I have a completely different approach to bookstores now that I’m a wife and a mother. It’s not just that I have less time to read. For years I’ve primarily “read” audio books, but I still loved spending hours in bookstores looking for ideas, plotting life changes and dreaming about adventures.
I was a single person for a lot longer than most people. At age 35, I was still very single and for a majority of those 35 years I wasn’t even in a consuming relationship. When I walked into a book store I was drawn by a magnetic force to books about travel, changing jobs, going back to school, and learning a new language. Perhaps it isn’t too surprising that my courtship involved a lot of travel and learning a new language, and shortly after marriage I started a new job.
But now, I guess, I’m here. I’d rather look at this baby than any of these books or even magazines. I did wander around looking for a house organizing book, but didn’t find one and ended up just sitting on a bench without anything in my hands just watching the baby. Now my book choices are about the child I have, not the child I’m dreaming for and the house I have, not the foreign destination where I imagine moving.
Sure, I have dreams for our future, but I’m living my life in the present, not living vicariously through the adventures of others. My very favorite books used to be memoirs of others lives. That’s changed. They can have their horseback rides across the Russian Steppe, I want to keep my mind in my own adventure.
God Provides for Us 
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