An Interview with Madeleine L'Engle
by Sharon Donohue
Photo credits: Christianity Today, Inc.
"For me, God was the one who took the side of the underdog; the people God chooses are always the flawed ones, the failures.”
If there’s one thing that’s true of all great storytellers, it’s that the characters they create are born out of their own lives. Madeleine L’Engle, author of many award-winning books, including A Wrinkle in Time, is no exception.
Madeleine grew up in an apartment in Manhattan, a home that harbored her penchant for reflection and imagination. She was an only child, born to her parents after 20 years of marriage, but a much wanted child. And yet, as Madeleine puts it, “The pattern of their lives was already well established, and a child was not part of that pattern.” Evenings found her parents having a quiet dinner at eight o’clock, while Madeleine enjoyed her meal on a tray in her room, her feet on her desk, a book on her chest. So Madeleine drew great contentment in a life of her own, surrounded by many books, the influence of loving, artistic parents, and the solitude that so often led her into an interior dream world.
That world sheltered her from vestiges of World War I—but not completely. Madeleine’s father, a journalist and foreign correspondent, suffered lung damage from the mustard gas that infiltrated trenches during the war. By the time Madeleine was 12, the Depression had descended, and her father’s ailing health led them to the clean, dry, and affordable climate of the French Alps. Her parents sent her to a Swiss boarding school, an attempt to protect her from their pain. Her father was dying, and her mother was absolutely drained.
Madeleine’s life took a joyful turn as she entered high school and then college. There she hit her stride, enjoying the recognition of teachers and peers. After graduating from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, she returned to New York, where she began her career as a writer and an actress.
While serving as an understudy, Madeleine met many of the theater’s great performers, including a handsome, young up-and-comer named Hugh Franklin. They were wed January 26, 1946. Their marriage provides the drama for her book Two-Part Invention (Farrar, Straus, Giroux). Hugh, who was known to many as “Dr. Tyler” from the television serial, All My Children, suffered a bout with cancer in 1987. That fall he went home to his Lord.
A year later, in December, I met with Madeleine in her study, the library at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan. Two days earlier she had celebrated her 70th birthday, a particularly special one, thanks to the many surprises planned by her family and numerous friends across the country.
The story behind this storyteller is an age-old theme, the same thread that’s found in Scripture itself. It’s the story of an underdog, of an unlikely hero.
What was unique about your relationship with Hugh?
I’m not sure this was unique, but we allowed each other to be different. For example, I’m an Episcopalian; Hugh grew up in the Baptist church, and that was fine. We gave each other latitude. We didn’t have to do everything exactly the same way. Rather than separating us, that drew us closer.
One thing that was different for our generation was that I already had published two books before we were married, and I made it clear in my own naïve way that we were going to share in housework and bringing up the kids. And we did.
How did Hugh respond to that?
He accepted it right away. And he was a marvelous father. He ironed better than I did, so he did the ironing. He never felt put down by it because we each gave our full share. But at the time we married, that was unusual.
It’s obvious your individual crafts meant very much to both of you, but so did your family. What sacrifices did that lead you to make?
When the kids were little I was frequently extremely exhausted. It was hard to write and raise a family. But even if I had been able to afford help, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to bring up my kids. I wanted to be their mother. And Hugh wanted to be their father. That’s why he gave up the theater for nearly a decade.
Given all the frustrations, is there anything you would have changed?
No. It was the decade of my rejections, a very difficult time in all ways, and probably my most unhappy decade for many reasons. But I still wouldn’t change it.
Besides demands with the children, why was that decade so difficult?
The rejection slips. I couldn’t get anything published. I had five books published successfully before I changed my writing and saw myself as God’s servant.
Did this realization come after the rejections?
No, my rejections followed my awareness. That’s what’s so ironic. I had begun to realize my work was God’s gift to me and that I needed to serve it. But from then on for 10 years I got nothing but rejections.
How did you feel about that?
I went out and yelled at God. I said, “God, why all these rejection slips? You know it’s good; I wrote it for you.”
I know some people are afraid to be angry with God. But the fact that we are angry points to our belief in his presence and power; after all, you can’t be angry with somebody who’s not there.
It’s perfectly all right to be angry with God—God can handle all our angers. What we want is for him to say, “I love you.” Often I have felt God’s presence strongly when I have been most angry.
