Book Review: Becoming Mrs. Lewis

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Barbara Harper

I did not start reading anything by or about C. S. Lewis until about twenty years ago. Something I read then indicated that his marriage was just one of convenience so his American wife could stay in England. Since then I’ve read varying accounts of his relationship with his wife, Joy. Patti Callahan asserts that the woman whom Lewis mourned in A Grief Observed and who inspired Til We Have Faces had to have been more than just a dear friend. The letters between the two have been lost, but Patti researched all of the other pieces of Joy’s and Lewis’ writings she could find plus biographies of them to get to know Joy. Based on her findings, she crafted a fictional story titled Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis.

Joy was something of a child prodigy, graduating from high school and college early and earning a master’s degree by age twenty. She was Jewish, an atheist, and, for a brief time, a Communist. She married William Gresham in 1942 and had two sons, but the marriage was troubled almost from the start. Bill was an alcoholic with some seeming mental issues after his military service. In one incident when Bill was drunk, despairing, and talking of suicide, Joy dropped to her knees and prayer to a God she did not believe in – and felt something of an encounter. It was enough to change her perspective and start her searching for answers. She had read and respected C. S. Lewis and knew he had converted to Christianity from atheism, so she wrote to him.

They corresponded for three years. In the meantime, due to health issues and a need for more answers, Joy took a trip to England, where she stayed with a friend, rested, wrote, and finally met Lewis, who asked her to call him Jack. By this time, Joy’s marriage was seriously crumbling, and she was beginning to have feelings beyond friendship for Jack. But she wanted to keep her friendship with Jack pure. She determined to try to save her marriage – until she learned that her husband and cousin were having an affair. Then she asked for a divorce.

Joy returned home as soon as she was able and returned to England with her boys. She and Lewis visited often. She and the boys even stayed with Lewis and his brother, Warnie, for several weeks. They read and edited each other’s writing, walked, ate, drank. Joy fell hard for Jack, but he treasured the philea (brotherly, friendly) type of love they had. He felt he was too old to start thinking about romance, and, besides, in the eyes of his Anglican church, she was still married. When Joy had to face leaving the country due to bureaucratic regulations, Jack offered a civil marriage and bought her a house. When Joy was diagnosed with cancer, Jack realized his true feelings for her and married her in earnest.

Joy was an intelligent, complicated woman. She reminds me very much of the woman at the well in John 4, “looking for love in all the wrong places,” as the saying goes. Early in her life, she was made to feel that she could never “measure up.” Her father punished her for besmirching her A report card with a B. Her mother compared her unfavorably to her prettier, more graceful cousin. She sought for acceptance and assurance of her worth in a string of sexual encounters. She came to learn that sex in itself does not equal love.

Joy is also a reminder that true Christians don’t always fit in a nice, neat box. Really, we have to look no further than our Bibles to know that. Almost every major figure in the Old Testament had serious family and/or personal issues, and the NT epistles dealt with issues in churches that we scratch our heads over these days. Yet even in the messiness of her life both before and after salvation, and the up and down pattern of her growth, there’s a steady trajectory of growing in grace and knowledge.

I must know when it is enough. And I must trust God — again and again I was learning and relearning to trust the truth who had entered my sons’ nursery. The rusty and decrepit habit of trusting in only myself, only abiding in my own ability to make things happen, died hard and slow (Chapter 40).

Much of what I’d done — mistakes, poems, manipulations, success and books and sex — had been done merely to get love. To get it. To answer my question: do you love me? . . . From that moment on, the love affair I would develop would be with my soul. [God] was already part of me; that much was clear. And now this would be where I would go for love — to the God in me. No more begging or pursuing or needing. Possibly it was only a myth, Jack’s myth [Til We Have Faces], that could have obliterated the false belief that I must pursue love in the outside world — in success, in acclaim, in performance, in a man.

The Truth: I was beloved of God.

Finally I could stop trying to force someone or something else to fill that role (Chapter 44).

Jack: I’ve spent all my life in an attempt to find Truth and moral good and then to live it. I can’t discard my moral habits for feelings, which are just that — feelings (Chapter 42).

I enjoyed getting to know Joy and seeing Jack as a normal person in everyday mode. And I loved the truths quoted above that Patti incorporated into the story.

However, even given Joy’s penchant for looking for love through sex at first, there seems to me to be more of a sensual aspect of the story than needed to convey Joy’s misdirection. Even a hill is unnecessarily described as appearing “like the breast of a woman in recline.” Another friend mentioned the preponderance of alcohol in the story. Even allowing that different Christians have different convictions about whether and how much a Christian can consume, alcohol seems the major drink of choice for any occasion here. It’s mentioned even when we really have no need to know what the characters are drinking. I’m left wondering why. I don’t know how much of these things are the author’s choices and how much of it is integral to Joy’s story. Because of these issues, this book won’t appeal to everyone. While I don’t endorse everything in the book, I think if one can set aside some of the objectionable elements, Joy’s growth as a person, as a Christian, and her impact in Jack’s life and work can be seen and appreciated. The choice whether to read it or not must be left to individuals.

Linda is currently hosting a four-week book club to discuss this book. Week one’s discussion is here: week two is here. Week three is here., just posted today, with one more session coming next week. So it’s not too late to join in if the discussion if you’d like.

Linda also pointed us to a couple of nice videos. In this one, the author shares her thoughts and shows photos of Jack and Joy and videos of Jack’s house, the Kilns.

This one shows aspects of Oxford, integral to both Jack and Joy:

An interview with the author is here (HT to Linda).

