Meghan posted one of her favorites of Shakespeare's sonnets (115- definitely one of the best!), and so I thought perhaps I would respond here by posting one of mine. This has always been one of my favorites, and I'm not even sure why. I remember the first time I read it. It was Father's Day actually, I believe I was in 5th grade, and we were wasting some time at Barnes & Noble in Lynnwood while waiting for our reservations. I remember I found a shakespeare sonnet book, sat down on the floor and started reading. I think I memorized half of this sonnet before getting back up. I love the final two lines.

Sonnet 5
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

Several years later, Natalie (then, Johnson) moved in with us as an MC student, and she quickly encouraged my love for Shakespeare. That Christmas, she bought me Shakespeare's Sonnets... the same copy she had of them (which I had borrowed many times already).



Though Kristin often jokes about the influence of Natalie on me, I certainly am so grateful for the young woman who moved in while my older sister (and best friend) was suddenly gone (also in MCs), and gently encouraged my love and passion for literature. She would finish her homework early, to sit and read poetry with me and drink tea. She took me to play tennis. She listened to my middle-school-girl woes of mean boys and teasing. Years later, she sat with me at Starbucks on the Ave, passing me her Italian books, and some of the best advice I received about college. She's a dedicated, disciplined, sweet and incredibly intelligent woman. And it's with a smile that I realize that this young woman who I quickly loved and admired, graduated from the University of Washington, an English Lit major, with Italian as her foreign language, and went on to work in Marketing. See any funny resemblence?

I promise, I haven't been trying to follow in her footsteps, but I love that the Lord placed her in my home for a year, so she could water my literary heart with books, chats, and chai.

It's always a wonder when we look back and see the little occurances and the amazing people that helped guide us to where we are called to be, and who we are today.

*interestingly enough, all three of the ladies in the photo above have had quite an impact on my literary heart. :) And my heart in general.