Jane Eyre

A favorite past-time of mine is soaking in a warm bath (hot baths make me itchy) and reading a good book. Before my kids were born, I might spend 2 hours in the bathtub, then the water turned too cool and I had to get out. My mother-in-law really turned me on to reading when she shared her Francine Rivers "Mark of the Lion" series with me. I would read anything by her or by Ted Dekker. This week I have been able to get back to relaxing in the tub (though not for 2 hours). After a long, hard day, I was talking to my mom (whining to her is more like it), and she suggested I take a book to the tub and relax. The only book that I hadn't read in a long time was Jane Eyre (my copy from high school). I read a passage today that blew me away, and I want to share it with you...

"What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous impalpable principle of life and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature; whence it came it will return, perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man- perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No, I cannot believe that: I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all;it makes eternity a rest- a mighty home-not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushed me too low; I live in calm, looking to the end."
-Helen from Jane Eyre