The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Ahh! It's the last day of February and the conclusion of Barbara's Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge. I thought I'd make a hasty effort to see if I can get our review of The Long Winter done. This was the title the kids and I read together this month as it was next in the series for us. I really am so happy Barbara hosts this each year as it gives me the opportunity to not only re-read these wonderful books for myself, but to also share them with my kids.

I confess that I had hoped we'd have matching weather to compliment our reading (but with a working heater!) but, alas, we here in the Northwest had a rather mild winter. We had just one snow flurry and that was that. Small pellet hail was about as exciting as it got. I believe those on the East coast had our share of snow along with their own! We ended up reading The Long Winter to the accompaniment of our usual rain.

Ultimately, we spent two weeks reading this book aloud and I think it's safe to say that all of the kids enjoyed it. The older two boys (ages 9 and 7) would ask for additional chapters to be read at the conclusion of each day's reading. Things grew especially tense as we stopped before finding out what happened to Almanzo when he went in search of wheat for the town. The boys were also especially attuned to the lack of food in the Ingalls home. Bookworm1 (age 9) - who is not a fan of potatoes - was glad not to live out on the prairies in the 1800's. He appreciates a little more variety in his diet. I thought it especially interesting to see their minds at work when we were on the chapter which talked about how Pa managed to purchase 2 lbs. of beef. As it so happened, I had just bought the same amount from the store.

Bookworm2: Well why were they worried? Two pounds is a lot of beef! That'll last them awhile!

I pulled out the wrapped two pound package of beef from our fridge and asked how long he thought that amount would last our own family of six. Realization dawned.

The Long Winter is an excellent book to be reading if you want to talk about teamwork as a family. This is a subject we focus on a great deal as with six of us, the more help we give to one another, the further we make it in a a day. An attitude that says, "I'm here for you when you need me" is something that we very much stress and wish to grow in our kids and we look for examples to show them what attitudes make - and break - the concept of being a team. This particular portion of the Ingalls' life really struck me as being one that required team work for one's very survival. Situations were tough and intense and it required the efforts of all family members to make it through that one long winter. (It also made me thankful for the rain.) We might not each face a long winter in the sense of being trapped by large snowdrifts, but we each have particular moments in time where we really need the comfort and the help of others and I really admired the way the Ingalls pitched in and worked together. On that note, I looked up a few quotes on teamwork which I liked and which I think suit this book well.

Thanks, Barbara, for hosting this reading challenge. I surely do appreciate it! We'll be looking forward to next year's challenge in anticipation of our next Wilder read.

Hinds' Feet on High Places, by Hannah Hurnard

The last time I read Hinds' Feet On High Places was back in 2009 when our family experienced two deaths, back-to-back. We had somewhat expected my father's death from cancer, but not my brother-in-law's death in a car accident. Let's just say that we really didn't like 2009 very much and were not at all sorry to wave goodbye to it. It was a horrid year (and yes, it still burns in our memories). I read this book in the midst of a life that was just dribbling apart. Apparently I was so choked up by the emotions of it that I couldn't even really review it. Sorrow and Suffering were too close at that time and I was definitely gripped with the terror of a climb to the High Places.

Fast-forward 7 years and spring has had new life breathed into it. Since 2009 we have added 4 children to our family (Bookworms 2 - 5). Relationships have settled into new places as all family members adjusted to the missing pieces. The pain isn't acute, although I still cry from time to time. I miss my father ferociously. I know he would have thrilled in being Papa to all of these grand kids. This is not even to mention Uncle Landon who we feel certain would have been a crowd favorite. There will always be a void in our lives as a result of losing these close family members, but the intensity and the agony has dissipated over time. In looking back, I can see how God used these two deaths and subsequent life fall outs for our good and for His glory. I cling tighter to His promises and I believe more deeply that He is everything that He says that He is. He is my God, whether life is bliss or filled with horrors. Suffering and Sorrow drug us into places we wouldn't have been able to go ourselves but the Shepherd King was faithful - IS faithful - to work out our salvation. As I read Hinds' Feet On High Places this time, I didn't feel the same sense of desperation as I did before. This time it was a quick re-read, with a few head nods in agreement, but which produced nothing on the level of gut-wrenching.

In case you aren't familiar with the premise of the book, it is an allegorical tale describing what it looks like to obey God, even though He might have you walk through hard situations. The story surrounds the character of Much-Afraid who is aptly named. She has met the great Shepherd and longs to follow him up to the high places in the mountains but she is trapped below by fear. She would likely remain in the valley forever if not for the Shepherd calling her to come and follow him To act as her guide to the High Places, she is given two companions by the name of Sorrow and Suffering who will help her along her journey.

