Thursday, September 2, 2010

A New Favorite

I am a huge fan of the movie Anne of Green Gables. In my post-mission, pre-marriage days, I had roomates who introduced me to the Anne movies. Whenever one of us was sick, or just having a really horrible day, we would have an Anne marathon.

There is some controversy over when this specifically happened, but around the time that Jeremy and I got married we found the Anne books in a little bookstore for not much money. I had never read the books and decided that I would like to. Jeremy bought them for me.

That was 11 1/2 years ago.

I don't know why I never actually read them. I started the first one and only got a couple of chapters in before I stopped. Every once in a while Jeremy would harrass me about not reading the books.

For Mothers' Day this year Jeremy got me the set of dvd's . It had been on my wishlist FOREVER and I was super excited. What is even more exciting is that I now have a daughter old enough to appreciate them with me. So the day after Becca broke her collar bone this past summer, when she was in a lot of pain and couldn't really do more than just sit, I asked her if she wanted to watch the first one. She LOVED it! Within 24 hours we had watched all 3 movies! I was in heaven.

That sparked my interest once again in reading the books.

Well, with the craziness of summer (kids at home, YW camp, pioneer trek...) I didn't get to read much, but finally, last night, I finished reading Anne of Green Gables.

The point of this post isn't to tell you a long, boring story about reading a book that I bought almost 12 years ago. The point is to share with you my new favorite quote. It inspired me to a feeling of gratitude for my life, that isn't exactly what I dreamed of, but suits me perfectly.

"...but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joys of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!"

"'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world,'" whispered Anne softly.

Like Anne, I am a dreamer. And though the dreams that I hold dear don't always come true in the way that I dream them, "flowers of quiet happiness" bloom along my path, "the joys of sincere work, and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship" are mine, and there always is a "bend in the road!"

Indeed, "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world."