(Sharing with Carole’s Books You Loved)

My Second Writer’s Conference

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Barbara Harper

Friday and Saturday were a whirlwind of activity as I had an opportunity to attend my second Carolina Christian Writer’s Conference. I had a wonderful time, and my head is still spinning, processing all I learned.

Karissa Culbreath was the keynote speaker. Wow! She was both sweet and dynamic, accomplished yet relatable.

As with last year, there were four different workshops times over the two days, with about half a dozen workshops to choose from each time. Most times I wanted to attend two or three, so it was hard to narrow down the choices. I wish they all could have been recorded. Topics ranged from how to find (make) time to write, how to navigate social media, fears, grammar and editing, writing for children and youth, writing for various markets, aspects of nonfiction and fiction writing, mastering Amazon – and multitudes more.

There was an informative panel discussion Friday night, an opportunity to split into different genre groups with a few of the faculty members on hand to answer questions, a “lightening learning” session where we went in small groups from table to table to hear five minutes of each speaker’s best or favorite tips, and an opportunity to eat lunch with one of the speakers.

We also had an opportunity to send in an outline and ten pages of a manuscript ahead of time for a critique and then to have a fifteen minute meeting with the person who critiqued us. Last year the manuscript was given to one of the speakers, and we didn’t know who until we got a notice of our meeting time with them. This year we got to choose which person we wanted to look at our manuscripts. We were also able to sign up ahead of time for a fifteen minute meeting with another of the faculty members. I got both of the people I requested for each of those (last year the person I asked for had no slots available). Then Friday morning we had the opportunity to sign up for another fifteen minute meeting. That person ended up having a different role than what I had thought, so in a sense we didn’t really fit each other’s needs. Still, she gave me a piece of key, valuable advice that’s going to have a big impact on how I shape my book, and I enjoyed the conversation.

Last year, some of you may remember, I’d had no plans to attend a conference, and I had never even heard of this one. When I did hear about it from an online friend, it was only 2-3 weeks before the conference. Since it was in the city where we used to live, that sparked more of an interest and a possibility to go since it was in a familiar place. But it was so soon, and we had my mother-in-law’s care, and I had not traveled alone nor attended anything like a conference in eons, etc., etc. But God worked it all out. I had a manuscript I’d started, but it was really in no shape to be seen. But it was all I had, so I pulled it out of mothballs with no time to shape it up and sent it in. The critique last year was pretty devastating, with not one positive note, leaving me thinking perhaps writing was just a pipe dream. But the critique was good in pointing out some glaring mistakes I was (obviously) unaware of, making me now acutely aware of them. And the rest of the conference encouraged me that all was not lost yet. Last year I also missed all of Saturday mornings events due to being sick in my hotel room.

This year, I started off feeling sick before I ever left. I ended up missing the very first explanatory session, but was able to attend the rest of it. Last year my nerves were taut with the newness of everything, being in circumstances I was unused to with a lot of strangers. It wasn’t until the last few hours then that I just relaxed and enjoyed the rest of it. This year, though nerves did flare up, I was more at ease and relaxed through the whole conference. I enjoyed a lot of good conversations with fellow conferees.

Last year, since the conference came up so suddenly, I just kind of went with the flow and had no idea what to ask. This year, after a year of more intense focus on my writing and reading writing blogs in the meantime, I came with two pages of typed questions. 🙂 I didn’t get all of them answered – I wished my fifteen minute sessions could have been thirty – and I added several more questions after the conference was over.

My critique session was as different as night and day than last year. Part of that was the different personalities of the critiquers. The lady I had last year was not unkind, but she was just more of a matter-of-fact personality. The lady I had this year was very sweet and encouraging. She did have some corrections and valuable editorial notes, but the whole tone of the critique was more uplifting. I was so thankful and encouraged for the growth God led me through since last year, and the hard critique last year was definitely one of His tools.

One new aspect of this year’s conference was contests. We had an opportunity to submit writing in any of several categories. If I remember correctly, I think we could enter as many times as we wanted, but there was a $20 fee for each entry which was then used to provide scholarships for people who needed financial help to attend. The fee was for a good purpose, but also served to limit how many entrees most of us could submit. As it happened, I won first place in the Devotional category.

And! EABooks sponsored a contest in which we could submit entries on the theme “Blessings in Disguise,” and they would choose 20-25 to be included in their book compilation. That would not only give us exposure and an opportunity to get our message out, but being actually published would increase our writing credentials. My entry was one of those chosen for the book.

(Special thanks to my new friend Tori for taking and sending me the last photo!)

Besides just being excited about winning anything, I am so encouraged. Though I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn, the positive critique and conversations and the contests all help me know growth has occurred and I’m heading in the right direction.

Last year I shared some of my takeaways from last year’s writer’s conference. Those were all reinforced. It will probably take me several days to process everything from this conference. But I would encourage you to attend a conference if you have any desire to write, especially for publication. You can get some of the information from blogs and books on writing. But the ability to ask questions, talk with people inbetween workshops, have lunch with a writer or editor, listen in on some of the more informal sessions like the genre groups and “lightning learning,” and especially the fifteen-minute meetings with the faculty are experiences you can’t get anywhere else.

For me as a first- and even a second-timer, it helped that the conference was small. It wasn’t quite so overwhelming that way. Many areas have one or two-day writer’s conferences. There’s a really big Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writer’s Conference not too far from me that I may try to make it so some day. But it’s five days, and therefore more expensive. And if my head is about to explode after two days, I don’t know what it would do with five. But there are also that many more writers, editors, and publishers to hear from and opportunities to interact and ask questions.

Now – back to regular life, laundry, and more writing.

(Sharing also with Literary Musing Monday)

Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge Wrap-up for 2019

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Barbara Harper

The end of February closes the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge for this year. I hope you had fun with it, and I look forward to hearing about what you read!