It was strange to me that suddenly, when I saw my work as glorying to God and I was trying to be a better Christian, all I got were rejection slips. But now I’m grateful for that long period of failure. I’ve known people who had too much success too quickly, and they begin to take it for granted and think it’s theirs.
On my 40th birthday I got another rejection, and I finally came to terms with the fact that even if I never got published, I had to write, because that’s what God had been telling me to do all my life.
How do you deal with feelings of failure?
I think we have to be free to fail. This is something I think is very wrong with our society. A lot of college students, for example, won’t take that difficult course they’re interested in because they might not get the “A” they need. If I were not free to fail, I’d never write another book.
We are human; we make mistakes. But I learn from the things I do wrong. So you make a mistake. Try something else or try again. At the end of the day I take all my mistakes and hand them to God and say, “I’m sorry. Help me.”
Tell me about the background for A Wrinkle in Time.
That was my eleventh book but the first in which I totally realized my work was for God. For me, that was a very theological book. I was writing about a universe created by a God of love.
But every publisher I contacted rejected it. They said, “Who is this book for? Children or grown-ups?” I said, “It’s for people—people read books.” They assumed children couldn’t possibly understand it. But my kids were seven, ten, and twelve when I was writing it. At night I read them what I had written, and I knew they could understand it.
It took two-and-a-half years and 42 rejections to get a publisher. And then the publisher told me, “Now dear, we don’t want you to be upset; this book is not going to sell. We’re just doing this as a self-indulgence because we love it, and we don’t want you to be disappointed. But of course, it’s too hard for children.”
And then it took off like a sky rocket.
And after all that, it went on to win the Newbery Medal for children’s literature. The timing is interesting.
Yes. If it had been published two-and-a-half years earlier by the first publisher who turned it down, it could well have fallen into a dark little hole. It came out at exactly the right time.
Despite the popularity of your books, you’ve also been criticized. How do you feel about that?
I feel very unhappy because the misunderstanding comes from the very ones who should be understanding. It’s distressing that my only criticism comes from Christians. Most of my mail is positive, but every so often I’ll get letters from Christians who want God in their tight little box. They are quick to misconstrue.
What I resent most is when I’m misquoted. “L’Engle is a self-professed New Ager.” Wherever did that come from? I know nothing about the New Age movement, nor do I care to.
One of my books along with one of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books was on a list of books to be removed from a library bookshelf because of what someone called their “pornographic content.” I reread my book then thought to myself, They must know more about porn than I do. I couldn’t find anything in my book or Lewis’s book that could possibly be called pornographic. You find what you look for.
There is a tendency in Christians to look for bad things. If you’re going to look for Satan in symbolism, you’ll find Satan. Personally, I want to look for Christ.
Is it a temptation for you to put those Christians in a box?
Oh, it’s a terrible temptation. My real problem is how do I stop being judgmental about people I think are judgmental?
If you could address your critics in person, what would you tell them?
Before you criticize, read carefully with an open mind. Most of my critics haven’t even read my works. I’d say, “Read the whole work, not just parts of it. Then you have the right to criticize.”
Now some who have read my books have questioned me, and I have sympathy when they express their concerns. In fact, I’ve made some good friends out of those discussions. Invariably, when I’ve explained my reasoning, they realize they have leapt to a false conclusion. My writing is very scriptural.
What one character in the Bible do you relate to?
Jonah. I read Jonah whenever I’m having an attack of judgmentalness. I need to go back and read Jonah tonight.
Jonah did not want to forgive the Ninevites. It’s a wonderful, funny, heart-warming book, because we all have bits of judgmentalness.
Some people have difficulty reading the Old Testament, yet you were absorbed in it even as a child. What was it that intrigued you?
It’s such a wonderful, exciting book. Probably the most important thing to me is that God never called qualified people to do his job. In a sense, we’re all unqualified, but it seems that God goes to great pains to choose the most unqualified people. You know: Would you choose a woman past menopause to start a nation? Gideon was the youngest son from an unlikely tribe, and he was called to lead his people. The message is so clear—if we thought we were qualified, we might think we did it ourselves.
As a child, what was your earliest recollection of God?
When I was very little, still sleeping in the crib, I was taken to visit my grandmother at her beach cottage. I looked up into the starry sky and there was all of God’s glory. I was held in arms that loved me with people who loved me, and it was just a moment of revelation. I knew all that was God’s.
If you were a parent of teenagers today, would your parenting style differ much from what it was years ago?
