Love is a pox...

I seldom indulge in doubt.

But there are some things as a kid that the adults said were "givens" in life that I'd always written off as exaggerations. I'd always doubted a certain set of things. You know the sort. "Time will go so fast ten years will pass like a month." Really? Come on now-I'm not that dumb. The "time-flies" promise was something I always denied. At seventeen, eighteen, I was not ready to accept it. Not quite yet. But my reticence to acknowledge there might be something in it after all was weakening, though I wasn't aware.

Because this year has been huge in one way: A pox has broken out. The pox. 

When you're fourteen years old you sit on the bed with mama beside you and talk about "the future" in comfortable terms of far-awayness. You sigh and lament the fact that there's nobody around to marry, were you old enough anyway. "Don't worry," mama says. "Once it starts happening you won't know what has started. Everyone will start dropping like flies."

You snort.

You chuckle in a "Yeah, like that will every happen" way.

You forget about it.

Until you're twenty. And then. Then. Then the pox does break out.

After coming home from a trip for the second time this fall and finding (for the second time!) that another friend has found herself a "matchless match" (and what's up with this happening every time I leave town?) I felt rather kooky. Was it just me or was there an inordinate amount of "matches" being made this year? How many was it? An alarming amount, it seemed. Could it be that Mama was right and once it started it wouldn't stop? Ahem.

This afternoon I sat down and decided to count--for sanity's sake--how many friends and acquaintances of mine had begun a relationship {or were bordering on it} this year? The total took me by storm.

14.

14 couples.

That makes 28 if you're counting. But who's counting?

28 people I know (more or less) who have coupled off this year. And this isn't counting the people I know who have gotten married or are engaged currently.

O.o

I feel...

...not jealousy.

More like bewilderment.

 Confusion and a little kick-back defense to find that those adults were right all along.

Love is a pox. A pox the whole world succumbs to by and by.

Well jeegley-clambake. This is a to-do.

It's one of those cases where you find the world flying out of control, out of your grasp, and growing up suddenly looks rather serious and cock-eyed and not at all like you thought it would be. It's exciting because obviously some things are finally moving along and little people are growing up and meeting people and loving people and marrying people and having more little people. But it's going so fast.

A busy summer and fall of campaigning, ministry, and writing.

I finally slow down, turn around, and three of my best friends are in relationships.

Several good friends follow suit.

I hear tell rumors of the same happening in my extended circles.

What on earth happened? I'll tell you. We grew up. And once you grow up beautiful things start to happen. Beautiful, scary, adventurous things. It's real now and I find the adults were right.

...about love.

...about time.

...about life.

I have seen things change so fast it'll give you whiplash. I actually started a Pinterest-board because of this new revelation of having grown up. It's inspiring new ideas, new thoughts, new inspirations. So here's to adventure. Here's to wearing a neck-brace if you have to. Here's to buckling your seat-belt, checking your parachute, and waiting for the drop.

Here's to a bit of daring.

Trios are my lot in life.

"I feel it a shelter to speak to you."

-Emily Dickinson

It's funny to think about life these days.

Dad always likes to remind us that the essence of life is Relationships.

Relationships between us and God first, then between us and our families, then sweethearts, and friends, and so on down the line.

I have such a variety of relationships right now that it really makes one's head dizzy. Especially when you think about the intricacy and complication of some of the individual ones. I have family relationships, I have here and now relationships with friends I see fairly often. I have relationships with friends I see not-so-often. I have a whole group of online friends like you girls, a group of writing friends, a group devotional blog friends, and then my relationships with my characters. (Which, for a writer, are real ones!)
These relationships vary in intensity and complexity. :D For instance: Levi and I are nearly twenty years apart, so that means that when he is just getting married I'll be The Older Sister Rachel who may or may not be married and will probably stand like a specter in the corner smiling benevolently while Levi swaggers down the aisle with a beautiful bride on his arm. ....it's strange to think about the future in that respect. :)

Then you have current-day relationships like making sure I'm spending quality time with all of the wee ones who surround me right now. I have five younger sisters...am I behaving in a way I want them to remember me on that day when Levi and Grace are starting families on their own?