A week from today I’ll use random.org to draw a name from the comments on this post to win either The Little House Cookbook compiled by Barbara M. Walker, Laura’s Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson, The Little House Coloring Book, or a similarly-priced book related to Laura. A week should give some of us who are still reading time to finish up and post about our reading. You don’t have to have a blog to participate: you can tell us what you read in the comments here. If you have a blog, you can either let us know what you read in the comments or share the links back to any reviews or challenge-related posts from your blog or even from Goodreads if you review books there. Due to shipping costs, I’m afraid I can only ship to those in the US, unless you’d like a Kindle version.

For my part, I read:

Fairies

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Fairy Poems, compiled by Stephen W. Hines, illustrated by Richard Hull. I had forgotten that Laura wrote such poems until Rebekah mentioned them. Laura is usually more matter-of-fact than fanciful, though some of her descriptions are lovely. So I was interested to see how she did with fairy poems. Hines provides a brief introduction, telling how Laura came to write the poems for the San Francisco Bulletin. Then he shares an adaptation of an essay Laura wrote called “Fairies Still Appear to Those With Seeing Eyes.”

There are only five poems in the book, spread out over several pages with a number of illustrations. The poems are very old-fashioned, naturally, as they describe the various activities fairies are involved in. I’m not normally into fairy poems, so I don’t know how they would measure up for young readers today.

Honestly, I didn’t care for the illustrations much. I think I would have preferred lighter colors, maybe a watercolor effect. I liked the detail of the plants and animals, but not the fairies and people.

Have you or your children read this book? What did you think?

LIW song book

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook compiled and edited by Eugenia Garson.

The copy I checked out from the library looks like the one above, but I saw other copies on Amazon with a Garth Williams illustration of Pa with his fiddle on the front.

What I appreciated most about this one was Garson’s research. She looked up every song mentioned in the Little House books, provided a few sentences of background for it (when it could be found), and a quote from the LH book where it was mentioned. Sheet music is provided for all the songs, making me wish I could play the piano enough to pick out the tunes. I was familiar with just a few of them. This would be a nice resource for anyone wanting to learn more about music from this era.

I also read On the Way Home and The Road Back by Laura Ingalls Wilder. These two books have been packaged together with West From Home, Laura’s letters to Almanzo while visiting Rose in San Francisco for the World’s Fair, into one volume called A Little House Traveler. Since I had read West From Home a few years ago, I did not read that one at this time. The first is Laura’s record of moving with her husband and daughter by covered wagon from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri; the second is her journal of traveling back to South Dakota to visit her two remaining sisters 40 years later in an un-air-conditioned Buick. I reviewed them here.

I also wrote Why Laura Ingalls Wilder Is Still Worth Reading because some question whether she is any more. No, she and her family were not perfect. But we can still learn from them.

That’s it for me. How about you? Remember, leave a comment on this post about what you read or did for the challenge before Thursday of next week to be eligible for the drawing.

Update: The giveaway is closed. The winner is Rebekah! Congratulations!

(Sharing with Carole’s Books You Loved)

End-of-February musings

Posted on February 27, 2019 by Barbara Harper

I’ve finally taken the plunge. Some of you know that I am in the process of writing a book. I have the rough draft finished and now have to go back through and work on editing and shaping up. Publishers these days want authors to have a public platform in place before considering their book. So I created an author Facebook page to keep separate from my personal Facebook account. I want to invite you to like and follow my author page here. I probably won’t link every blog post there – just the more devotional ones for now. And I’ll share updates about the book progress as well as general encouragement. I do have a Facebook page that my blog automatically shares posts to, as some prefer to read them there. If I end up posting the same content both places, I’ll probably close down the blog page and just keep the author one. But we’ll keep them as is for now and see how it goes.

February has always been pleasant to me, even though it’s still wintry and cold. It’s a short month, and it brings us one month closer to spring! Two highlights in February for me are Valentine’s Day and my daughter-in-law’s birthday. For scheduling reasons we celebrated each after the official day.

Valentine’s Day vies with Christmas as my favorite holiday. I made my usual “meat hearts” (mini meat loaves shaped like hearts) and chocolate heart-shaped cupcakes. My grandson’s parents suspect red dyes of giving him problems, so we’re trying to avoid anything with red dye. Since most sprinkles and colored sugars for Valentine’s Day have red in them, I looked for non-food decorations and found these cute little cupcake toppers at Target.

My special gift to my family is making a card for each of them. I try to make them according to their color preferences, likes, etc. This was for my husband:

The Cricut machine did all the heavy lifting of cutting that out. I just had to choose the design and glue it together.

This was for Jeremy, who likes foxes:

The fox and paw prints are stickers.

This was for Jason, a coffee-lover who likes blue:

This is for Mittu, my daughter-in-law:

She likes lavender and purple, so I used a heart-shaped punch and several lavender pieces of scrapbooking paper. On the checkered one, I used a corner punch at the bottom.

This was for my grandson, Timothy.

The top cookie shape was done on the Cricut, and I got it a little too big, but it worked out ok. The shape of the bottom one was also done on the Cricut, but the paper on top looked like sprinkles already.

And, finally the last one was for Jesse, who likes red and prefers non-mushy cards. 🙂

Though you could say jam is mushy . . . 🙂 The jam jar and letters were done on the Cricut. The Cricut also had the “You are my jam” letters shaped in an arch, but for whatever reason, they would not come out right. So I found a clipart banner and typed the words on it. There must be a way to type letters in an arch on the computer, but I couldn’t figure it out. Normally I would ask Jesse, but the card was for him. 🙂

Then, it’s always a joy to celebrate our sweet daughter-in-law’s birthday.

