Stepping Heavenward

Oh, the suspense! Was anyone wondering what book I would recommend next? Here it is. It's the book I read during our lovely 10-day vacation entitled Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss.

It's the journey of a young girl as she grows into her faith, starting at age 16 and continuing through her later years. The book is actually her personal journal complete with refreshingly honest thoughts, a gripping storyline and faith that is challenged and strengthened through her experiences.

As a young girl she writes about her mother who went away daily to pray and seek the Lord for her children and family. She and her brother knew it was the time of day that their mother enjoyed more than anything. They actually felt the prayers of their mother in their lives and were thankful to receive them. At that point in her life she honestly recorded the reasons why she felt unable to pray, the distractions and difficulties surrounding prayer...reasoning I could definitely attest to. Later on in her life she had become like her mother, a woman of prayer. She couldn't get through one day with her prayer time with the Lord and her children felt the same way that she and her brother once felt about their mother. A place of spiritual maturity she felt she could never reach was finally in grasp.

I think this spoke to me because so often I desire to be all-wise, all-understanding, and all-Godly overnight. I pray for something one night that the Lord might help me change and then get frustrated when it isn't gone the next morning. I see older women in the church and wonder why I can't be as wise as them. I forget that these things take time. Most likely they are wiser because they are older and have been through many more experiences than I have. They have allowed the Lord to speak to them through their daily experiences and eventually those days turn into months and months into years. I trust that the Lord is maturing me, it's just harder to see when I'm with myself everyday and I see how often I fall short. Seeing her journey in the book allowed me to see what hopefully the Lord is doing in me now...refining me slowly but surely, in His timing.

I highly recommend this book and I also recommend keeping a journal so that you can go back and read each year how far you've come each year in your spiritual journey. In the past I wrote in my journal furiously...ripping through journals in a month. I'm going to try to be better about it this year so I'll be able to look back. One other thing I have been doing since Taylor Joy was born is writing in a journal for her...prayers, thoughts, memories of things that she did or said, encouragement and praise. I want her to be able to look back one day and know that the Lord's promises are true and that her life has been covered in prayer from day one. I believe it will be a treasure when she's older.

Enjoy the book while you are reading! Those 300 pages go very quickly!