When you grow up in a teacher’s home, you learn to love books, language, and the power of imagination. My mom doesn’t read aloud to me anymore, I say with regret, but old habits do not die early so I feel implored to read to my children each and every summer. They no longer appreciate to be read aloud to anymore.. I say that part with regret also. So, I read to myself. I set little goals for myself and try to reach them. I have been steadily working on my bachelor’s in elementary education (for those who may have been here before and wonder), and I’ve been working in our local public school as a teacher’s aide, so I haven’t read as much as I wish. I started re-reading Anne of Green Gables back in May, just for fun. I hadn’t read it since I was about thirteen, and it influenced me tremendously back then. I wondered how it would feel to traipse through the fields of clover near Dryad’s Bubble, visit the Lake of Shining Waters, race through the Haunted Wood at dusk, and of course, spend each night in peaceful slumber in the east gable after so many years. Well, it was fabulous! Yes, Anne was, and still is, a “kindred spirit” albeit a fictional one. She inspired Leslie’s middle name – Anne, with an e, and I am still glad of it all these years later.

It’s amazing how time stands still in books – I mean, for me! I felt just as much a young teenager longing for my own “Gilbert” as much as I ever did when I really was a young teenager. Amazingly, I understood some parts even better now, like the challenge of passing exams, the fear, the sickness, the thought of failure and being resigned to it – just like Anne. I also understood the pang of loss more so this time around. The following quote, where Anne refers to her feelings the night before Matthew’s death, particularly stood out to me:

“Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.”

Anne’s words perfectly sum up my feelings after my dad’s sudden death: “no life is ever quite the same again.”  And the sorrows of life truly are “sanctifying.” A word I most certainly did not appreciate at age thirteen.

Like Anne, I know there is laughter and joy after sorrow. God always provides grace and peace and strength, but there is also the constant threat of the shadow of that dark day lingering closely by, the pain of which I will never forget. Well, the years have rolled on and Dad’s death pales in comparison to greater emotional suffering I have experienced since that dark day in July of 2004. As Anne says at the end of the book, “…my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I am going believe that the best does.” Sometimes the memory of great heartache can entice us to believe that only the shadows, dread, and darkness are in our future, but that’s simply not true. For the believer, the best really is just around the bend.

I am starting a new path in my own life. I should, Lord willing, finish my degree in August. I passed my own “entrance exam” in June, which for me was the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification in Elementary Education. And, best of all, I have been hired to teach the fourth grade in a nearby community! Yes! I have finally achieved a great goal of my life, to be a teacher. I will get paid to spend my days doing something I love.

Reading Anne again has brightened my life. This fictional character has reminded me of a great fact: God’s Providence is real, and He is working in my life. She has also made me smile, and that alone isn’t “stuff and nonsense.”

From my heart,