Olsonomics Guest Post

I'm so very excited to welcome "Old Ollie" of Olsonomics into my spot in the blogosphere, today. Ollie blogs differently than anyone else I follow. He writes honest peeks into the souls of people he knows, and he's made me love them. I've wondered at points if these people live in his town or in his head, and part of me hopes for in his town because I sent Rose a Christmas card last year. But the other part of me doesn't care because--if Rose lives in Ollie's head--she's simply the part of his head I love best. He's sent her spiraling to me all the way from Canada, and I love both of them and all the others, too.

Ollie inspires the part of me that believes: everyone has a story, or many of them, and everyone is most beautiful and fascinating in the sea of his or her quirks. Please do visit Olsonomics, and join me in praying that Ollie will write a book. But understand: if--on its release date--you try to snatch my copy, I'll fight you like for Cabbage Patch Kids in 1983.

Without further ado, here's Old Ollie:

Rose's Bible

The first thing I ever noticed about Rose was her Bible. It was beat up. It was an NIV Study Bible and it was in tatters. She'd even duct taped the spine, to keep it from splitting in half. Her husband, Bruce Fish, works at a rural dump. I kept thinking he'd pulled this Bible from the heaps of refuse. This was not the case.

I had a coach in high school who said that if we wanted to be great basketball players we needed to dribble the ball everywhere we went. This is the same principle that Rose uses for her Bible. Wherever she goes her Bible is with her. She'll even bring it out in the boat when we go fishing. Rose is more likely to have her Bible than her purse.

Rose has a mandatory Bible study every morning at 10:30. The whole world stops and whoever is around has no choice but to participate. Recently French and I were ice-fishing with Bruce Fish and it was 10:30. Out comes her wretched looking Bible. We weren't paying enough attention so she handed it to French to read the day's passage. Usually he can't even find his Bible, but he stopped what he was doing and read aloud. Rose looked well pleased.

I recently asked her how her Bible got so battered. She just shrugged. French said: “Tell him your system Rose.” She just shrugged again. Rose is so shy. French said: “Rose reads the Old Testament once a year, and the New Testament twice, she also reads all of Proverbs once a month." Turns out that this has been her system for over twenty years. That certainly accounts for the state of her Bible.

Rose looked at me and said: “You go read Proverbs 3:5-6.”