From the time I could walk and talk, I have been head over
heels in love with England. Tea parties, tube maps, Jane Austen marathons, and
hoarding Cadbury chocolate constituted much of my childhood. I’d lay awake at night, aching to see misty
moors and pebbly beaches.
After much teasing from my family and questioning looks from
friends upon first seeing my union jack plastered room, I’ve often wondered at
my seemingly innate longing. Especially after this last summer that I spent in
France. La Belle France. I fell in love with France in a way that will affect
me for the rest of my life, and its place in my heart is equal with that of
England.
Yet, that ache, that joy I felt from loving England my whole
life is still there as a part of my identity, even after falling in love with
another country.
In Surprised by Joy,
Lewis describes his experiences as a child where he ached in a similar way to
my longing for England. His longing occurred when was reading Beatrix Potter.
He says,
“It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of
Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but
that is something like what happened; the experience was one of intense desire.
And one went back to the book, not to gratify the desire (that was
impossible—how can one posses Autumn?) but to reawake it.”
Lewis describes this feeling as joy. Of it he says, “it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is
itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which her eis
a technical term that must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and
from Pleasure…it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of
unhappiness of grief.”
When reading this, my thoughts automatically turned to
England. A lifetime of learning about and dreaming of England has filled me
with this Joy, one that cannot be possessed, but provides overwhelming emotion.
This is like our Joy in Heaven. The aching we feel is but a taste of what is to
come. My longing for England is a reminder of what it is to be alive, of what
is beauty.
While in France, one cloudy afternoon, I found myself on a
cold, misty beach in Bretagne. I had spent the loveliest day visiting castles
and speaking with locals about the American invasion during WWII. It was a day
of immense pleasure and satisfaction. However,
when I dipped my toes into the English Channel, when I was physically connected
to England for the first time in my life, I was overpowered with joy, with that
desire that nothing in this world can satisfy. And from that desire, I could
only conclude that I was not made for here.
How beautiful that we can access that heavenly joy through such
simple things as thinking on a foreign country.
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