I found that cute little birthday cake banner at the grocery store.

This is the card I made for Mittu’s birthday:

The letters were stickers; the square and rectangle shapes were cut with my paper cutter; the hearts were made with punches. I actually did the cupcake freehand, which doesn’t usually work out well! But it came out ok this time. Oh, the texture designs on the background and icing were done with the Cuttlebug embosser.

Those celebrations are not only enjoyable in themselves, but they are bright spots in the long winter and wait for spring. We are starting to see some bulbs pushing through the soil, but we still have some cold temperatures predicted for the next several days.

We experienced a lot of major flooding in our area last weekend after several days of heavy rain. Our house was fine, as it’s on raised ground. But a lot of roads around us were flooded over, including an on-ramp to the interstate.

We’re still adjusting to the loss of my mother-in-law. I wrote a tribute to her here. Since my parents and my husband’s father passed a long time ago, we’re not new to or surprised by grief. But they lived 1,000 and 2,000 miles away, respectively. Adjusting to their being gone took different forms – like missing calling my mom. Since Jim’s mom lived in our home for the last five years, there were triggers everywhere, and changes affected everything from what I buy at the store to how I use my time even to how I load the dishwasher. But she was doing so poorly her last few months, it’s a relief to know that she is no longer in a non-working, silent, crumpled body, and she’s with her Lord, her husband, and her sister. And we know from previous experience that those triggers lessen over time. In fact, in some ways I have felt guilty over enjoying some of the changes, like being free to go anywhere any time without arranging for a caregiver, not having to set up the ramp on bath days, not having hospice people (nice as they were) coming in and out, my husband being able to transfer his work station back into the room she had occupied, etc. But I tell myself that if she could talk to me, she’d probably say something like, “Thank you for your care, but please, go on and enjoy your life.” (Forgive me if I have said this before – I thought I had but couldn’t find it here.)

Something that just occurred to me recently was that my mother-in-law cared for her own parents in various ways for years. They did not live with her, but they lived near-by, and my in-laws were the go-to people when her parents needed help of any kind. Of course they visited other times than when they needed help, and probably needed more help the older they grew. In some way I can’t quite explain, it helped me to realize that she understood what was involved in care-giving, and that I was able to give back to her in that way.

Of course, one thing I am into every month is reading. I read and reviewed these books (titles link back to my reviews):

Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy, a nice imagining of what Anne’s Marilla might have been like as a girl.
Murder in an English Village by Jessica Ellicott, kind of a cozy mystery involving a jet-setting American and a homebody Englishwoman who are friends with opposite personalities and who stumble across buried secrets in a sleepy little post-WWII English village.
Katie’s Dream by Leisha Kelly, the continuing saga of the Worthham family in the post-Depression era. This time Sam’s brother, recently released from prison, brings a little girl he insists is Sam’s, even though Sam never even met the girl’s mother. The story involves untangling the confusion and deciding what’s best to do with a little girl who only wants a home.
Read the Bible for Life: Your Guide to Understanding and Living God’s Word by George H. Guthrie. Excellent resource for just what the subtitle says. Especially helpful in discussing the different genres we find in the Bible and how to get the most out of them.
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, classic riches-to-rags-to-riches story that I had never read before. I am so glad I have now.
Journaling for the Soul: A Handbook of Journaling Methods by Deborah Haddix. Good resource: covers just about any journaling method you could imagine. (Congratulations to Kathie for winning the giveaway!)
I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel. Pleasant musings on the reading life.
On the Way Home and The Road Back by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The first is Laura’s record of moving with her husband and daughter by covered wagon from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri; the second is her journal of traveling back to South Dakota to visit her two remaining sisters 40 years later in an un-air-conditioned Buick.

I’m currently reading Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis by Patti Callahan, Love Is Not a Special Way of Feeling by Charles Finney, and Steal Away Home: Charles Spurgeon and Thomas Johnson, Unlikely Friends on the Passage to Freedom by Matt Carter and Aaron Ivey.

Around the blog, besides the book reviews, Friday’s Fave Fives, and Laudable Linkage:, I’ve shared

It’s Okay to Say It Hurts. “Enduring hardship as a Christian is not just a matter of a stiff upper lip or a smile that glosses over painful circumstances.”
Praying to Love More. “In my ongoing quest to understand what Christian love is and to grow in it, I compiled Bible verses which specifically spoke of praying to love.”
Smelting the Soul. “Instead of being discouraged that God continually shows me the ways in which I fall short, I can rejoice that He is continuing to refine me.”
Why Laura Ingalls Wilder Is Still Worth Reading. No, she and her family were not perfect. But we can still learn from them.

And that about wraps up February! I have an adventure coming up that I look forward to telling you about a little later on.

(Shannan invites us to share our end-of-month round-up posts, what we’re into, what’s keeping us sane. Sharing also with Inspire Me Monday, Literary Musing Monday, Tell His Story, Porch Stories, Let’s Have Coffee, Woman to Woman Word-filled Wednesdays, Faith on Fire, Grace and Truth, Linda’s Book Bag)

Traveling with Laura Ingalls Wilder

Posted on February 26, 2019 by Barbara Harper

I read two short books about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s travels as an adult. They weren’t written with an eye toward publication, at least not in the form she left them. They were just travel journals, notes she made for herself along the way. Perhaps she just wanted to remember certain things about her trips, perhaps she wanted to note details for letter-writing, or perhaps she did plan on incorporating some of the information into future articles or books. But since she did not start writing for publication until seventeen years after her first trip, it seems more likely that these were just notes she kept for herself. Both were published after her death.

