More Beautiful Than Anne’s

When I was a teenager, my parents took our family on a trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada—the setting of the “Anne of Green Gables” books.  This was the Holy Grail of trips for our family, as we were all Anne fans, having listened to Mom read the whole series to us and most of us having read them on our own, as well.  Before we left on the trip, I had bought a Larnelle Harris (a gospel singer) tape—thinking that if the flight there was scary, I could distract myself by listening to Larnelle’s beautiful voice on my Walkman.  The flight was fine, but I listened to that tape the whole way there, anyway.  I’d never heard a voice like Larnelle’s.  And when he sang, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” even my skin praised God with goosebumps.

When we got to Cavendish, the town that was the setting for most of the “Anne” books, I was in heaven.  It was like the books came to life—the red dirt roads, the waves crashing against the cliffs and breaking on the rocky beaches—I had such a clear picture of Anne and Diana that I would not have been at all surprised to run into them.  Mom and Dad had rented a cabin for us near the beach and the other “Green Gables” sites, too.  So on our second day there, I put my headphones on and walked up near the house that the fictional “Green Gables” was based on.  And I walked the paths behind the house that, in the book, Anne had nicknamed “Lover’s Lane.”  I sat on a tree stump after I’d walked for a little while, and as I sat there, Larnelle began to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” on my Walkman.  It was a transcendent, transformative moment for me.  I was sitting there, in “Anne country,” listening to my favorite hymn.  And in that moment, I claimed the words of that hymn for myself.  I listened to the lyric, “Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!” right as the sun broke through the trees above me, and I felt spot lit by God’s love.  Sitting there in the sunshine, I prayed about the future I dreamed of as a writer and told God all the other dreams I had for my life, too.

Twenty-five years later, I think of the young, innocent girl I was in Prince Edward Island, wanting an exciting story like Anne’s, and I think of myself now—a recovering addict and alcoholic.  In most ways, that young girl and I aren’t the same person.  Life changes you when you’re brought to your knees because of pain, depression, and addiction.  And yet, I still believe, as I did then, in the power of words, love, and imagination, even though most of the dreams I had for myself then didn’t come true.  Some were impractical, some were impossible, some I destroyed by the choices I made.  But my God was there through every minute of it.  He loved that young girl who idealized life and believed that people in fiction truly existed somewhere.  And He loves me, the woman who threw away whole chapters of her life because of her addiction—and who is now writing the rest of her life story.

When I look back over my story so far, with all of its joy and sadness and brokenness and beauty—I am in awe of God’s faithfulness to me. On every single page of my story, I see Him.  He was faithful—even when I wasn’t.  He gave me new dreams and helped me let go of the broken ones.  He gave me a life and a husband and family that are far more beautiful than any I could have dreamed of for myself.  If I could go back and say one thing to that girl who loved the story of Anne and had her whole life ahead of her, it would be, “Trust Him—He is faithful.  Cling to Him when life is overflowing with joy and when life is so hard, it almost breaks you.  In the end, your story is going to be even more beautiful than Anne’s.”

And oh, it has been!—all because of His faithfulness to me.  All I have to offer Him in return is my faithfulness and this, my hymn of praise: