Pauline's Bookshelf: Stepping Heavenward

I'd use book covers for these posts, but copyright law is kind of convoluted and I don't want a DCMA notice.

Stepping Heavenward was a lovely read! It’s a fictional diary by Elizabeth Prentiss, following the life of a girl named Katherine Mortimer. One of my mentors gave it to me during a phase I went through where I was rather caught up in trivial worries of this world. In my journal I wrote of it, “This book is such an encouragement! A delightful breath of air, relieving such a sense of suffocation – and I have only reached chapter seven.” Part of this “sense of suffocation” came from being mired in the filth of some exceedingly worldly books I was attempting to analyze. When a Christian is entrenched in a field of godless thinking, they can only feel suffocated and depressed – which is what happened to me.

Now that you know where I was when I started reading Stepping Heavenward, let me tell you some of my favorite parts of the book!

My first realization that I would enjoy this read came when I saw the frivolity and impulsivity of the protagonist, sixteen-year-old Katherine Mortimer, or Katy. (“How dreadfully old I am getting! Sixteen!”) Though Katy is a fictional character, she is more genuine than some girls I know, including myself. This book is set in the 1830s-1850s, but young Katy has much in common with teenage girls of today: a tendency to oversleep, a fierce devotion to her BFF, and even a messy bun as her go-to lazy hairdo. I didn’t know messy buns were a thing back then!

But aside from her lighthearted thoughts (or “levity,” as she would call it – this book was published in the 1800s, after all), young Katy also struggles with how to live the Christian life. She promises herself she’ll pray more, control her temper, and exercise the discipline of self-denial, but this doesn’t work and she constantly berates herself for her failings. After an honest conversation with her pastor, Dr. Cabot, in which Katy admits she doesn’t know if she loves God or not, she still doesn’t have all the answers. And that is okay. Many people who grew up in Christian homes could relate to this conversation – when one has been raised by judicious Christian parents, says Dr. Cabot, one cannot identify a turning point in their lives in which they turned to God. “The question is not whether you ever gave yourself to God, but whether you are His now.”

I know what this is like. When I was eleven, I thought I wasn’t saved because I never recited that prayer that’s always printed on tracts. So I snagged a friend at church and asked her to lead me through it. Looking back, I don’t think I understood anything at all! I didn’t truly fall in love with Jesus until I was fourteen and had read Authentic Beauty by Leslie Ludy, which presented our Lord in an intensely personal way.

As Katy comes to the same understanding I found, her joy fills the pages. But she has to learn contentment by the only means possible: sorrow. The loss of family and friends, a broken engagement, and poor health give Katy plenty of reason to mourn – and to seek out her Savior. The journal spans twenty-seven years and ends on an overwhelmingly enraptured tone in the midst of chronic illness: “Yes, I love everybody! That crowning joy has come to me at last. Christ is in my soul; He is mine; I am as conscious of it as that my husband and children are mine; and His Spirit flows forth from mine in the calm peace of a river whose banks are green with grass and glad with flowers. If I die, it will be to leave a wearied and worn body and a sinful soul to go joyfully to be with Christ, to weary and to sin no more. If I live, I shall find much blessed work to do for Him. So living or dying, I shall be the Lord’s.”

True to the style of the era, the writing is verbose and decidedly untweetable, but I’ll try to pick the more succinct of my favorite lines:

“[Mother says] I am growing careless about my hair and my dress. But that is because my mind is so full of graver, more important things. I thought I ought to be wholly occupied with my duty to God. But Mother says duty to God includes duty to one’s neighbor and that untidy hair, put up in all sorts of rough bunches, rumpled cuffs and collars, and all that sort of thing make one offensive to all one meets.” (Chapter IV)

 “Moral – Mothers occasionally know more than their daughters do.” (Chapter V)

“Duty looks more repelling at a distance than when fairly faced and met.” (Chapter VI)

“It is not optional with God’s children whether they will pay Him a part of the price they owe Him and keep back the rest. He asks, and He has a right to ask, for all you have and all you are.” (Chapter VI)

“One need not be fanatical in order to be religious.” (Chapter VII)

“The only true way to live in this world, constituted just as we are, is to make all our employments subserve the one great end and aim of existence, namely, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” (Chapter VII)

Many of my favorite quotes are from the earlier chapters of the book, when Katy is around my age and I relate most to her then. Later chapters tell of her dealings with the disappointments in married life, difficult in-laws, and lessons learned in the crucible of motherhood – all things I have yet to experience, but I hope that the truths presented here will help me prepare myself for my future.

I give this book six out of five stars and recommend it to anyone struggling with how to live in a heaven-minded manner while dealing with earthly suffering.