The first book, On the Way Home, details Laura’s move with her husband and daughter from De Smet, South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri in 1894. Laura’s daughter, Rose, who was seven at the time, provides an introduction and ending to set the context from her vantage point as a child. Rose had had to stay with her grandparents (Ma and Pa Ingalls) while her parents had diphtheria. Dire prediction were forecast about their health, but they survived, although Almanzo walked with a limp the rest of his life and “was never as strong as he had been” (p. 8). In addition there was a worldwide “panic,” which Rose explained was different from a depression. For these and various other reasons, the Wilder family decided to move, traveling with anther family, the Cooleys. Rose shares details of some of their preparations, like Laura’s sewing to make money. Once Laura “made sixty good firm buttonholes in one hour, sixty minutes; nobody else could work so well, so fast. Every day, six days a week, she earned a dollar” (pp. 11-12). I enjoyed seeing a few glimpses of the Ingalls family through Rose’s eyes, like her “aunt Grace, a jolly big girl,” singing “Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay” (p. 9).

After the family got their covered wagon ready, packed it, and said good-bye to their loved ones, the narrative shares Laura’s notes. Often she jotted down little details like the price of crops, landscape conditions, places they found to bathe or trade, and the weather. (The first day, their thermometer showed 102 degrees inside the wagon!) Of course, as with any trip, there were various mishaps, like a horse running away, causing a later start one day.

Some of her most interesting notes involved the people they met along the way, like a Russian settlement.

Laura’s notes end just after the family’s arrival in Mansfield. Rose takes up the narrative again, describing her father going out every day to search for just the right spot. When he found it, the family dressed up to take the $100 bill they had hidden in Laura’s writing desk to the banker and buy the land. But the $100 was missing. Rose was highly offended that her parents asked her if she had told anyone about it or played with the desk. Since they could not find the money, Almanzo looked for work for a few days while still keeping an eye out for an ideal property. Finally they found the $100 and bought what they later named their Rocky Ridge farm.

To be honest, I have never been fond of Rose. I read one biography of her years ago in which she just did not seem like a likeable person. Then in more recent years I read that she played fast and loose with facts, even in biographies she wrote. So I have never really trusted her. I enjoyed her writing and the scenes from her viewpoint here, but she paints Laura rather harshly most of the time. Then again, Rose seems highly sensitive. For instance, when her father cut wood from the property to sell in town, she greeted him outside when he came back and learned he had sold the whole load. Excited by the news, she ran in to tell her mother. When she “pranced out to tell my father how glad she was . . . he said, with a sound of crying in his voice, ‘Oh, why did you tell her? I wanted to surprise her.'” Rose then writes:

You do such things, little things, horrible, cruel, without thinking, not meaning to. You have done it; nothing can undo it. This is a thing you can never forget (pp. 106-107).

She might have been referring to her father being cruel for his reaction, but I think she’s talking about herself. Somehow she magnified what would have been in the grand scheme of things a minor misunderstanding and disappointment into something “horrible” and “cruel.”

There’s one really odd sentence in Laura’s section. She described hating to leave the Russian settlement where they were camping. As she looked back on the scene:

I wished for an artist’s hand or a poet’s brain or even to be able to tell in good plain prose how beautiful it was. If I had been the Indians I would have scalped more white folks before I ever would have left it (p. 30).

She wasn’t wishing the Russians harm, because she had enjoyed her time there. Looking at it again just now, she seems to be saying if she lived there, she would have put up a fight rather than leave the area – or perhaps she understood the Indians fighting to stay on their land in a way she had not when she was a child.

The Road Back contains Laura’s notes made some forty years later on a trip back to De Smet to visit Carrie and Grace, the only remaining family members. It was interesting reading this right after the previous book, because they covered the same ground, only going the opposite direction, in an un-air-conditioned Buick instead of a covered wagon. Laura was 64 and Almanzo was 74.

I marveled at how many times Laura remarked on the good dirt or gravel roads. Some roads were made of cement, but many were not: yet in that day they still beat the trails or prairies they had come in on.

They had not been back in the forty years they had lived in Mansfield. Laura had written Little House in the Big Woods, but it had not been published yet. So she was not well known as a writer at that point except for her columns for the Missouri Ruralist.

Once again Laura detailed road, weather, crop, and economic conditions of the places they traveled through. She also listed their travel expenses: their first night on the road, they spent $3.42 for gas, food, a night in a cabin, and paper. They got a lot of their news about different areas from filling station attendants. Once again, Laura’s humor winks in places. She described seeing a group of signs along the road that said, “For the land’s sake, eat butter.” When they stopped to eat, she wrote, “I had bacon and eggs and coffee, bread, and for the land’s sake ate the best butter I’ve tasted” (p. 305).

I enjoyed her different observations about seeing again the places and people she had know. She said of Carrie, “She had changed a great deal but I knew her.” (I guess so, after 40 years.)

She waxed a bit more philosophical in this journal. She and Almanzo and those they visited also did some sight-seeing. One interesting stop was observing the carving of Mount Rushmore in progress.

The narrative ends near the end of the trip, where they stopped to eat and call Rose to say they were nearly home. Laura noted that though she didn’t keep up very well with the accounting, the trip cost “$120 for 4 weeks and 2,530 miles” (p. 344) for the trip to De Smet and back.

These two books have been packaged together with West From Home, Laura’s letters to Almanzo while visiting Rose in San Francisco for the World’s Fair, into one volume called A Little House Traveler. Since I had read West From Home a few years ago, I did not read that one at this time. On the Way Home and West From Home had been published as stand-alone books, but The Road Back has only been published here. Rose had On the Way Home published a few years after her mother’s death. Roger Lea MacBride, Rose’s lawyer and heir, found the notes for the other two book in Rose’s papers after her own death. He had West From Home published and wrote the introduction. Abigail MacBride, Roger’s daughter, provided the introduction for The Road Back. It’s interesting that the mode of transportation for the first trip was a covered wagon; for the second, a train; and for the third, a car.

