The Braxtons of Miracle Springs (13 page)

As much as both Christopher and I loved being on Pa and Almeda's property as part of the Hollister/Braxton community, we were conscious of the need to be
ourselves
in the midst of it.

Especially since I knew that Christopher was trying to figure out what we ought to do with our lives if Pa
did
decide to shut down the mine, we were more aware than before that we were a separate family from the others. I suppose that is part of learning what it means to be married—realizing that a
new
family has begun, that suddenly you are the husband or wife rather than the child.

For us the realization was more gradual than for some young people like Mike and Emily, because we were still living as part of Pa and Almeda's larger family. Yet we wanted to learn how to be a family of our own too.

Through the summer we began to eat a few of our meals alone together in the bunkhouse. There was no kitchen, or even space for one, but we fixed up the corner of the large space into a sitting room with a table and a small sideboard for dishes. Then we brought meals once or twice a week out to the bunkhouse in a warm cast-iron pot. I cooked a few simple things on the top of our stove, and of course I could boil water for tea and coffee.

Every once in a while, too, we'd invite some of the others out to “our house” to have supper with us. We had Tad and Zack and Becky, even Pa and Almeda by themselves once, and it was fun to be able to be the hostess and to serve them at
our
little table.

Becky came over to have dinner with us after church one Sunday in early August. Christopher and I were particularly playful and happy that day. The three of us took a ride together, then came back and ate in our little bunkhouse.

Gradually Becky grew quieter and quieter. I didn't know why at first. But when Christopher went outside for a minute and almost immediately tears came into my sister's eyes, I soon found out.

“Becky dear—what is it?” I asked, reaching out my hand across the little table and placing it on hers.

“Oh, Corrie,” she said, “seeing you and Christopher together, so happy, talking and smiling and having so much fun—I can hardly stand it. I'm just so afraid it's never going to happen to me, that I'm never going to get married.” By the time she was through saying that, she was sobbing long, stored-up cries.

I got up and went around to the other side of the table, sat down beside her, held her, and let her cry as long as she needed to.

“How did you feel, Corrie,” she asked, “when you were my age and didn't know if anyone would ever love you enough to marry you?”

Suddenly it was all so clear, and I couldn't help feeling bad for the effect that the happy day Christopher and I had enjoyed had had on her.

“Oh, Becky,” I said, “I'm so sorry we've made it difficult for you!” I put my arm around her and gave her a hug.

“
You
didn't make it hard,” said Becky through her sniffles.

“I am still sorry we weren't more sensitive to what you were feeling. And I should have been, because I have had plenty of those same thoughts myself.”

“So how did you keep it from making you depressed?”

“I suppose I got it into my head early in my life that I wouldn't marry,” I answered. “That isn't to say that I didn't struggle with it, but I learned to accept it.”

As we sat, I thought how different it had been for my younger sister. Everyone had just assumed Becky would marry. If
anyone
would marry in our family it would be
her
, not me. She had always been prettier than me. She was lively and fun and gay, and from the time Becky was fifteen boys were taking an interest in her. She had had plenty of young men callers, but no one that she'd ever been serious about. Now here she was almost twenty-five, with no serious suitor in sight. I hadn't even realized how anxious Becky had been growing over it as the years passed.

“Accepting it—that's the hard part,” said Becky.

“Becky, I
am
sorry,” I said. “I realize now that it must have been difficult for you with Christopher and I being so close all the time and so happy together. It has been, hasn't it?”

Becky nodded, her eyes still wet.

“I always thought I would be married by now,” she said.

“I guess I hadn't stopped to think what it was like for you.”

“It was different with you, Corrie. Like you said, you didn't expect to be married. Sometimes I didn't even think you wanted to get married.”

“I struggled with it too,” I said, “though probably not so much as you.”

“I've dreamed about being married and having a husband and family ever since I can remember,” Becky said. “You had your writing and travel, but there's nothing else I've ever wanted but a home and family of my own. And now—”

She stopped and glanced away, eyes filling again.

“Now . . . now it's hard trying to accept the fact that it may never happen.”

“Oh, Becky, you're still young to be saying that.”

“I'll be twenty-five in a couple of months, Corrie. I've got no prospects. There really never have been any serious prospects.”

“I was twenty-seven before Christopher and I met. He was thirty.”

