take heart

Like many other women, I have enjoyed the works of Jane Austen, particularly "Persuasion" and "Pride and Prejudice." She captures so perfectly what is elegant and proper to ladies, and describes the yearning of a heart to be loved. She speaks of grandeur and estates and maids and groundskeepers. As I was reflecting on this the other day while I was weeding my garden, I started to have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that I was about to get a lecture, sometimes known as my time with the Lord. He had something he wanted me to think about.

Who has deemed this to be proper? A love story written by a woman who never married. Have women been duped into thinking they have a husband less than perfect because he does not have the social clout of Mr. Darcy? Or that he is lacking because he cannot sit through an hour of Brahms without thinking that it is his own lullaby and sleep away?

At the time when Austen wrote about the finer things of life, there was a different breed of man across the pond in America fighting for a different way of life. These men looked and acted differently. They were fighting for freedom, for their faith...they were fighting to live to see the next day. They loved their God and their family and the right to see justice for every person.

The Lord asked me, "What do I say is important in a man?" My mind was flooded with the character of a Godly man: honesty, obedience to the Lord, caring for others, generous, hard working, just, and wise. Those things matter. Ripped jeans and proper etiquette can take a second row. God looks to the heart and judges a man as such. I have looked to my husband's heart, and do you know what I have found? A good man. And in that I can be so very thankful!