Sprinkled throughout the book are pictures of the Ingalls and Wilder family, their homes, and some of the scenes the Wilders might have seen in their travels. At the end is a short (three-page) biography of Laura, a family tree, photographs of notes children had written to her, and a copy of her last letter to Rose.

I enjoyed visiting with Laura on her travels. Even though her notes were off the cuff and not polished, I enjoyed her powers of observation and descriptions as well as her characteristic humor.

(Sharing with Literary Musing Monday, Carole’s Books You Loved)

One picture is worth a thousand misunderstandings

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Barbara Harper

Imagine a defendant going to trial. He’s told his story to his lawyer and worked with him to lay out all the proofs of his innocence. As the trial begins, the prosecutor introduces just one piece of evidence: a seemingly incriminating photograph. The judge calls for the verdict without giving the defense a chance to say anything. The jury convicts the defendant and the judges sentences him.

Imagine the same scenario, but the evidence is one statement the defendant is known to have made without any context as to its meaning.

“Ridiculous!” you might say. “How can anyone judge a case without hearing both sides?” And you’d be right.

Yet people do this every day. As you are probably aware, a young man was vilified recently on social media for a photograph that seemed to indicate he was disrespecting, if not downright mocking, an older Native American man. But in the following days, more information came out about the scenario, proving there was much more to the story. (I don’t know all the details: I just bring this up as an example of how quickly people rush to judgment before they know the facts.)

Once one of my son’s friends who had never met me thought that I must be pretty grouchy. The reason? Another son had posted pictures of a family outing, and one photo caught me looking quite irritable after waiting outside in the heat for seats in a restaurant for what seemed like an interminable amount of time. Someone else assumed in another group photo that there must have been some underlying hostilities because a few people were sitting with arms folded. Yet the conversation had been as amiable as could be. But these are minor misunderstandings compared to the way people tear each other apart on Twitter with as little substantial cause.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” the saying goes. Yet a picture captures just one moment in time, not the whole story. It doesn’t give context, the events leading up to or coming after, the circumstances behind the scene.

That’s true whether the picture seems bad or good. There are multitudes of articles about people feeling depressed after viewing other peoples’ seemingly perfect lives on social media. We see the perfectly decorated cake, but we don’t see that it has been turned so the best side faces the camera. We see the beautifully redone room, but we missed the part where the clutter was cleared off to the side before the picture was taken. We see the adorable family Christmas photo, but we don’t see the several pictures taken and rejected to get just the right poses and expressions. When we think other people on social media have such perfect lives, we don’t realize that those captures of perfect moments don’t tell the whole story. Nobody has a picture-perfect life all day, every day.

The same is true with isolated statements. Take, for example, the sentence, “I’m going to kill you!” Now imagine it in different scenarios:

Two friends setting up a chessboard
One brother pulling a prank on the other
A young wife being mercilessly tickled by her husband
A jealous man stalking a girl who doesn’t want his attention
A woman trying to escape an abusive relationship

Depending on the context, saying “I’m going to kill you!” might be perfectly innocent, though maybe not very wise to say. Other contexts make the statement more realistic or sinister.

In addition to the folly of rendering judgment based on pictures or individual statements out of context, we can also misjudge scenarios. Imagine a parent hearing a loud crash, running into the living room, and seeing her son with a baseball bat standing by a broken window. Before launching into a tirade based on what seems to have happened, the wise parent calms herself down to ask questions and assess the situation further.

Proverbs 18:13 says in the ESV, “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” I am not familiar with the Holman Christian Standard Bible, but I like their translation of this verse: “The one who gives an answer before he listens– this is foolishness and disgrace for him.” We agree it is foolish, unjust, and harmful for a jury to convict a man over just one photo or statement. It’s just as foolish, unjust, and harmful to play armchair prosecutor, jury, and judge over situations we know little about; it’s even more foolish to do so publicly.

James tells us, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (1:19-20, ESV). Jesus said, as well, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31, KJV).

This is true whether our judgment is good or bad, condemning or helpful. When we rush to “help” someone by pouring forth the benefit of our wisdom and experience without first hearing them out, we do more harm than good. Why? Because the person is wounded and alienated due to feeling misjudged and unheard, and our advice is off base because we’ve misdiagnosed the case.

We’re quick to pull out the “Judge not” card (often out of context) when anyone misjudges us, but we too often rush to judgment of others. Instead, we need to consider first of all whether it’s even our business to judge a particular situation. Then, in Matthew 7:1-5, Jesus admonishes us to take care of any “planks” in our own eyes before we try to take a speck out of someone else’s and to remember “with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” Then we need to hear all the facts and consider carefully and fairly. Withholding judgment due to not knowing all the facts would wipe out the great majority of public judgments on social media and in our persona lives.

“Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24, ESV).

(Sharing with Inspire Me Monday, Literary Musing Monday, Tell His Story, Let’s Have Coffee, Porch Stories, Wise Woman, Woman to Woman Word-filled Wednesday, Faith on Fire, Grace and Truth. Linking does not indicate full endorsement)

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

Hard to believe we’re at the last FFF of February! 1/6 of the year will be over in a few days! Here are some of my favorite parts of the last week:

1. Valentine’s Day observed. We celebrated late because my husband was traveling on Feb. 14.

Valentine

2. Being treated at a restaurant. My son, daughter-in-law, and grandson treated us to lunch last Saturday at a favorite Mexican food restaurant of theirs that we hadn’t tried yet.

