Sometimes we let our failures from long ago hang over our lives like a shroud, a suffocating web which, although we are barely conscious of it, lessens our enjoyment of life.
I am in
awe at how deftly the Lord can pierce this web in an instant, to bring joy and
freedom, even after fifty years.
For
someone considered academically promising enough to skip two elementary school
grades, and labelled “definitely university material” after high school
testing, I experienced two huge failures, damaging to my self-esteem. I spent two years in grade twelve, my only
two years at an elite private boarding school.
Later, I left university the day before my second year final exams
began, after barely scraping through first year in Modern Languages and Literatures.
There were
lots of reasons to fail grade twelve. Academically, the course was so much superior
to that of public high school as to be on a university level. Then there was the emotional adjustment to
the ingrown world of boarding school. It
did not help that I was a year younger than the other students, unathletic, and
required to fit in with a lot of team captains and athletes. I was also dealing with my father’s
alcoholism, at its peak at home. My
mother told me years later that she had put me into the private school, her old
alma mater, because she thought that I might have a nervous breakdown at home.
The
second year was a happy one, in which I made many new friends. However, I decided to take grade thirteen at
my old public high school, to achieve university entrance. The superior private school English course
stood me in good stead, as I managed to get the highest mark in English composition
of our two local high schools by comparing Thomas Hardy with E.M. Forster, an
author of whom the public school students had never heard.
Then came
the broadening world of university. I
loved the world of new ideas, the atmosphere and many of the courses, but I was
in no way ready academically or emotionally to succeed. I was on a search for
emotional healing, as well as a search for the truth about God. I spent many hours in the offices of the
chaplain and the university psychiatrist, who treated me for depression. Having a need to be needed, I invested time
in helping friends with problems.
I had never
done actual research in my life.
Thinking that it would be plagiarism to write the thoughts of the
reference authors we were given, I wrote my own thoughts in English
essays. Years later, I realized that we
were supposed to prove that we had read and understood the authors’ theses by
summarizing them in our work. (That
would have been much easier than trying to be brilliant myself!) I later helped my sister with her correspondence
courses, understanding this now, and realized how enjoyable the work was, and that
I could really ace it…now…too late.
The
thought of having wasted so much of my parents’ money at both schools was
enough to cause me to beat myself up, inwardly, for years. The assessment of others about my character and
ability filtered into my self-image.
Until the
Lord surprised me, after all those years, by saying to me:
“Frances,
no one can take that wonderful English away from you.”
I smiled
as I thought of Miss Stewart, her gray hair in a French roll, taking us to the
elegant parlour of the private school to listen to Dylan Thomas reading his own
poetry. I thought about my life-long
love of the poetry of T. S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins, acquired
there.
“I have
measured out my life with coffee spoons.”(from The Love- Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot)
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of
daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon…”(from THE WINDHOVER: to Christ our Lord by Gerard Manley Hopkins
And what
fun I had had at university with Chaucer’s The
Canterbury Tales.
“ A Knicht
there was…”(O.K., some of the fun was in having our friend Ann, who had no idea
how to pronounce Chaucerian English, read it…)
Deep within
my soul remain the American novels we studied: Moby Dick, The Sun Also Rises, Portrait
of a Lady, Huckleberry Finn and so many more.
It is,
after all, the learning that matters.
Yes - my
Lord, my God, my best Friend, knows me, and knows how to speak in a positive
and healing way.
…He
restoreth my soul.{Psalm 23:3)