No. When my kids were teenagers, we were back in New York, in the middle of the ’60s. For us the focal point of the day was when we gathered for dinner and talked. I didn’t care what time we ate, but we ate together, and we talked. This is something that’s being lost today, and I think it’s very sad.
At dinnertime we always used our best China. We sang grace together and discussed the events of the day. This was our time as a family to put things in perspective.
Is parenting more difficult today than it was in the ’60s?
The reason it’s more difficult is because parents are abdicating their responsibility. They ask their three-year-old, “Would you like to eat this . . .” instead of saying, “This is what we are going to have.” It’s not fair to dump that kind of responsibility on children.
You have said you don’t believe in a “child-centered” household. What do you mean by that?
We have several friends whose idea of bringing up a child lovingly was to let them do whatever they wanted to. That’s letting the child be God, and that doesn’t work. When company came the parents never had time to engage in any adult conversation.
When I was growing up, if my mother had to make a choice between me and my father, she chose my father. And when I became a mother, whenever I had to make a choice, it was better for the kids when I chose Hugh.
When you look at marriages today, do you feel disturbed? What trends do you see that alarm you?
Marriage is not taken seriously enough. We live in a society that says, “If it hurts, quit.”
I’ve known of marriages that break up just at the point at which they could have begun to grow.
No good long-term marriage comes free. You have to work at it, and that’s against this pleasure-seeking principle.
Hugh and I made very solemn vows in church before God. But today I think some of the younger people who are living together before they’re married are rebelling not against the morality of my generation, but against our immorality—people marrying in church and getting divorced as though a promise to God didn’t mean anything. Obviously I’m not advocating premarital sex. but I think some of these kids want to be sure that when they say those words they’re going to mean them.
You say many marriages today break up right at that point where they could have deepened. When did you and Hugh hit that point?
Any number of times. When we moved to the country to raise the children, it was a very difficult time. We were running a general store, barely making it financially, and we were exhausted all the time.
Development in marriage is like the development of a human being. A baby will make a sudden leap in growth then go along for a while before making another leap. And that’s the way it is with marriage—you have to make that leap or something goes wrong.
What do you mean when you say you and Hugh “left no unfinished business”?
We had fully accepted each other as we were. When Hugh died, I didn’t have to say, “Oh, I wish I had done this or hadn’t done that.”
It’s something that takes time. If one of us had died during that decade in the country, we’d have had a lot of unfinished business. We were still in the struggles of learning what marriage is all about. So many people have such an impossible perception of what marriage ought to be.
What advice would you give to couples that want to have “no unfinished business”?
To be honest with each other. Be able to say, “I don’t like what you just said. I don’t like what you just did. Now let’s talk this out.”
You have said that in a marriage, each person must be willing to let the other person die first. That’s a loving, sacrificial thought, but personally, it gives me a lot of anxiety.
Well, listen—I’ve had plenty of anxiety! The fact that you are willing doesn’t mean the emotions don’t happen or that it’s any easier. I had incredible anxiety because the doctors were convinced they could cure Hugh, and something in me just knew that his time had come.
I would certainly like to have had another 10 or so years with him, yet I had this profound feeling that God was calling him. And you can’t do anything against that. It was the right time for Hugh.
I’ve often been asked if my faith were tested while he was ill. I was angry at what was going on, angry with God. And yet, on the other hand, the whole time I very much felt the presence of God. An unequivocal thing you can say about God is that God is love. The incarnation never promised us that things would be easy, that we would be happy all the time.
A lot of people feel that to be a Christian means to be happy no matter what is going on. That’s garbage. It’s a false happiness, and it’s going to let you down. In our lives we have many causes for anxiety, and if we repress it, it’s going to express itself in some unhealthy way. The only thing to do is to acknowledge it, to talk to God and say, “God, I’m frightened.”
On the cross Jesus said, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” If we think we’re never going to say that, we’re foolish. Having anxiety is a normal part of life. But it’s always followed by affirmation.
So how do we deal with life’s tragedies?
We recognize that terrible things happen. Innocent girls are raped and murdered. Young men are killed and awful things happen, but it was never promised that they wouldn’t. God promised, “I will be with you” through it. When Moses said, “Who are you?” God said, “Certainly I’ll be with you.” What an answer. And that’s always been the answer—"I am here."
