Reading and Discipline

I think what I'm writing might be painfully obvious to many people.  But it's totally changed the way I think about discipline (or, everything).

If I had to describe myself in five words, I would definitely not use the word disciplined.  There have been brief pockets of time in my life that I have been disciplined in a certain area, but is it really discipline if it's only for a brief pocket of time?  But I don't enjoy being undisciplined.  I'm lazy; I hate it; it's really hard to change.

Reading has been one of those things I really wanted to do for the past few years, but I could never really start.  And when I did start, I couldn't finish.  I've always thought myself a really slow reader, so it felt like it would take me forever to finish a book.

About eight months ago, I started reading, though. I started with Stepping Heavenward.  After finishing what to me was a long battle in perseverance, I picked up another book, and then another.  I think I've read more in the last eight months than I have in my whole life.  And guess what?  It is so much easier now. 

I first noticed it when reading some Doug Wilson books.  A long time ago, I started reading Reforming Marriage, and it was really hard.  For whatever reason, I just couldn't understand how he worded things.  I would read sentences and paragraphs over and over again and pretty quickly just give up.  Perhaps partially from reading his blog sometimes and partially from reading several of his books, I feel like I understand his writing style and "voice" much more than I used to, which makes reading his books so much easier.  Now I feel like I'm whizzing through them compared to how long it took me before.

I'm reading J.C. Ryle's Holiness now, which I think would have been unimaginably difficult for me just a year ago.  Not only would I have been incredibly intimidated by 400 pages, it would have been so hard to get through one page, much less one chapter, because of the language and references he uses, not to mention the ideas.  I think, though, reading Pilgrim's Progress really helped prepare me to read this book because I understand the ideas Ryle presents much better with less effort than I believe I would have before.

I'm learning that I'm actually not as bad or slow of a reader as I thought I was; I just had no practice!  It took a lot of books to see the fruit of disciplining myself to read, but it is paying off more than I imagined.