Lessons From The Blue Castle

I’m linking up at “The Modern Mrs. Darcy” today.

She is hosting a blog carnival with the theme, “The Book That Changed My Life“.

I’ve always liked to read. I used to read a lot of fun fiction books, but my favorite books now tend to lean towards nonfiction. I rarely read fiction at this point in my life.

I tossed several ideas and book titles around while thinking about a book to write about. When I think about books in the context of a big life changing event, I really don’t have a title that instantly comes to mind. I’ve read a lot of books that I think have helped me grow in Christ and in character. I could compile a pretty long list of books that I really, really like and that I think have sound advice and good ideas and have been written by talented men and women. Some of these titles are listed on my favorites page and I keep thinking I will take the time to add to my list. {Everything seems to require time!}

So when this book title popped into my head, it kinda stuck and I kinda liked it and I decided I would write about it:

• It is fiction!
• It’s not really earth shaking or totally life changing or anything like that.
• It was and has been and is a favorite book of mine.
• This author does characters so well.
• There are life lessons that it teaches well.
• This book has life changing events that happen in it-perhaps that’s why it came to mind.
• It ends well-I’m all about happy endings.

The book that came to mind is The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. If you know L.M. Montgomery’s name and if you love Anne or Emily , then you realize why I love this book too. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it!

Really, this book probably isn’t so much life-changing for me, as life-lessony! Hopefully no one minds my linking up anyway!

A short bio of the story:

Valancy Stirling is a woman who is still living with her Mother and Cousin Stickles and she has been “long since relegated to old maidenhood” by her family. She is a meek, quiet creature before whom life stretches as dull and long and well, lifeless.

The second paragraph of the book contains this sentence. “One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.”

This was Valancy’s lot in life. She didn’t really mind so much being an old maid, but there was a sting in the fact that no man had ever sought her or desired romance with her.

As the back of the book says, “All her life Valancy had lived on a quiet little street, in an ugly little house, never daring to contradict her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt. Until the fateful day a letter came from Doctor Trent-and Valancy decided to throw caution to the wind for once and for all…For the first time in her life Valancy said and did exactly what she wanted.

This book is a fiction book, but there are many lessons in it that I like.

• Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself. Because you will never, never please everyone.

• Sometimes we judge people very, very badly by looking only at who we think they are or where they have come from.

• Sometimes kindness comes from unexpected places.

• Sometimes happiness comes from being surrounded by the simplest things we love and enjoy.

• Sometimes we don’t realize just how much someone means to us until some event makes it very real to us.

• Sometimes we think we’re just plain better than others.

• Sometimes something simple we do for someone else, can mean the world to them.

• Sometimes appearances are deceiving.

• Sometimes hurts inflicted by others are hard to overcome or even to forget.

• Sometimes “the trouble with people, is that they don’t laugh enough.” -Valancy Stirling

• Sometimes the propriety of society, is simply a list of rules, that people have made and placed upon everyone, with no Biblical foundation to stand on.

• Sometimes when we think we “know“, God places a situation in our life to show us who we really are.

These are some of the lessons that come to me from the pages of this fun and funny and fictional story. It may not be a true story, but the actions of the characters are very real. Because we all have that thing called “self” in us and we all struggle with caring more about “self” than others!

I want this book to be life-changing for me in this way. By being able to apply all the life lessons that I listed, more fully in my own life. Quite simply, I fail in every area.

More than anything I want Him, my Savior, to keep changing me and molding me and making me less, less, less of me.

To step into my life and change it.

*the links in this post are my affiliates!