housewives of plymouth colony

I'm sure if the Bravo channel (or television) existed in the 1600's, they would have carried "The Housewives of Plymouth Colony". Because these were some tuff chicks. Most of them came from wealthy, comfortable backgrounds and dutifully followed their husbands across the ocean to settle the harsh and untamed wilderness of New England.

I've had to read a lot of Early American literature this semester, and it's eerie just how similar the voices in all the stories, journals, and poetry are:

*Your house and all your worldly possessions burn down: Praise God


*Your children die one by one from starvation, cold, and, dysentery: Praise God


*Half your family gets hatchet-ed in the head in front of your eyes during an Indian attack: Praise God


*Your haven't heard from your husband who left for business months ago and fear him shipwrecked: You got it....Praise God.

God and His will were pondered in every thought. Searched for in every instance. Most in my class laugh at these women, saying they used God as "a crutch", as if their own fortitude and ingenuity counted for nothing. And, I, sitting mostly silent, couldn't help but think....

But, the women were right.

God is in everything. Without Him, life would just be sad and hard and meaningless. In fact, I found I could relate a WHOLE lot to Puritan Pilgrim women.

One in particular spoke to me as if she and I were kindred spirits swapping stories. Her name was Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, the wife of a minister in the town of Lancaster, Massachusetts. Not only do we share the same after effects of a quaint 17th century sickness, but we share the same passion towards trying to make sense of our heavy proportion of trial through words.

In 1676, while her husband was away, Mary's house was attacked and burned by Wampanoag Indians. Her sister, brother-in-law, young nephew, and many of her neighbors were killed in front of her.She herself was shot in the side, and the seven year old daughter she was holding was also shot (and died in her arms days later). The Indians took her and 24 others captive, separating them, and marching them about the woods and countryside --changing camps twenty times. During that time, she was badly wounded, near starving, mocked, freezing, beaten, put to hard labor, and ever unsure if she would be allowed live from day to day. They told her they had killed her husband and eaten her son. 

One kind Indian gave her a Bible he had stolen in exchange for her knitting him a pair of socks. That book became her sole comfort and possession. After three months, she was finally released for the ransom of 20 pounds that her husband (who wasn't killed after all, nor was her son) and many others worked to raise. Seven years later, she decided to write her story.

 I imagine if blogs existed back then, she probably would have had one and used it to reach out to others who had been through similar experiences, as she often described feeling separate from those around her due to the nature of what she had passed through and the changes it wrought upon her mind and spirit.

I can relate.

 Though a 400 year age gap divides us, what she wrote could easily be something I wrote:

"Before I knew what affliction meant, I was ready sometimes to wish for it. When I lived in prosperity, having the comforts of the world about me, my relations by me, my heart cheerful, and taking little care for anything; and yet seeing many, whom I preferred before myself, under many trials and afflictions, in sickness, weakness, poverty, losses, and cares of the world, I should be sometimes jealous least I should have my portion in this life, for as the scriptures say "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" (Hebrews 12:6)"

So she was saying that she thought herself too blessed and wondered if God didn't love her enough to inflict her a bit since it was that affliction, she believed, that set apart the best people she knew. Have you ever wished that? Or maybe sought to find problems in your life--the one that is actually pretty darn perfect?  Anyway, she goes on,

"But now I see the Lord had his time to scourge and chasten me. The portion of some is to have their affliction by drops, now one drop and then another; but ...like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food did the Lord prepare to be my portion. Affliction I wanted and affliction I had, full measure, pressed down and running over. Yet I see, when God calls a person to anything, He is fully able to carry them through and make them see and say the have been gainers thereby."

How I have felt a similar flood of trial pour into my life over the last six years! How, too, have I felt that divine carrying. And then...the unexpected blessings that come from such a period in life-- according to Mary, and myself. The blessing of perspective, of patience, of a strength inside you never thought possible. The blessing of refinement:

"If trouble from smaller matters begin to arise in me, I have something at hand to check myself with, and say, why am I troubled? I have learned to look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under them. As Moses said, "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord."

True in 1685. True today. So, may you ever be grateful should your trials come not at all, or gradually, in drops. But ever grateful, too, should you be in the midst of a flood of trial. It can all be anointed to your good. And really, it's probably not as bad as being a slave to hostile Indians. Yup. :)