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in the fiery furnace. God did not take them out; God was in it with them. So too I went through my fiery furnace, what the poet Yeats calls “the place of excrement”—but God was there. I don’t see how I could have stood it otherwise.
Of all that you and Hugh learned from each other, what are you most grateful for?
That we helped to free each other to be who we were. He was a bit older than I and more confident. I was just shy, totally shy.
How did he help you?
He saw something in me and married me! What did he see in me? He was absolutely gorgeous, an extraordinarily handsome young man. And I was tall and clumsy.
You felt that way.
Well, I know I was tall. I know I was clumsy. But he saw something else. He saw beyond that and helped free the real me. So did my children. My eldest paid me the most marvelous compliment when she was seven or eight. She flung her arms around me and said, “Oh, Momma, you’re so exciting!” That sent my heart soaring.
It’s taken me a long time (and obviously I haven’t finished yet) not to see myself the way my grade school teachers saw me, as being the non-achiever, the inept, clumsy one that wasn’t going to make it. Your opinion of yourself gets set very early in those years.
As a child, did you realize you were being underestimated?
I accepted their assessment. But I had two worlds. The world of school was horrible. But then I would come home to my room, where I would write and read and play the piano and paint pictures. I lived in an interior world, and that was my real world.
Many women today are experiencing great loneliness, some in the midst of marriage and parenting. How do you help the lonely?
I hold them. It’s a great advantage of being 70. Today touch has become a touchy subject. But we ought not to go the other extreme and be afraid to touch. We all need to be held.
I understand your granddaughter recently planned your 70th birthday party. What was that like?
Very awesome. I was surprised that between 300 and 400 people came. I usually don’t like big parties, but this didn’t have that feeling. Even though it was an enormous party, there was an incredible intimacy to it.
I felt extraordinarily joyful. There was so much love in that enormous hall. People who had never seen each other before were greeting one another and saying, “Oh, I know you!” Everybody was happy. Friends from Hawaii sent me leis and a crown of flowers, which I wore.
I felt like something out of a George MacDonald story.
I suddenly realized that my vision of myself was as just sort of an ordinary gray mouse, but that these people didn’t see me that way. I realized, and this is important to me, that they were responding to my work as well as to me. It was a wonderful affirmation.
Initially written for Today’s Christian Woman, a publication of Christianity Today, International. No portion of this article may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author, Sharon Donohue.
If there’s one thing that’s true of all great storytellers, it’s that the characters they create are born out of their own lives. Madeleine L’Engle, author of many award-winning books, including A Wrinkle in Time, is no exception.
Madeleine grew up in an apartment in Manhattan, a home that harbored her penchant for reflection and imagination. She was an only child, born to her parents after 20 years of marriage, but a much wanted child. And yet, as Madeleine puts it, “The pattern of their lives was already well established, and a child was not part of that pattern.” Evenings found her parents having a quiet dinner at eight o’clock, while Madeleine enjoyed her meal on a tray in her room, her feet on her desk, a book on her chest. So Madeleine drew great contentment in a life of her own, surrounded by many books, the influence of loving, artistic parents, and the solitude that so often led her into an interior dream world.
That world sheltered her from vestiges of World War I—but not completely. Madeleine’s father, a journalist and foreign correspondent, suffered lung damage from the mustard gas that infiltrated trenches during the war. By the time Madeleine was 12, the Depression had descended, and her father’s ailing health led them to the clean, dry, and affordable climate of the French Alps. Her parents sent her to a Swiss boarding school, an attempt to protect her from their pain. Her father was dying, and her mother was absolutely drained.
Madeleine’s life took a joyful turn as she entered high school and then college. There she hit her stride, enjoying the recognition of teachers and peers. After graduating from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, she returned to New York, where she began her career as a writer and an actress.
While serving as an understudy, Madeleine met many of the theater’s great performers, including a handsome, young up-and-comer named Hugh Franklin. They were wed January 26, 1946. Their marriage provides the drama for her book Two-Part Invention (Farrar, Straus, Giroux). Hugh, who was known to many as “Dr. Tyler” from the television serial, All My Children, suffered a bout with cancer in 1987. That fall he went home to his Lord.
A year later, in December, I met with Madeleine in her study, the library at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan. Two days earlier she had celebrated her 70th birthday, a particularly special one, thanks to the many surprises planned by her family and numerous friends across the country.
The story behind this storyteller is an age-old theme, the same thread that’s found in Scripture itself. It’s the story of an underdog, of an unlikely hero.
