CONFESSIONS OF THE ILL-READ

I may have admitted before that I was not very interested in reading when I was in school. My sister was the one reading the Little House books, Nancy Drew or the Chronicles of Narnia. I only read what was required of me and a few Judy Blume books or other popular teen "literature". Now that I've been homeschooling I'm finding out how much I missed. My latest discovery is the Anne of Green Gables books. I had watched the PBS produced movies and loved them. I had started to read the first one to my daughter. But just a couple weeks ago I picked up the third book in the series - Anne of the Island. I started there because I thought I already knew what was in the first two books from watching the movie. I realized that the movies contained the plots from the first four books. Anyway, I devoured Anne of the Island and quickly moved to Windy Poplars and Anne's House of Dreams. I love L. M. Montgomery and P.E.I. I told my husband I would love to go there someday. There were so many lines in these books that I wanted to remember and write down. The way Anne looks at nature and sees beauty in everything is so refreshing. In one of these books she's looking at some scene and describes the experience as drinking in a cup of glory. I love the descriptions and the characters. Is it just me or do you find contemporary fiction today to be lacking? Especially Christian fiction. It's just poor quality if you ask me. I do not claim to be a literary critic or a learned bibliophile but if I read another Francine Rivers novel with the words, "raked his hand through his hair", one more time I'm going to scream. L. M. Montgomery never repeated phrases like that. She always finds a new way to describe something.

Anyway, right now I'm reading Rainbow Valley which is the seventh book in the Anne of Green Gables series. It's mostly about her children. Did you know she had seven children? The first died shortly after birth. After the death of her first born, they have a woman come and live with them to help out. Her name is Susan and she stays on with the Blythe family for years to come. I wonder if it was common for families back then to have help like that? I'm sure many mothers did everything around the house, but it sure would be nice to have someone like Susan helping with the children and the cooking and the cleaning. She makes the best maple sugar buns and gives them to the children before they go to bed. But in the mothering department, no one will do but Anne. She has a way of understanding her children and their temperaments that's so tender.

At the end of Anne of Ingleside, she starts to doubt Gilbert's love for her. After all, they've been married fifteen years, they have six children, and he's a busy doctor. Then they're invited to a get-together where they will meet up with an old friend of Gilbert's - Christine. In Anne of the Island, they are going to college at Redmond, and Gilbert is continually seen with this Christine and rumoured to be engaged to her. In the end we find out they are just friends but the old jealousy comes storming back into Anne's heart. At this dinner party, Christine taunts Anne with comments about "just" being a mother. Christine never had children. She thought the world was overpopulated! Anne gives the greatest response, which I will be adopting and using if the Lord gives me an opportunity. Here's a short excerpt of the conversation:

"Fancy you being contented there,"smiled Christine. ("That terrible mouthful of teeth!") "Do you really never feel that you want a broader life? You used to be quite ambitious, if I remember aright. Didn't you write some rather clever little things when you were at Redmond? A bit fantastic and whimsical, of course, but still..."
"I wrote them for the people who still believe in fairyland. There is a surprising lot of them, you know, and they like to get news from that country."
"And you've quite given it up?"
"Not altogether...but I'm writing living epistles now," said Anne, thinking of Jem and Co.
Christine stared, not recognizing the quotation. What did Anne Shirley mean?

I feel like I'm in the company of Anne, that I'm a part of the "race who knows Joseph". Read Anne's House of Dreams to find out about that. It means beind kindred spirits. We are all writing living epistles if we are mothers. We are daily writing on our children's hearts. Attitudes, beliefs, affections. Our investment now has eternal consequences. As Elisabeth Elliot once said, we are bringing up souls for God. May God give us the grace to keep this purpose as a priority and hold it up as a high and holy calling.