"This earthly life is a battle:" Wisdom from Ma Ingalls

Illustration by Helen Sewell *

Last year, our family read through the entire Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I had a moment while reading Little House on the Prairie when the Ingalls family's wagon is coming up on the prairie in Kansas for the first time, that I had to catch my breath. I felt so grateful to Laura Ingalls Wilder for giving us this glimpse into her life with all its imperfections and setbacks, to be able to experience this moment in history for ourselves. In her biography by William Norris, “Laura explained that her desire to write came from her feeling that what she had experienced on the prairies were ‘stories that had to be told.’ She said that her memories of pioneer days “were altogether too good to be lost.”

I agree with Laura that these stories are too good to be lost. Lately, as we go through these hard times, I have been even more grateful to know these stories. But I also realized as we journeyed with the Ingalls that Laura had to be brave to write this story as well, because it wasn’t altogether a happy story. Brent joked that the series should have been called, “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” and it really was: prairie fires, injuries, malaria, blindness, financial difficulties, and millions of grasshoppers. That is all before the endless blizzards and near starvation of The Long Winter. Just reading those books made Brent and I huddle around the woodstove afterward because the feelings of coldness and hunger were so visceral. I have often thought to myself during this quarantine, "At least I'm not twisting haysticks."

Illustration by Helen Sewell, original illustrator of Little House on the Prairie

In the summer right after we moved, I was checking on our little tomato garden one morning. A kind of white fuzzy caterpillar had been landing on our plants. After researching a bit, I found out that it was the Hickory Tussock caterpillar, which not only could deleaf a tree, but its black spikes were venomous and would sting you if you touched it. (Brent learned that the hard way.) That’s when I heard the strangest noise, a kind of munching noise coming from the trees above me. I looked up for the source, and saw a caterpillar lower itself on a strand down to the ground. As I scanned the distance, I realized that the sound was the sound of hundreds of hickory tussock caterpillars propelling down from the tree on our lawn. I ran inside and grabbed a broom and began knocking them out of the tree and squishing them with my flip-flop. I called Ella to help, and together we killed probably a thousand caterpillars that year. Our trees and garden were saved, but it gave me a special empathy with the Ingalls family when the grasshoppers landed in their fields. What could be more horrifying than the thought of millions of grasshoppers landing in your hair, under foot, crawling over your house?

I wondered how did these pioneers do it, how did they keep on going through the disappointments, the crop losses, the famine, the diseases?

While I found myself often frustrated with Pa’s wanderlust and inability to settle down for the sake of his family, I have to admit that I, too, often get caught up in my own idealist visions of the future. For ten years, we were stuck with a house in the city, when we longed for a rural life. If we could just move to the country and raise chickens, we would be happy, we told ourselves. Yet when we finally achieved our dream, nothing turned out as we thought it would. That began a series of frustrations and disappointments that has lasted over two years and included natural disasters and a pandemic. Yet none of it compared to what the Ingalls went through. 

Illustration by Helen Sewell, original illustrator of Little Town on the Prairie

After surviving the grasshoppers, Mary’s blindness, and the Long Winter, they finally move into their claim shanty and plant their corn. Then the crows arrive to eat their crops, and it’s really too much for Laura.
“The prairie looks so beautiful and gentle,” she said. “But I wonder what it will do next. Seems like we have to fight it all the time.”
“This earthly life is a battle,” said Ma. “If it isn’t one thing to contend with it’s another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better you are and the more thankful for your pleasures.”

My commonplace book art inspired by an illustration by Helen Sewell in Little House on the Prairie

Ma’s words helped me with my own frustrations. I realized that I had been a victim of my own idealism, that I had written a story in my head of how God would work in my life that had nothing to do with my reality. Like Pa, choices that I had made to make that dream a reality may have even hurt my family. The disappointment of losing that dream had so clouded my vision that I felt like I had no story to tell. My words were literally stuck in my head. I wanted the story with the happy ending I had written in my head. I wanted God to tie up everything in a neat bow.

 I don’t like to think of life as a battle. Yet in the current state of the world, life seems to feel more and more like a battle every day.

Pa always seemed to think that happiness was just a little bit farther west, but Ma was more practical. Early on, she accepted that life is a series of things to contend with, and it’s acceptance of this reality, that allowed her to appreciate the small pleasures in life and be thankful. I wondered if maybe, she was right.

Earlier this year before the pandemic, Brent and I had sat down to discuss life and mission. These sessions have often resulted in a big vision for our life and crazy adventures, but this time, we came up with a simpler motto for our year. "One foot in front of the other." We can’t see far ahead, but we can take the next step, face the next thing we need to contend with, and hopefully be thankful for our pleasures along the way. I think Ma would approve.

*Our tiny small-town library has some really old treasures in its stacks including some original copies of the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder with illustrations by Helen Sewell. While we love our editions with illustrations by Garth Williams, I loved this older style too, and thought I would share.