One of the first things I thought about after hearing I would be a father was how much fun it would be to read The Chronicles of Narnia to my kids. MM and JoJo are probably a tad young, but I couldn't wait any longer and we recently broke into The Magician's Nephew. (My series has it first even though that wasn't the original order.) MM did a pretty good job keeping up with the plot and characters. JoJo seemed very impressed by Queen Jadis picking up Diggory and Polly by their hair; she re-enacted that part several times. The girls referred to the book by the kids' names instead of its real title and we worked through it one chapter a night. Reading it to them was everything I thought it would be.
Somewhat coincidentally, I simultaneously read Lewis's The Screwtape Letters as part of a class at my church, taught by our pastor, Fr. John. I had never given much thought to demons and their methods of tempting before. I always believed in Satan and devils but never put my intellect to them. The class was great and I learned much about myself and Christianity. In some ways ignorance was bliss, but I'm the better for it. The description of Wormwood losing "The Patient" to Heaven is such a beautiful rendering of what leaving this life for the next might be like that you don't at all feel sad that he was killed in an air raid and separated from his sweet, Christian girlfriend. That part made me long for death.
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