What was unique about your relationship with Hugh?
I’m not sure this was unique, but we allowed each other to be different. For example, I’m an Episcopalian; Hugh grew up in the Baptist church, and that was fine. We gave each other latitude. We didn’t have to do everything exactly the same way. Rather than separating us, that drew us closer.
One thing that was different for our generation was that I already had published two books before we were married, and I made it clear in my own naïve way that we were going to share in housework and bringing up the kids. And we did.
How did Hugh respond to that?
He accepted it right away. And he was a marvelous father. He ironed better than I did, so he did the ironing. He never felt put down by it because we each gave our full share. But at the time we married, that was unusual.
It’s obvious your individual crafts meant very much to both of you, but so did your family. What sacrifices did that lead you to make?
When the kids were little I was frequently extremely exhausted. It was hard to write and raise a family. But even if I had been able to afford help, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to bring up my kids. I wanted to be their mother. And Hugh wanted to be their father. That’s why he gave up the theater for nearly a decade.
Given all the frustrations, is there anything you would have changed?
No. It was the decade of my rejections, a very difficult time in all ways, and probably my most unhappy decade for many reasons. But I still wouldn’t change it.
Besides demands with the children, why was that decade so difficult?
The rejection slips. I couldn’t get anything published. I had five books published successfully before I changed my writing and saw myself as God’s servant.
Did this realization come after the rejections?
No, my rejections followed my awareness. That’s what’s so ironic. I had begun to realize my work was God’s gift to me and that I needed to serve it. But from then on for 10 years I got nothing but rejections.
How did you feel about that?
I went out and yelled at God. I said, “God, why all these rejection slips? You know it’s good; I wrote it for you.”
I know some people are afraid to be angry with God. But the fact that we are angry points to our belief in his presence and power; after all, you can’t be angry with somebody who’s not there.
It’s perfectly all right to be angry with God—God can handle all our angers. What we want is for him to say, “I love you.” Often I have felt God’s presence strongly when I have been most angry.
It was strange to me that suddenly, when I saw my work as glorying to God and I was trying to be a better Christian, all I got were rejection slips. But now I’m grateful for that long period of failure. I’ve known people who had too much success too quickly, and they begin to take it for granted and think it’s theirs.
On my 40th birthday I got another rejection, and I finally came to terms with the fact that even if I never got published, I had to write, because that’s what God had been telling me to do all my life.
How do you deal with feelings of failure?
I think we have to be free to fail. This is something I think is very wrong with our society. A lot of college students, for example, won’t take that difficult course they’re interested in because they might not get the “A” they need. If I were not free to fail, I’d never write another book.
We are human; we make mistakes. But I learn from the things I do wrong. So you make a mistake. Try something else or try again. At the end of the day I take all my mistakes and hand them to God and say, “I’m sorry. Help me.”
Tell me about the background for A Wrinkle in Time.
That was my eleventh book but the first in which I totally realized my work was for God. For me, that was a very theological book. I was writing about a universe created by a God of love.
But every publisher I contacted rejected it. They said, “Who is this book for? Children or grown-ups?” I said, “It’s for people—people read books.” They assumed children couldn’t possibly understand it. But my kids were seven, ten, and twelve when I was writing it. At night I read them what I had written, and I knew they could understand it.
It took two-and-a-half years and 42 rejections to get a publisher. And then the publisher told me, “Now dear, we don’t want you to be upset; this book is not going to sell. We’re just doing this as a self-indulgence because we love it, and we don’t want you to be disappointed. But of course, it’s too hard for children.”
And then it took off like a sky rocket.
And after all that, it went on to win the Newbery Medal for children’s literature. The timing is interesting.
Yes. If it had been published two-and-a-half years earlier by the first publisher who turned it down, it could well have fallen into a dark little hole. It came out at exactly the right time.
Despite the popularity of your books, you’ve also been criticized. How do you feel about that?
I feel very unhappy because the misunderstanding comes from the very ones who should be understanding. It’s distressing that my only criticism comes from Christians. Most of my mail is positive, but every so often I’ll get letters from Christians who want God in their tight little box. They are quick to misconstrue.
What I resent most is when I’m misquoted. “L’Engle is a self-professed New Ager.” Wherever did that come from? I know nothing about the New Age movement, nor do I care to.
