This little verse got stuck in my head a long time ago and refuses to leave, and I think that is because of the circumstances under which I ran across it... and those will require some backstory.
The first TV show I remember watching was Little House on the Prairie. Which lead to the first book I ever read (you guessed it!), Little House on the Prairie. I'll blog later about the disappointment that arose from that experience; suffice to say, I was obsessed with Laura Ingalls' world. And why not? Neither the TV show nor the book did a lot of justice to what I now know was the hard, hard life the the frontier family in the 1880s lived. Plus, the show made it seem that most problems in 1880s farm life could be solved by Charles & Caroline's wisdom in one hour or less, or possibly two hours for the really tough ones. (Full disclosure: my mother didn't let me watch the really depressing episodes, so I knew nothing of the fire that killed Mary's baby & Alice Garvey until I was an adult.)
Anyway! In the course of my Little House-addled 10-year-old life, I ran across this verse on a "verse a day" calendar. I was stunned. In fact, I was horrified. I took it to my mother, to confirm that it really was in the Bible and the calendar writers didn't make it up. I then went into a week-long mourning that I had been sinning by being so in love with the Little House way of life. (Which must have been really fun for my mother, by the way.) At the end of it, I resigned myself to not longing for the 1880s as I had done until then, and instead trying to enjoy my 1980s life for what it was. After all, Laura didn't have TV or a huge library full of books to read, as I did.
There you have it: Backstory done & the effect of this verse on my innocent 10-year-old brain narrated. Tomorrow: adult perspective.
2 comments:
That's great. I look forward to hearing your adult perception of this verse.
I think it's great that you can remember your thoughts on a verse back when you were a ten year old!
Ha ha. I wouldn't remember if I hadn't been so upset by it. It's like the only New Year I remember clearly before I was about 12 is 1985, and that's because that was the year that I "got it" in terms of what a new year meant... and I was so sad to say good-bye to '85. I had to go off & cry for a while, I was so upset. :)
So there ya have it... emotions = memory.
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