Fairest Isle

There is simply nothing like traveling to open the eyes and the mind and the heart to fresh inspirations of God’s Spirit! Some of the most profound moments of my life have been in other countries, on foreign shores, among a language that is not my own (even the Northern United States! ). God changed my heart forever on my first trip to Russia. He spoke to me in an unforgettable way off the coast of Maine. And He restores my soul each and every time I visit my beloved Jekyll Island.

So it was that I anticipated our Maytime sojourn in England with a heart full of glad expectations. God had already lavished so many blessings upon the preparation that I could only imagine what the actual journey would be like. We’d been planning it for years, and I felt the same giddiness attendant upon my wedding day rising to the fore as the date of our departure approached. But this trip didn’t seem like any other—there was a definitive sense of home-going attached to every detail. English literature and English culture are so intrinsic a part of our lives, not to mention an easily-traceable British lineage on both sides, that it was as much a return as a visit.

We kept to the quiet ways, the rural landscapes and pastoral splendors of which England is so wealthy. We stayed in rental cottages in places we really wanted to get to know, catering to our own needs and doing exactly as we pleased every day. There were revisitations of favored spots from previous journeys before we knew each other, beauties we could hardly wait to share with one another. And there were delicious surprises neither of us had dreamed of: a hilltop of bluebells high above the Somerset coast; Cotswold lanes lined so thick with wildflowers they leaned over and brushed the car as we passed; the scent of hawthorn snowy with bloom and the thrill of an English robin singing in the hedge.

Mid-way through our trip we had to agree between ourselves not to set foot in one more antiquarian bookshop. (Philip was fearing for our weight limit…) But I did managed to cart home some treasures: slim volumes of poetry, an early 20^th century wildflower guide, a lovely blue and gilt Little Lord Fauntleroy. We drank more tea and consumed more scones and clotted cream that I would have thought humanly possible. We wandered hand in hand over green pastures musical with the bleating of spring lambs and watched the sun set over the Cotswold hills and ate fresh strawberries bought off the side of the road. And every single day I was literally overwhelmed with the goodness of the Lord. I saw His beauty in every beautiful thing and filled up a whole notebook with my rhapsodic scribblings.

I was refreshed, restored, my creativity invigorated in a totally new way. But I came home not quite whole. Part of myself resides yet among those leafy lanes and hedgerows. And it always, always will.