Reading this book again was an interesting exercise, knowing where I was mentally/emotionally/spiritually during my last visit. While I knew God had a plan in the pains we were experiencing, I didn't much care for anything that was happening. It was horrendous. Hurnard's story captured my emotions and gave me something to focus on to some extent or another. This time, from a place of relative calm (all things considered) I felt the book read off as a little too poetical and dramatic. I had a harder time connecting to the story as a source of spiritual inspiration which it is designed to be. It just didn't meet me where I'm at right now. That said, there were a few passages I marked as being particularly meaningful, having walked through hard things and with the expectation of facing more hard things in the future.

"Then she looked at the Shepherd and suddenly know she could not doubt him, could not possibly turn back from following him; that if she were unfit and unable to love anyone else in the world, yet in her trembling, miserable little heart, she did love him. Even if he asked the impossible, she could not refuse." (Chapter 4, Start for the High Places)

Life has its ups and its downs. We're grateful for calm days but we no longer expect them to last. A fellow from our church said something like this to me, "Your theology is good if it accepts the fact that your greatest trial is still to come." Faith in the Lord has to endure in the face of certain trial and tragedy. It's easy to be exasperated when struggles come our way, but exasperation must never lead to defeat. (It also doesn't equate defeat.) One can be weary of struggles but still be ready to face them at the same time.

I know that life here on earth isn't meant to be easy; it's meant to change us to become more like Christ. "Disaster" has struck us more than once since 2009 (although never quite so deeply) but there's a knowledge that the Lord will uphold us with His hand. We can't be dropped and lost, although we can be broken and rebuilt. It's part of His good plan.

"She was still crouching at his feet, sobbing as if her heart would break, but now she looked up through her tears, caught his hand in hers, and said, trembling, "I do love you, you know that I love you. Oh forgive me because I can't help my tears. I will go down with you into the wilderness, right away from the promise, if you really wish it. Even if you cannot tell me why it has to be, I will go with you, for you know I do love you, and you have the right to choose for me anything that you please." (Chapter 6, Detour Through the Desert)

Emotions run deep with the above quoted passages. How often does it happen that we do not understand the way that He is leading? We walk by faith and not by sight for much of the journey, do we not? Step by step we keep following after the Lord, trusting in His goodness and His love. I believe in Him. But I will still crouch at His feet and bawl my eyes out from time to time. This does not mean that I have no faith, but rather that I have faith in a Savior who can handle my emotions and who doesn't look away from me, disgusted by my fears. The Lord has compassion on my family and leads us through the hard places, proving His goodness all the while.

The last passage I marked was this one:

Then the Shepherd smiled more comforting than ever before and said, "Be strong, yea, be strong and fear not." Then he continued, "Much-Afraid, don't ever allow yourself to begin trying to picture what it will be like. Believe me, when you get to the places which you dread you will that they are as different as possible from what you have imagined . . . " (Chapter 11, In the Forest of Danger and Tribulation)

Hello!

Me and my overactive imagination need this reminder frequently. I find that with age I grow less scared of the future full of unknowns. I know that challenges are coming but I'm able to stop myself from imagining them out more often than not and this is a huge praise. The Lord knows me and my imagination and He knows it takes a great deal of self discipline to train it. All I need to know is that God is my God and daily I will seek Him. Daily I will trust Him to lead me, step by step, to the High Places. My job is to follow on, obeying His commands and resting in His promise that He will never leave me or forsake me. Though I will periodically be cast down, I will never be utterly destroyed because I will be upheld by His hand. He is faithful, gracious, and kind. He is tenderhearted and full of mercies which are new every morning. He is my God, and I will praise Him. And I will follow even when it doesn't seem to make sense to do so.

Why? 

Because I love Him.

But only because He loved me first.

The only way to close this post is in song you know. The best way I know how to do that is to invoke a Steven Curtis Chapman into the conversation which might cause you to grin a wry sort of grin.

This is my all-time favorite song. I first heard it when I was 16 or 17 (?) and my heart screamed, "YES! THIS!" even then. Twenty years later my heart still screams the same.

This song. Always.

The Magic of Ordinary Days, by Ann Howard Creel

This review has been a couple of weeks in the making. I keep sitting down to write up my thoughts and then am distracted away from the computer yet again. I have a few reviews that are begging to be written and I'm hoping to get to some of them this week. (Fingers crossed.)

