Late in her life, Anne Bradstreet wrote a letter to her children, retelling her story for their “spiritual advantage” and for “the glory of God.”  She started with her childhood in England, where she was born in 1612 to a pious Puritan family. Like most Puritan writers, she didn’t hide her struggles and failures. She was honest about her times of teenage indifference to religion and her reluctance to adapt to the lifestyle of the New England outpost where she and her family had arrived in 1630. 

Anne went on to become America’s first published poet. Her writings became popular on both sides of the Atlantic, sustaining the faith of many Christians at a difficult time of conflicts and divisions. But her faith was not always unshakable. In her letter to her children, she revealed some of her questions and her careful examination of things she had once taken for granted. Today, some would call it “deconstruction.” Although she attributed her doubts to the devil, she took them seriously and looked for convincing answers. 

Her first question was whether God even existed: “I never saw any miracles to confirm me, and those which I read of, how did I know but they were feigned?” Like many people before her, she found an answer in the beauty and order of creation. “The consideration of these things would with amazement certainly resolve me that there is an Eternal Being.”  

The next question was more specific: “How should I know he is such a God as I worship in Trinity, and such a Savior as I rely upon?” Eventually, she was able to dispel these doubts about the reliability of the Scriptures through several considerations. Firstly, the Scriptures had produced in her heart an effect “that no human invention can work upon the soul.”  Additionally, the Scriptures had been preserved for centuries despite many attempts to destroy them. They also include so many fulfilled prophecies “which could not have been so long foretold by any but God himself.” Anne concluded that these were proof enough that the scriptures were true. 

Other doubts included the possible legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Church. If God exists and He is truly the God revealed in Scriptures, how do we know the Protestant interpretation of Scriptures is correct? The Roman Catholic claim of having the same God, the same Christ, and the same word as the Protestants might have stuck with Anne, she said, if she had not seen “the vain fooleries that are in their religion, together with their lying miracles and cruel persecutions of the saints.”  

And yet, if the Protestant interpretation of the Bible is correct, why are there so many divisions and even gross errors among Christians? Anne found this thought so discouraging that she ended up asking, “Is there faith upon the earth?” 

“But then I remembered,” she continued, “the words of Christ that so it must be and that, if it were possible, the very elect would be deceived.” This settled the matter. “That hath stayed my heart, and I can now say, ‘Return, O my Soul, to thy rest, upon this rock Christ Jesus will I build my faith, and if I perish, I perish’; but I know all the powers of hell shall never prevail against it. I know whom I have trusted, and whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that I have committed to his charge.”  

This section on questions and doubts takes up about half of Anne’s letter to her children, showing them how important this period of wrestling with the faith was in her life. She closed her letter with a wish that, if her children ever had to go through similar doubts or tests of their faith, they would remember to look to God – “the same God who hath heard and delivered me, and will do the like for you if you trust in him. And, when he shall deliver you out of distress, forget not to give him thanks, but to walk more closely with him than before. This is the desire of your loving mother.”  

Anne wrote these words in 1657, after one of her frequent episodes of illness and fainting. “This was written in much sickness and weakness,” she said, “and is very weakly and imperfectly done; but, if you can pick any benefit out of it, it is the mark which I aimed at.”  

She probably thought she was close to death. Instead, God kept her on earth fifteen more years. In the meantime, her health continued to get worse until, in 1671, her son Simon described her as all “skin and bones.” Her last poems show how much she longed for heaven. She died on September 16, 1672, in North Andover, Massachusetts, at the age of 60, with her husband at her side.  

Although not all her children could be present at her death, they probably read and reread the letter Anne wrote to them. But they are not the only ones who have benefited from it. Many generations of Christians have read her letter and learned from her example of facing her doubts with courage and integrity to strengthen her convictions. They have also been encouraged by her poems, which are equally powerful as they portray, in their honesty and depth, a faith that fears no challenge.