Dear Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss

Dear Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss,

Thank you for writing your thoughts and experiences in a journal the whole of your adult life. I am thankful that they have been made into a book for all to read. I realize you lived well over a hundred years ago.

I feel sometimes that I will never understand this life or my God who walks with me in it. Sin flows through my veins at times as thick as the blood. I try so hard to live as Jesus did and am frustrated when I don't. That is why I am so thankful for the pouring out of your heart into words. It has been so amazing to see how your journey with God transformed you, to see your spirit refined. I am encouraged.

I see how you lost babies as well. I also see how that loss strengthened you but not in the ways I thought they could in my own life. As a matter of fact, I've been so angry at God. There have been moments that if He were to walk into the room I might leave. I imagine making eye contact with Him impossible. Then I read your story. I realize that my heart cries out for the intimacy I knew with Jesus and at the same time it is only myself that keeps me distant from Him. There is so much I don't understand and my words could never do the situation or the journey justice. I am thankful to see God has used you to make it all so much more clear.

I've thought myself distant from our Father because I can neither read His word as I have before nor have I picked up my own journal for sheer stubbornness. I thought that this made me distant and then to learn what you learned through a letter from someone much wiser than you. Our minds, our thoughts, our emotions and feelings have nothing to do with the very deep intimacy we can experience in a real relationship with God. He hears the depths of my soul, sees and is inclined towards its moans, its inaudible songs, each step, and everything else there are no words to describe. My soul was broken and now I see Him working to put it back together but I also find He is not putting the pieces back where they were but is making everything new. Oh, how painful this process is and how glorious. How impossible to be able to explain it to someone who has not experienced it. I pray with all my heart as was done in you that God will continue to make me stronger, purer, kinder, more patient, full of mercy and love for all He chooses to put into my life. He really has chosen to put some people in my life that are at least in my own mind, unlovable, uncaring, and unpleasing and I find my heart loving them and I am humbled. In my own will I would walk away from those who do not bring me comfort or please me but in His they are the very ones my heart desires. I think this is because I have found myself to be such a selfish unloving, ungrateful person and He loves me not just in spite of my faults but loves me including my faults.

I reject Him.

He loves me.

I hold onto unforgiveness.

He loves me.

I shrink back from pain.

He loves me.

I hide from Him.

He loves me.

This darkness of my soul is breaking and though it is painful, His Light is shining through. His restoration done with firm yet gentle hands is completing His good work in me and I find my whole self trembling at the sight of it as a new bride trembles as her bridegroom slips the ring on her hand and I am humbled an elated all at the same time.

Thank you for sharing your life with me. I am encouraged to see that you to wanted it all at once but found it is a lifetime's work to be so much greater than the day before and that though the path seems at times to spiral down or go into dark places, each step really is Stepping Heavenward.

Your sister in Christ,
Katie