Then, of course, you have what I have mentally termed "The Triangle" which consists of me and Daniel and Abigail...Daniel and Abigail increasingly close and me tagging along behind, learning to let them go and love this new relationship between the three of us. It is going very well, I think. I am tranquil and peaceful and make fun of them for setting their watches in the Lover's Time Zone which has no concept of hours and minutes. ;)

It's actually very funny to think back on my life and how the Lord has prepared me for this Triangular season. You see, much like Anne Shirley always had her twins, I've always had my Trios. It started five days after I was born when Katie Wilson was born. We've been friends since that first day, along with her older sister, Morgan. I grew up learning the fine art of busting that myth that "Two's company, three's a crowd." It just couldn't be true for me so I didn't let it be true.

Then when I got to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen...somewhere around there, I met two more dear sisters who made up my second trio: Joanna and Maryanna. Our relationships weren't perfect then either. We had to work out the kinks of spending enough quality time with each person. And really, I've always been on the business end of the trio. I've always been the one dividing myself between the two. :] (At least in these cases)

Right now I have a triple set of trios...Morgan, Katie, and I, Joanna, Maryanna, and I, and Daniel, Abigail, and I.

"Trios are my lot in life!" ;)

God knew that He had this season between Daniel and Abigail coming up and He's been training my since I was five days old for it. :D Isn't that wild? But He does work in these ways sometimes and I am so glad that I have some experience in dealing with a threesome so that getting used to these new dynamics isn't as painful as it might have been.

...But it still feels at times like I'm stuck in a period-drama....everyone getting married and moving off and "saving China." ;) Ah....that's life! <3

Avonlea--Love of my heart

I had forgotten how much I loved Anne of Green Gables. It has been years since I had watched the movies and somehow they had faded into a pleasant, girlhood memory and little else. I thought of Anne with gentle, patronizing complacency, but she was not alive to me anymore.

Then a blogging friend hosted an Anne of Green Gables week and part of that girlish love was revived. And then...and then we borrowed the films from the library and my heart was ripped in two and pieced back together with a glorious stitchery of the red Avonlea roads and Anne-esque dreams, the blue blue sea and those simpler days. I literally sat dumbfounded, wondering how I could ever have forgot it. Forgot the precious story with its precious people.

I sat on the couch with my sisters, watching 7 year-old Abigail experience Anne for nearly the first time in her life. That light in her eyes was me all over again. How could I forget? 

Leah and I had an Anne of Green Gables marathon last night and watched the movie all evening long. I laughed over Anne's scrapes, cheered over her triumphs, fell in love over Gilbert (*giggle*) and generally was transported. As I went up to bed last night it struck me--I had tasted my life again as it was seven or eight years ago. I was only twelve and my womanhood stretched long before me like a flickering afternoon shadow, untouched.  I had simple hopes, simple pleasures.

The memories came flooding over me, unsought but powerful...

...traipsing through our neighborhood clad in a pinned up tablecloth for lack of a proper Victorian skirt...

...my first attempts at a pompadour...

...laying on Dad's trailer with a single red rose clasped to my breast, pretending I was Anne who, in turn, pretended to be The Lady of Shalott...

I hereby declare I want to name one of my daughters "Anne" :)

I hadn't realized how much that Anne-girl has shaped my girlhood and my life. I learned to dream in Avonlea. I learned to imagine, to write, to create, to love. Everyone has their soul-book; that one piece of literature that stands above all else and speaks to their heart. Anne of Green Gables is mine, for in it I realized that a simple girlhood is mine for the taking whenever I choose to walk that road to Avonlea. 

Yes. I caught a glimpse of how far I've come. I'm turning twenty years old in a matter of a few short months. According to Anne and Miss Stacey, my character will be much formed by that point. I cried last night, hardly knowing why, but it had something to do with the fact that I have lived those "growing up" years that once seemed to loom so glorious and frightening on the horizon of my twelve-year-old imagination. I stand now where the brook and the river meet, so to speak, and I tremble slightly at the force of that great river, wondering whether the brook with her purling windings and wind-song mightn't be the pleasanter one after all. But the pull of the tide lures me on to the river, onto his broad, glistening wings and I must follow.

I am grown up now...

Quite grown up.

And yet I know that anytime the cares of being a young lady press to close about me, all I have to do is come winging back to the dear arms of my old friends in Avonlea...somehow life is simpler, sweeter when viewed from the front porch of Green Gables.

Never grow too old, girls. Never forget your girlish loves. 

Never become too wise to fall in love with Gilbert...

Someone please find one of him for me! <3

 ...too sober to laugh over the mouse drowned in the pudding sauce....

.... too grown up to remember the hopes and dreams of your girlhood years.

 These things are a precious gift. <3