Donald Miller wrote the forward to the book Love Does by
Bob Goff & a line directly from the forward says,
"We don't like to put hands and feet on love. When love is a theory, it's safe, it's free of risk. But love in the brain changes nothing. Bob believes that love is too beautiful a concept to keep locked up behind a forehead like a prisoner."
...& that is exactly what the entire book is about. The author Bob Goff tells his personal stories about putting love into action.
I read this book about a year ago. I should have titled this blog Jared Wanzer Party of 1 Book Club - The Original because this was the first book that as an adult I read and thought wow I like reading. I wasn't the biggest fan of reading growing up, at a young I struggled with reading so it was just never my favorite things to do & I honestly most of the books we were assigned to read in school I either didn't understand or just were not interesting to me. I never vocalized that but I felt it.
I was visiting my friends The Caldwell Family in Oregon about this time last year & they had just moved to Oregon shortly before I came to visit. They are some of my best friends & so I had heard them talk about this book but like I said I wasn't one to just go buy a book and honestly if I had I would have to just added it to my shelf of decorative books on my book shelf. They had the book at their house and said I should read it & after the first page I was in. They had recently made some big changes in their lives and a lot of them came after reading this book.
I honestly have always felt like love is an action not just something you say but somethings you do, Love Does not - Love Says, Love Thinks about doing. This book made me really stop and think about my life and things I should being doing not just putting on a to-do-list.
In the Introduction of Love Does it says,
"Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those "we'll go there next time" deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no "next time" because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision. They need a change of attitude, not more opportunities."
I bought about 10-15 copies of this book when I arrived home from visiting my friends, after reading it in just a couple of days. I was handing this book out like candy. About a month ago I bought myself a copy because I never ended up keeping any of the copies & I just wanted to reread it, I think it is a book I am going to reread about this time every year, just for a refresher.
Love Does truly made me live my life differently. I don't think I was living a horrible life I just felt like I wanted to do more. This book really inspired me to get out there and do just that.
just a few on my list -
Volunteer
Find ways to do what I have always wanted to do which is be a traveling photographer.
Reconnect with people I have known along the way.
Be more involved, more present, more engaged.
Make more time for things that matter.
Try new things.
This book will truly encourage you to get out there and do things you've always said you are going to do, make time to do see the people you always say you are going to go see, help people that might need your help. It will be different for everyone of course but I do think it is worth picking up the book and seeing what happens.
A few excerpts from the book that really stood out to me, even though I have almost the entire book highlighted.
"I used to want to fix people, but now I just want to be with them."
"Jesus wasn't a religious guy. To me, Jesus sounded like an ordinary guy who was utterly amazing. He helped people. He figured out what they needed and tried to point them toward that. He healed people who were hurting. He spent time with the kinds of people most of us spend our lives avoiding."
"I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude as I get older because I can see, both through the good times and the bad times, that God has been with me."
"I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I'm more afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter."
"I used to think God guided us by opening and closing doors, but now I know sometimes God wants us to kick some doors down."
"...and the last thing I want to do is miss an opportunity or make God Mad, so I just keep saying yes."
"I used to be afraid that if I was authentic I might take a hit, but now I know that being real means I will take a hit."
and last, I leave you with this quote as you go through your day,
"I want to be doing things today, not just flipping through crinkled and yellow mental pictures of what happened along time ago."
