the Shredding

To my reader,

     Never would I have thought I would rip a book to pieces.  Yet, on Wednesday the 17th, I found myself doing just that.
     I won't share the name of the book, lest some zealous fan come at me with a carving knife intending to shred me.  I wouldn't be surprised if the thought crossed their mind if they knew the name of the book.  It has been acclaimed as a "modern classic."  All I read was an amoral novel about sex, drugs, and a kid who has no boundaries and parents that are metaphorically blind as moles.
     Despite my distaste for the book, when Mom asked me to help clean out the garage and I found it in a pile of other books to be sold, I felt torn.  It was not a matter of "to keep or not to keep."  Rather, it was "to sell or to destroy."
     The idea of ravaging the book wasn't new to me.  I had been debating with myself for months.  I wanted my money back because it had been such a disappointment, but I didn't want anyone else reading it.  Yet, the thought of burying, burning, or shredding a book, no matter how disgusting to me, was horrifying.  The smell of paper and ink; dark, beautiful letters against a blank background; the binding that holds the pages together; these wonderful things demolished is a tragedy.
     Still the stirring to destroy what was wrong urged on.
     I grabbed the book and paced about the garage with it.
     I stopped and stared at it, the ugly paperback cover in one hand, the body in the other.  I shut my eyes.  Muttering, "Just do it, just do it!" I tore off the front.
     I never thought I could feel freedom in such an act.  I separated myself from sin, and relief was the reward.  I forsook my greed and made sure no one else would be bound to the book.
     Three or four pages at a time, I tore the whole of it into quarters.
     The remains sit in the recycling bin, waiting to be taken with the company it belongs in: the trash.

"What shall we say, then? 

Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 

By no means! 

We died to sin; 

how can we live in it any longer?" 

Romans 6 : 1&2 

Alive in Christ,

Janelle