Stepping Heavenward

No, this isn't a post about building our new staircase... That will come in about 6 months (fingers crossed!).  It's a post about a book I just finished: Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss. Originally published in 1869, this book is a favorite of my best friend, Kirsten. I flew through it, thoroughly enjoying the young woman's journey to godliness, as seen through her journals.  I just need to copy a couple of quotes for my own personal reference and thought this is as good a place as any. 
You may or may not have noticed my book lists on the right hand side of my blog.  I determined early in the year to READ!  I have always loved to read, yet I have not been very diligent about doing it over the last few years. I wonder why...  But, I'm excited to look at the list of books completed!  It has been a worthwhile undertaking!

On marriage...
"The coming of each new child strengthens and deepens my desire to be what I would have (my marriage) become, makes my fault more odious in my eyes, and elevates my whole character.  What a blessed discipline of joy and of pain my married life has been; how thankful I am to reap its fruits even while pricked by its thorns."  p. 230

On children...
"Martha says I shall now have one mouth the more to fill and two feet the more to shoe, more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure or visiting, reading, music and drawing. Well! This is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other. Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which it dwells is worthy all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother's heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest!"  p. 229