there. I fall asleep – eventually – missing the sound of her breathing beside me.

A marriage is a strange thing. It ends with heartbreak either way. Divorce or death.

The hardest things to say goodbye to are the things you don’t have a choice about.

Describe a family member.

It’s been a difficult couple of weeks.

Nine days ago, my beautiful wife died. There’s no sense in any language to describe the experience.

Over the last few years she’d been losing a battle with depression, but most people who met her had no idea. They also didn’t know how much physical pain she was in.

The thing is, her Faith kept her going. She never allowed anything she was going through to take it. Of course, she would ask “why?” when the storms hit.

But mostly, she was an amazing lady. She would give the clothes from her back to keep someone else warm. She’d taken food from her plate to feed the hungry.

Professionally, as a GP in the community she was someone who refused to just do the bare minimum. Consultations with emotionally hurt patients would take an hour because she knew they needed to be heard. I never heard anyone complain about having to wait because they knew she was going to give them the same love.

In our family life she lived the last six years for our son, Ethan. His happiness was the reason she got out of bed each day. The strength to fight to find an answer to the pain she was in was driven by her passion to be the best mother she could be.

I’ll never be blessed with anyone like Rene again. She was my Joy, my Love, my Soulmate. Truly my Helpmeet. She drove me mad making lists about everything. She will always be the One I Loved to the end.

When we marry, we don’t easily think about the vows. ‘Til Death parts us.

Now death has come. We celebrated 21 years of marriage last month, and next week I will have to say “goodbye” to her in Church.

The pain is indescribable.

I am left with the memory of the most amazing gift she could have ever given me. 21 years of shared love, laughter, pain, joy, sickness, health. A little more time “richer” would have been good, but we’re not promised everything, just asked to be faithful to each other. For 21 years I have known the most important thing of all. Love.

I don’t know what the next step is. Such a powerful person missing. We were supposed to have another 20+ years.

To my darling Wife, René Elise Lewin: I love you more than you knew. More than I could express. You gave me your heart and blessed me with your companionship for almost half my life. The intensity of your presence is matched only by the emptiness in your absence.

Sleep tight my darling.