One of my books along with one of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books was on a list of books to be removed from a library bookshelf because of what someone called their “pornographic content.” I reread my book then thought to myself, They must know more about porn than I do. I couldn’t find anything in my book or Lewis’s book that could possibly be called pornographic. You find what you look for.
There is a tendency in Christians to look for bad things. If you’re going to look for Satan in symbolism, you’ll find Satan. Personally, I want to look for Christ.
Is it a temptation for you to put those Christians in a box?
Oh, it’s a terrible temptation. My real problem is how do I stop being judgmental about people I think are judgmental?
If you could address your critics in person, what would you tell them?
Before you criticize, read carefully with an open mind. Most of my critics haven’t even read my works. I’d say, “Read the whole work, not just parts of it. Then you have the right to criticize.”
Now some who have read my books have questioned me, and I have sympathy when they express their concerns. In fact, I’ve made some good friends out of those discussions. Invariably, when I’ve explained my reasoning, they realize they have leapt to a false conclusion. My writing is very scriptural.
What one character in the Bible do you relate to?
Jonah. I read Jonah whenever I’m having an attack of judgmentalness. I need to go back and read Jonah tonight.
Jonah did not want to forgive the Ninevites. It’s a wonderful, funny, heart-warming book, because we all have bits of judgmentalness.
Some people have difficulty reading the Old Testament, yet you were absorbed in it even as a child. What was it that intrigued you?
It’s such a wonderful, exciting book. Probably the most important thing to me is that God never called qualified people to do his job. In a sense, we’re all unqualified, but it seems that God goes to great pains to choose the most unqualified people. You know: Would you choose a woman past menopause to start a nation? Gideon was the youngest son from an unlikely tribe, and he was called to lead his people. The message is so clear—if we thought we were qualified, we might think we did it ourselves.
As a child, what was your earliest recollection of God?
When I was very little, still sleeping in the crib, I was taken to visit my grandmother at her beach cottage. I looked up into the starry sky and there was all of God’s glory. I was held in arms that loved me with people who loved me, and it was just a moment of revelation. I knew all that was God’s.
If you were a parent of teenagers today, would your parenting style differ much from what it was years ago?
No. When my kids were teenagers, we were back in New York, in the middle of the ’60s. For us the focal point of the day was when we gathered for dinner and talked. I didn’t care what time we ate, but we ate together, and we talked. This is something that’s being lost today, and I think it’s very sad.
At dinnertime we always used our best China. We sang grace together and discussed the events of the day. This was our time as a family to put things in perspective.
Is parenting more difficult today than it was in the ’60s?
The reason it’s more difficult is because parents are abdicating their responsibility. They ask their three-year-old, “Would you like to eat this . . .” instead of saying, “This is what we are going to have.” It’s not fair to dump that kind of responsibility on children.
You have said you don’t believe in a “child-centered” household. What do you mean by that?
We have several friends whose idea of bringing up a child lovingly was to let them do whatever they wanted to. That’s letting the child be God, and that doesn’t work. When company came the parents never had time to engage in any adult conversation.
When I was growing up, if my mother had to make a choice between me and my father, she chose my father. And when I became a mother, whenever I had to make a choice, it was better for the kids when I chose Hugh.
When you look at marriages today, do you feel disturbed? What trends do you see that alarm you?
Marriage is not taken seriously enough. We live in a society that says, “If it hurts, quit.”
I’ve known of marriages that break up just at the point at which they could have begun to grow.
No good long-term marriage comes free. You have to work at it, and that’s against this pleasure-seeking principle.
Hugh and I made very solemn vows in church before God. But today I think some of the younger people who are living together before they’re married are rebelling not against the morality of my generation, but against our immorality—people marrying in church and getting divorced as though a promise to God didn’t mean anything. Obviously I’m not advocating premarital sex. but I think some of these kids want to be sure that when they say those words they’re going to mean them.
You say many marriages today break up right at that point where they could have deepened. When did you and Hugh hit that point?
Any number of times. When we moved to the country to raise the children, it was a very difficult time. We were running a general store, barely making it financially, and we were exhausted all the time.
Development in marriage is like the development of a human being. A baby will make a sudden leap in growth then go along for a while before making another leap. And that’s the way it is with marriage—you have to make that leap or something goes wrong.
What do you mean when you say you and Hugh “left no unfinished business”?
We had fully accepted each other as we were. When Hugh died, I didn’t have to say, “Oh, I wish I had done this or hadn’t done that.”