As I mentioned in my nightstand post, my church ladies' book club was set to read The Magic of Ordinary Days, by Ann Howard Creel during the month of February. Life intervened and I wasn't able to attend the discussion of this book, but I did get it read all the same. I'm not sure what anyone else's opinion was, or what was shared, so I feel like this blog post can only been one dimensional in certain respects. This title was spoken highly of and so I approached it with great interest.

If you are unfamiliar with the story, it tells of a young woman named Olivia Dunne who is the oldest of three sisters and daughter to a minister. Upon the death of her mother, Olivia finds herself reeling. A few bad decisions lead to an unexpected pregnancy which, during the 1940's, was deeply frowned upon. Her father arranges a marriage for her in order to hide the shame which she has brought upon their family. Sent from her home in Denver, Colorado, she is moved to the countryside where she marries a farmer. The book tells the story of Olivia and the farmer's growing relationship. It also focuses on some of her interactions with two second generation Japanese girls who are being held at a local internment camp.

I dove into this book wanting to love it and finding it a very enjoyable read. I love historical fiction and enjoyed the arguments Creel made about holding a people in confinement due to a perceived threat to national security. Our country is facing this very issue again - but with a difference group of people. Once again we're struggling to learn from past mistakes and yet make wise choices in order to keep ourselves safe from those who wish us harm. This is an interesting topic and this book makes you think through what it means to put someone's life on hold by placing them into confinement. You also come to understand the risks that people believed they were facing in World War II with the Japanese-Americans. This was a tricky subject then and it's tricky now in this modern age with the new threats we face. The need for wisdom is fantastically great as usual making this an interesting side plot.

The romance (or lack thereof) in The Magic of Ordinary Days is also intriguing. While it might be easy to identify with the Nation's struggle to deal with their wartime enemies appropriately, it's harder to understand what a person might feel about an arranged marriage because that is not something we typically face in this modern age. As the story progresses, we see a growth in both Olivia and her farmer husband as they come to know one another. Their joys, uncertainties, stresses and misunderstandings all read off very believably. Their love story is ultimately one I would deem "cute" to read about, if I'm going to read a romance. Strangers falling in love through a set of rather extraordinary circumstances typically makes for enjoyable reading.

Like I said, I wanted to love this book and I rather did up until the second half after which point I began to despise it. My reasons for ultimately not enjoying this read are two-fold:

1. Olivia is a major, discontented idiot. Her discontentment with life stems as a result of having grandiose opinions about herself. She had high ideals and goals for a woman in that time period (and perhaps any other time period), but her choices failed to reflect or further her goals. Instead of accepting the consequences of her actions and learning from them, she spends a great deal of the book moaning about "what might have been." Chiefly, what got to me is the fact that she thought she was better than her farmer husband. She "rationalizes" herself into believing that she's smarter, prettier, has more potential, etc. than he does. While on the one hand I can believe that diving into a marriage before thinking it through very well is going to cause second guessing, I also take the position that if two people are Christians (which Olivia and her farmer were presented as being) then divorce is not an option and God permits and directs anything and everything in our lives for His glory. After you say "I do" the time for second guessing has come to an abrupt end (excepting cases of abuse, of course!!) and whining and complaining about your circumstances from that point out - while taking no pains to apply yourself to the success of the marriage - is something I flat out have no patience for whatsoever.

What Olivia needed was an in-your-face lecture about what was true and what was false. Her closest friends (i.e., her sisters) gave her horrible advice and failed to encourage her to pursue truth. They took no pains whatsoever to encourage her to walk the hard road and learn from it and so I had no tolerance for them. Advisers who only ever tell you what you want to hear are positively useless creatures. What I think the book does ultimately show is that Olivia was a whiny cry baby who wanted to have her cake and keep on eating it. In reality, God sent her the greatest gift she could ever ask for in her quiet, farmer husband. He is the epitome of grace to Olivia if she would just quit thinking of herself for half a second and realize it.

2. Creel becomes far too descriptive about Olivia and husband's sexual encounters. Really, if you prefer to avoid scenes in books, then you should just avoid this story. It made for especially embarrassing reading considering the ages of various other book club members. (Our group includes women 17 years on up and I wouldn't want them reading this.) Due to the scenes included, I found this title a rather poor selection for our book group. I certainly don't feel as if I can recommend this read as Creel becomes far too descriptive (and, again, Olivia is an idiot). Consider this your Conservative Reader Alert.

I can't really claim to be glad to have read this title. I liked our last book - Far From The Madding Crowd (linked to my thoughts) - ever so much more. Next month is an Agatha Christie and although I already know I'm going to miss the meeting, I'm still going to read a Christie so that I can participate "in spirit" if not in flesh.