Maiden Hopes

I just love it when I come a across a passage in a book that rings with a truth I have experienced.  I’ve known longings such as these expressed in the excerpt below.  And I’ve known the sweetness of a desire fulfilled.  Any word of encouragment that I could offer to unmarried girls that wish to be married is this:  Don’t be afraid to ask God to give you the desires of your heart.  How He loves to hear us ask for things in accordance with His will!  And if He seems to delay, we may rest assured that it is only for our greater joy and His greater glory.

"What is it," thought Elaine, in sudden self-searching, "that I seek?  What must this man be to whom I would surrender the keeping of my heart?  What do I ask that is so hard to find?

"Am I seeking for a god?  Nay, surely not, but only for a man.  Valorous he must be, indeed, but not in the lists–’tis not a soldier, for I have seen them by the hundred since I left my home in the valley.  ‘Tis not a model for the tapestry weaver that my heart would have, for I have seen the most beautiful youths of my country since I came forth upon my quest.

"Some one, perchance," mused the Lady Elaine, "whose beauty my eyes alone should perceive, whose valor only I should guess before there was need to test it.  Some one great of heart and clean of mind, in whose eyes there should never be that which makes a woman ashamed.  Some one fine-fibred and strong-souled, not above tenderness when a maid was tired.  One who should make a shield of his love, to keep her not only from the great hurts but from the little ones as well, and yet with whom she might fare onward, shoulder to shoulder, as God meant mates should fare."

 from At the Sign of the Jack o’ Lantern by Mrytle Reed