3. Lunch with a friend. Always good to catch up and fellowship.

4. Signs of spring.

5. Humor. We’ve been having a lot of rain here in TN. That has led to some humorous memes floating around Facebook:

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I am thankful the temperatures have not been low enough for all this moisture to freeze. And when we had a couple of hours of sunshine one morning, I looked out the window and soaked it in. But I’ll be glad for sunnier skies and dryer weather, hopefully next week.

By the way, I reviewed and will be giving away a book called Journaling for the Soul here if you are interested.

Book Review: I’d Rather Be Reading

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Barbara Harper

Reading Anne Bogel’s I’d Rather Be Reading is aptly subtitled The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life. Anne is the blogger behind Modern Mrs. Darcy, where books and reading are among her primary topics.

In this book Anne covers nearly every aspect of being an avid reader communicating with other avid readers.

Since she writes so much about books, people sometimes feel compelled to divulge their guilty reading secrets: hating books that everyone else loves, never having gotten around to reading a well-loved classic, having books on their shelves for decades that they haven’t read yet.

She discusses the books that we seem to come across at just the right time, even though we picked them up randomly, the books that “hooked” us into lifelong readership, the puzzling love for books that make us cry, the charm of libraries and bookstore, books that we keep because they were given to us or remind us of friends, how reading enhances real-life experiences, “bookworm problems” like never having enough storage space for books or needing to stop just at the best part of a book to go to work or pick up a child from school, the different types of readers we are at different stages of life, the discoveries made in an author’s extra notes (acknowledgements, introductions, afterwords), and much more. Along the way she references a plethora of books she’s read.

Maybe because I am only an occasional visitor rather than a regular follower of Anne’s blog, I didn’t have the same sense of conspiratorial camaraderie I might have had in discussing some of these same topics with friends. But I enjoyed plenty of head-nodding and “me, too!” moments, which, along with Anne’s breezy style, made this book a pleasant read.

(Sharing with Carole’s Books You Loved)

Review and Giveaway: Journaling for the Soul

Posted on February 20, 2019 by Barbara Harper

I kept journals in high school, but I became embarrassed by their content and threw them out. I wish I had kept them, embarrassing as they may have been, for a window into my teenage mind. I made notes from my devotional time for years, but stopped for two main reasons. My writing took up much more time than my reading, and I felt I needed to be listening to God in His Word more than writing my thoughts about His Word. Plus I had stacks of small spiral notebooks that I wasn’t sure what to do with. I rarely went back through them, so I figured they had served their purpose, and I threw them out, too. The closest thing I’ve had to a journal in recent years has been my blog.

But lately I’ve been reminded of the value of writing in connection with our time in God’s Word. Writing helps us process thoughts, and writing helps reinforce and make those thoughts permanent.

About this time, Michele’s review of Journaling for the Soul: A Handbook of Journaling Methods by Deborah Haddix caught my eye, so I asked for a copy for Christmas.

Deborah shares that journaling in the only way she knew it seemed like too much pressure and took up too much time. But as friends shared with her a variety of journaling methods, she hit on one that resonated with her and enhanced her time with the Lord.

Deborah shares several benefits to journaling. In addition to the ones I mentioned above, journaling can help us engage with a text of Scripture more than a cursory reading would provide, “moving you from reading for information to reading for transformation” (p. 13). Journaling enables us to slow down and focus, “documents what God is currently teaching us” (p. 16), “provides a record of our spiritual growth, one that we can look back on as a reminder of God’s persistent work in our lives” (p. 16). And journaling can be a tool to speak to our loved ones and others. The Journals of Jim Elliot profoundly affected me when I discovered it as a young adult.

Deborah has amassed a multitude of journaling methods. Some are written; some are more artsy. Some focus on prayer, some of self-reflection, some on meditating on one particular text, some on on working through a particular passage, some on gratitude lists or prompts.

Deborah recommends that we “start small and keep it simple” (p. 21). First we need to decide the purpose for which we want to journal and then assess which method fits within our interests and talents. She also advises that we evaluate what we’re doing periodically and decide whether it’s working or whether we need to change. She emphasizes that journaling should not be a source of pressure or driven by perfectionism. One of the best pieces of advice, and new to me, was the recommendation of leaving space for an “insight line” at the bottom of the journaling page – when we read back through our journal entries, we can add a line or two about how we’re doing with whatever we wrote about, whether we’ve grown or are still struggling, ways the Lord answered prayer, etc.

I found, as Deborah predicted, that not all of the methods appealed to me. One that did was Inductive Study Journaling – reading through a passage and jotting down our observations (what it says), interpretations (what it means) and application (“How does God want me to live in light of the truth of His Word” [p. 52]). Another was the Spiritual Markers Journaling, taken from the memorial stones Joshua was instructed to gather and set up as a reminder to Israel of His working among them in Joshua 4:2-7, something like the Ebenezers I listed a while back. She has a couple of pages on Truth Journaling developed by Barb Raveling. I’m more inclined towards journaling through a passage of Scripture than responding to seemingly random prompts, though the latter has its value as well. I’m considering a variation on the bullet method. I often read from more than one source, and it’s amazing how often they intersect. I’ve thought of just writing a sentence or two from each source each day.

