Stepping Heavenward.

I love that book. I read it several months back, and really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it for young Christian girls to read. The book is Elizabeth Prentiss' journal all the way from when she was sixteen to when she was somewhere in her forties. She writes mainly about her journey to Christian maturity as she grows into womanhood. I can totally relate to her in the way that she just hates herself when she speaks too quickly in a harsh manner, and does not act in a way that pleases the Lord. She has a real desire to honor God in all of her actions, and it is just cool to see her change so much in the way she writes about the Lord over the course of her diary as she grows into a godly, kind, loving, gentle woman. She is a big inspiration to me.

Below is part of a journal entry that Elizabeth Prentiss wrote when she was nearing the end of the pages in her journal. At the time, she was sick and in bed, not knowing if she would live or die.


June 30-
Everybody wonders to see me once more interested  in my long-closed Journal, and becoming able to see the friends from whom I have been, in a measure, cut off. We cannot ask the meaning of this remarkable increase of strength.
I have no wish to choose. But I have come to the last page of my Journal, and living or dying, shall write in this volume no more. It closes a life of much childishness and great sinfulness, whose record makes me blush with shame, but I no longer need to relieve my heart with seeking sympathy in its unconscious pages, nor do I believe it good to go on analyzing it as I have done. I have had large experiences of both joy and sorrow; I have seen the nakedness and emptiness, and I have seen the beauty and sweetness of life. What I have to say now, let me say to Jesus. What time and strength I used to spend in writing here, let me now spend in praying for all men, for all sufferers, for all who are out of the way, for all whom I love. And their name is Legion, for I love everybody. 
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 be weary and to sin no more. If  live, I shall find much blessed work to do for Him. So living or dying, I shall be the Lord's.