Bibliomania to the extreme

There is an interesting story that was e-mailed to me about a Bibliomaniac Amok:

He owes $14,000 in back rent, has $14 to his name, he’s been out of work for two years, his landlord is evicting him, he agrees he should be tossed. He’s got a rare book collection of 3,000 books worth, by his estimate, $1,000,000.

OK, we have a problem here. But, one that the blogger can relate to:

I have experienced a similar situation. The period 1988-1999 was one of great difficulty and there were times when I had to consider selling my books. It was a wrenching decision - and my collection was no where near the size or value of Leif’s. I resisted, muddling along somehow, finding money someplace else, or just letting debt slide as I hunkered down in my house of books. The books comforted me; they were my friends. I think I also had the inchoate sense that to sell was to admit failure, not as a collector but as an adult. My self-worth was directly tied to the collection.

But there comes a time, and it came for me, when an extremely cold shower and hard slap are necessary to awaken dormant reality. The books have to go. It was, without over-dramatizing the situation, one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make...

I, too, have been there. There was a time when I had over 2,000 books; they weren't worth anywhere near $1,000,000, but they were essential to my mental health—or so I thought. I had amassed them during my 13 years of college, and they represented my self-worth. My sense of worth wasn't in who God made me; it wasn't in being a husband or dad; it was in owning those books.

I didn't have an academic job, and it didn't look like I would get one—ever. That just made the existence of the book collection even more important to me. It represented what I had spent all that time and money on. But, God broke in.

He did it in an interesting way, though. He had our boiler go out in the middle of January in Minnesota—in a cold snap, too. There is no way that boiler should have broken; it was only 2-3 years old! But, it did.

So, what do you do? You have two kids and a wife—and no money. Well, you sell your treasured possessions. No, not your wife and kids! You sell your books. So, I did. I sold over 1,000 of them. Some of them went to Eisenbrauns, some to a local used bookseller who specialized in Classics.

And, you know what? Just like the blogger above, I experienced release. I was no longer bound by what I thought was keeping me free. I was free again. Strange, isn't it? The very things we think are keeping us free are actually binding us. There has got to be a sermon in there somewhere...