It’s something that takes time. If one of us had died during that decade in the country, we’d have had a lot of unfinished business. We were still in the struggles of learning what marriage is all about. So many people have such an impossible perception of what marriage ought to be.
What advice would you give to couples that want to have “no unfinished business”?
To be honest with each other. Be able to say, “I don’t like what you just said. I don’t like what you just did. Now let’s talk this out.”
You have said that in a marriage, each person must be willing to let the other person die first. That’s a loving, sacrificial thought, but personally, it gives me a lot of anxiety.
Well, listen—I’ve had plenty of anxiety! The fact that you are willing doesn’t mean the emotions don’t happen or that it’s any easier. I had incredible anxiety because the doctors were convinced they could cure Hugh, and something in me just knew that his time had come.
I would certainly like to have had another 10 or so years with him, yet I had this profound feeling that God was calling him. And you can’t do anything against that. It was the right time for Hugh.
I’ve often been asked if my faith were tested while he was ill. I was angry at what was going on, angry with God. And yet, on the other hand, the whole time I very much felt the presence of God. An unequivocal thing you can say about God is that God is love. The incarnation never promised us that things would be easy, that we would be happy all the time.
A lot of people feel that to be a Christian means to be happy no matter what is going on. That’s garbage. It’s a false happiness, and it’s going to let you down. In our lives we have many causes for anxiety, and if we repress it, it’s going to express itself in some unhealthy way. The only thing to do is to acknowledge it, to talk to God and say, “God, I’m frightened.”
On the cross Jesus said, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” If we think we’re never going to say that, we’re foolish. Having anxiety is a normal part of life. But it’s always followed by affirmation.
So how do we deal with life’s tragedies?
We recognize that terrible things happen. Innocent girls are raped and murdered. Young men are killed and awful things happen, but it was never promised that they wouldn’t. God promised, “I will be with you” through it. When Moses said, “Who are you?” God said, “Certainly I’ll be with you.” What an answer. And that’s always been the answer—"I am here."
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in the fiery furnace. God did not take them out; God was in it with them. So too I went through my fiery furnace, what the poet Yeats calls “the place of excrement”—but God was there. I don’t see how I could have stood it otherwise.
Of all that you and Hugh learned from each other, what are you most grateful for?
That we helped to free each other to be who we were. He was a bit older than I and more confident. I was just shy, totally shy.
How did he help you?
He saw something in me and married me! What did he see in me? He was absolutely gorgeous, an extraordinarily handsome young man. And I was tall and clumsy.
You felt that way.
Well, I know I was tall. I know I was clumsy. But he saw something else. He saw beyond that and helped free the real me. So did my children. My eldest paid me the most marvelous compliment when she was seven or eight. She flung her arms around me and said, “Oh, Momma, you’re so exciting!” That sent my heart soaring.
It’s taken me a long time (and obviously I haven’t finished yet) not to see myself the way my grade school teachers saw me, as being the non-achiever, the inept, clumsy one that wasn’t going to make it. Your opinion of yourself gets set very early in those years.
As a child, did you realize you were being underestimated?
I accepted their assessment. But I had two worlds. The world of school was horrible. But then I would come home to my room, where I would write and read and play the piano and paint pictures. I lived in an interior world, and that was my real world.
Many women today are experiencing great loneliness, some in the midst of marriage and parenting. How do you help the lonely?
I hold them. It’s a great advantage of being 70. Today touch has become a touchy subject. But we ought not to go the other extreme and be afraid to touch. We all need to be held.
I understand your granddaughter recently planned your 70th birthday party. What was that like?
Very awesome. I was surprised that between 300 and 400 people came. I usually don’t like big parties, but this didn’t have that feeling. Even though it was an enormous party, there was an incredible intimacy to it.
I felt extraordinarily joyful. There was so much love in that enormous hall. People who had never seen each other before were greeting one another and saying, “Oh, I know you!” Everybody was happy. Friends from Hawaii sent me leis and a crown of flowers, which I wore.
I felt like something out of a George MacDonald story.
I suddenly realized that my vision of myself was as just sort of an ordinary gray mouse, but that these people didn’t see me that way. I realized, and this is important to me, that they were responding to my work as well as to me. It was a wonderful affirmation.
Initially written for Today’s Christian Woman, a publication of Christianity Today, International. No portion of this article may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author, Sharon Donohue.
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