I am reading the book, Anne of Ingleside, for the first time. In the Anne of Green Gables series, it is the 6th book in the series and shares the escapades and mischievous shenanigans of Anne and Gilbert’s children. For some reason, I never got around to reading the entire 8 book series growing up. I just started and stopped with the first book. Actually, I’ll share the reason, and for me it is a story of kindness and rediscovery. As a young girl, I was gifted the first book in the wonderful world of the orphan, Anne Shirley. However, I was swimming delightedly in an ocean of music, and so my literary adventures would blossom later, even though I loved reading short and inspirational chapter books.
In our church, the young girls were paired with an older woman who would pray for the girl they were matched with, send a card on her birthday, and little encouragement notes every once in a while. A kind and generous woman (so very lovely and godly; I think of her with such gratitude) gave me a brand new copy of Anne of Green Gables. I didn’t know the story, except that it was about an orphan girl on PEI and that it was made into a movie featuring Megan Follows in the 1980’s, of which I watched at some point in my growing up years and really enjoyed it! Oh how I loved watching television shows of that time in history: Road to Avonlea, Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, Pollyanna. These shows fascinated me, and I imagined what it would be like to live in Avonlea with pinafores and horse drawn carriages and oil lanterns. However, the book would have to wait.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I had obsessive-compulsive disorder which hugely affected my reading capacity. I would read sentences and then ruminate over the words, getting stuck on words and staring at them as the minutes ticked by. Perhaps that is why I chose short books, ones that were about hope in God, overcoming trials, and horses, of course. Reading Anne was very difficult for me because the words she used were very long and sometimes foreign to my level of vocabulary. I stopped reading after trying very hard to tackle this large tome, and that’s okay. I wasn’t ready for it. At some point, eventually, I picked it up to finish it… another OCD reason because at that time, I felt that I had to finish books I started to feel a sense of completeness. It was a challenge the Lord ordained for me.
Many years later, when I finally met my beloved husband and we got married and started a family, my music world was diminishing for a season, and it was time for my literary world to awaken. What a wonderful Savior to bring about these seasons in his perfect timing. He knows oh so much more about ourselves than we could imagine. When my daughter was elementary age, we started a tradition of reading my beloved Mandie books to her. This was a precious time of the day. As she grew older, I decided it was time for the Anne books… for her AND for me! I found a beautiful set of the books with cover illustrations by the Canadian artist, Elly Mackay, published by Tundra Books. We began reading these books together, her and me, on our mommy dates, at times laughing out loud at the ridiculous adventures of Anne and her friends, and at other times, just delighting in the word craft of L.M. Montgomery. We loved the first 3 books, skipped Windy Poplars, and then I took up reading Anne’s House of Dreams and now Anne of Ingleside on my own. I think my daughter might rejoin me for the final installment in the series, Rilla of Ingleside!
And so I read and enter the worlds of beautiful descriptions of landscape and scenery, of seasons and sunsets all taking place on the magical Prince Edward Island in Canada. Sadly, the work of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books was not noticed on the world stage during her lifetime, but in God’s timing, the stories she crafted with her impeccable imagination and grasp of the English language was a ministry of joy and virtue that still builds up young girls to this day. Reading together has created wonderful memories for me and my children, and the books and characters we’ve met through the years have taught us all meaningful lessons for life, virtue, and character. I pray my children will take these books with them into their marriages and families one day.
Its been as an adult that I’ve rediscovered Anne and the beauty of LM Montgomery’s words all these years later from the challenging reading days of my middle school years with undiagnosed OCD. But finding beauty is hard won in this broken world, and even LM Montgomery, the writer of some of the most beautiful verses in Canadian literature lived with incredible pain and suffering that her readers never knew as news articles have revealed in recent years. I am convinced that joy and beauty are hard won, sought after through endurance and perseverance, and sometimes born out of severe circumstances, like the formation of the rarest and most precious gems. I leave you with a few quotes from this beloved author:
“In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of “faëry lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire.”
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And this blessed quote that speaks so dearly to my season of life and motherhood right now! How precious are these years:
A family hike through sunflower fields
“They were all growing so fast. In just a few short years they would be all young men and women... youth tiptoe...expectant...a-star with its sweet wild dreams...little ships sailing out of safe harbor to unknown ports...
But they would be still hers for a few years yet... hers to love and guide... to sing the songs that so many mothers had sung...
The night was cool; soon the sharper, cooler nights of autumn would come; then the deep snow... There would be the magic of firelight in gracious rooms...hadn’t Gilbert spoken not long ago of apple logs he was getting to burn in the fireplace? They would glorify the grey days that were bound to come. What would matter drifted snow and biting wind when love burned clear and bright, with spring beyond? And all the little sweetnesses of life sprinkling the road...
”What a family!” Anne repeated exultantly.”
My brave sunflower, shining with beauty and just loving the fact that she was created!