Of course, some people’s minds work differently. A man in our former church was speaking on a particular topic, and in his presentation he shared some “doodles” he had made during a recent sermon. They weren’t art in the sense of being enhanced by frills and flourishes, but he had just arranged the words of a verse or quote from the sermon in a way that illustrated its meaning just by how it was arranged. I wish I had a sample to explain it. I could not have done it in a week’s worth of thought and effort, much less in a quick few strokes while listening to a sermon. His mind worked in such a way that his note-taking took that form. Some like to study a passage not by outlining and highlighting but by verse mapping (some examples here, here, and here). Some take it a step further with art journaling, like Robin Lee Hatcher’s examples here or Karla Dornacher‘s. I’ve seen some examples of art journaling where the illustration covers over the Scripture itself, which, in my opinion, seems to be exalting it over the words of the Bible. To me, some of these types of methods would work best with one verse, whether meditating on it and/or trying to memorize it.

I’d add a word of caution with some of the more artsy methods. There’s a difference between coloring a verse as a hobby, a method of relaxation, etc., and engaging mentally with the text while drawing and illustrating it. I wouldn’t use coloring a verse as my whole time with the Bible. It does take thought and effort to engage with a text to determine the meaning and the best way to apply it. If drawing and illustrating it does that for a person, that’s fine.

So there are any number of methods for engaging with the Bible text in a way that helps us understand and apply its meaning. Deborah has done a great job detailing the reasons for and benefits of journaling and finding examples for just about every personality and mindset.

When I asked for a copy of this book for Christmas, somehow I ended up with two. So I’d like to share one with one of you. If you’d like to be entered for a drawing to win this book, just leave a comment on this post. A week from today, Feb. 27, I’ll collect all the comments here and use random.org to draw a name. (I’ll take all the comments on this post as entries for the drawing unless you let me know that you don’t want your name entered.) In addition, I must have a way to contact you: if you would, leave your email not in the comments but in the form underneath where you place your name. If you are commenting from a WordPress account, your email fills in automatically with the email associated with your account. And, due to shipping costs, I am only able to ship to the US.

Do you journal? Do you use a particular method?

Update: The giveaway is now closed. The winner is Kathie!

(Sharing with Literary Musing Monday, Carole’s Books You Loved)

Book Review: A Little Princess

Posted on February 19, 2019 by Barbara Harper

In A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, seven-year-old Sara Crewe has grown up in India with her beloved father. Her mother had died years before. Now the time has come for Sara to go to a boarding school in England.

Her father takes her to Miss Minchen’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Because he is rich, he provides for Sara to have her own room, maid, and carriage. Because Sara’s father is rich, Miss Minchen fawns over Sara and sets her as her “star pupil.” Privately she dislikes Sara. Because Sara is so elevated, the older popular girls immediately dislike her.

Sara herself is largely unaware of what being rich means. She seems much older than she is, quiet, thoughtful, and serious. But she has a sweet disposition and befriends other outcasts, like the overweight and not very smart Ermengarde, a motherless younger child named Lottie, and the scullery maid Becky.

Sara likes to pretend, and her most frequent pretend is that she is a princess – not because she is haughty or thinks herself entitled to be a princess, but to remind herself to act as a princess would act. Acting as a princess helps her not to lash or or slap people, even when they deserve it.

Suddenly Sara’s world is turned upside down when her father dies amidst a massive business failure. With no time to mourn or even adjust to the news, Sara is relegated to the attic and now has to work at whatever Miss Minchen assign to her. Sara has no other relatives and apparently there is nothing like children’s protective services in that day and time: Miss Minchen is now responsible for Sara and her upkeep, so she’s determined that Sara will earn her keep.

Sara still pretends to be a princess to help her act right, and she pretends that she is a prisoner in the Bastille to make her situation a little more palatable. But she is sad and miserable. Demands are made on her all day, she’s scolded and denied food for the least infraction. She visits with Becky, who has the attic room next to hers, but Lottie and Ermengarde can only come up when they can sneak in unawares.

At Sara’s lowest point, she wakes up to find “a dream come true” in her attic room – a fire in the grate, good food, warm bed coverings, a stack of books. Where could they have come from?

Though A Little Princess isn’t written exactly in the style of a fairy tale, it has many fairy tale elements: a “princess” in disguise or down on her luck, facing various trials, hidden away in a dark place, only to have things change and put to rights at the end with the villains getting their due comeuppance.

I searched a bit to try to discover Burnett’s purpose in writing the book. I couldn’t discover anything except that Wikipedia said “The novella appears to have been inspired in part by Charlotte Bronte’s unfinished novel, Emma, the first two chapters of which were published in Cornhill Magazine in 1860, featuring a rich heiress with a mysterious past who is apparently abandoned at a boarding school.” Perhaps she just wanted to write a fairy tale set in her time. But Sara certainly seems to be an exemplary heroine: not perfect (she admits to having pride and a temper), but constant in her character, kindness, and interest in others no matter what her circumstances. Maybe Burnett set up a character children could look up to and emulate.

But one factor that stood out to me was the way people treat others based on their economic status. Sara was the same person in good times or bad. Neither she nor her father asked or expected that she be out on a pedestal when they were rich, and certainly no one deserves to be treated as Sara and Becky were just because they were poor. The difference came in how others perceived them. Sure, there are some rich people in every age who feel entitled and deserving of pedestals and accolades. But we need to treat people with kindness and consideration no matter what their circumstances.

There’s some mention of “magic” in this book, but it’s not as pervasive as in The Secret Garden. The view of English imperialism and Indian servants might be offensive to modern sensibilities.

I had never read this book, that I can remember, but some years ago I saw a film version which I’d like to see again now.

I didn’t like the cover (pictured above) of the audiobook I listened to, but I enjoyed the wonderful narration by Virginia Leishman.

C. S. Lewis said the best children’s books are good reading for adults, too, and I agree. I very much enjoyed getting acquainted with this classic.

(Sharing with Literary Musing Monday, Carole’s Books You Loved)