“It was different with the two of you—surely you must see that. Neither of you are like most young men and women.”

“Only in that I wasn't looking for a husband,” I said. “But if God brought us together at twenty-seven and thirty, surely twenty-four isn't so old that you should despair.”

“I suppose you're right,” Becky sighed. “But it still seems more and more hopeless all the time. Oh, my heart yearns to find a man for me like Christopher is for you, but there aren't very many around.”

I couldn't argue with her. The Lord had indeed been good to me.

“You are fortunate, Corrie.”

“I know. You're right, and I am very thankful to the Lord,” I said.

“What makes it all the more difficult is that I don't want to go through life lamenting the fact that I'm not married. If this is my lot in life, I want to make the best of it.”

“You make it sound so horrid not to marry.”

“That's how it seems to me, Corrie.”

“I don't consider my life horrid up till last April,” I said. “I
enjoyed
my life before Christopher came along.”

“But like I said, you are different.”

“I don't think I'm
that
different, Becky. Besides, there are worse things in life than not being married.”

“Like what?”

“Like being married to someone it wasn't God's will for you to marry,” I answered.

Becky was silent a moment, contemplating what I'd said.

“When Emily married it wasn't so bad because I was still so young,” she said at length. “But when Christopher came, even though I said nothing to you, I admit that I had to battle feelings of jealousy, wondering why it was you instead of me who had a man that loved you. It didn't seem fair. You had never sought it or wanted it, yet you had the most wonderful, godly man in the world. And I have desired it and prayed for it, yet I've never met a man of Christopher's caliber in my life. I tried to pray for you, and truly I wanted you to be happy. Yet just being around the two of you hurt so deeply.”

“I'm so sorry, Becky.”

“There's nothing for you to be sorry about, Corrie. You didn't do anything wrong. It was my own attitude that wasn't right. Eventually I took it to God, and he has helped me. But it remains difficult because those feelings of wanting to be married are still there.”

“Has the Lord given you any peace at all about it?” I asked.

She thought a few moments.

“One good thing that has come of it, I suppose,” answered Becky, “is that at least I now know what kind of man to pray for. If I had never known Christopher, some other man might have come along who wasn't half the man of God he is, and I might have married him when possibly the Lord had someone better waiting for me—my
own
Christopher Braxton.”

“Just like
my
Cal Burton,” I suggested.

Becky smiled. “He was a dashing, good-looking man, Corrie. You can hardly be blamed for being taken in.”

“You know, I just realized as I spoke Cal's name,” I said, “that they both have the same initials—C. B.”

“Like yours,” added Becky, “Corrie Belle.”

I laughed.

“That, too! But what I was thinking was how similar the false can sometimes be from the true—just like fool's gold and real gold. At first glance they can look just alike. With people too, the false can mimic the true. If you're not careful, you can be taken in.”

I stopped and shuddered involuntarily.

“What is it, Corrie?” asked Becky in alarm. “I've never seen such a look on your face before.”

“It just suddenly dawned on me how close I may actually have come to marrying Cal without even realizing it at the time. If I had been anxious to marry, as many girls my age would have been, just think of the miserable life I could have made for myself. Worst of all—I'd have never met Christopher!”

Again I trembled and tried to shake the thought away. “Come on, Becky,” I said, “let's take a walk. I have something I want to say to you.”

We rose and went outside, then linked arms and walked slowly away from the bunkhouse toward the stream and up in the direction of the mine.

“You know,” I said after we had walked a ways in silence, “that I struggled with all this too, don't you? We have talked about it several times.”

Becky nodded.

“Just because I thought I probably never would marry doesn't mean I didn't want to or didn't think about marriage just like any girl. I've thought and cried and prayed, too. I went through stages of desperately wanting to be married and other times of not wanting to at all. One time I even thought about being a nun, like the sisters I stayed with back East. So when I say what I am about to say, you mustn't think I say it only because none of this mattered to me. I have felt some of the same things you are feeling, Becky.”

Becky nodded as I spoke.

“There was a time,” I went on, “back when I revisited our old home in Bridgeville, that I saw some things in a new light. It was as if I relived the first fifteen years of my life all over again.”

I stopped, remembering again the moments I had experienced under the old oak tree.

“Go on, Corrie,” Becky urged.

“I realized that life could be wonderful, not because I might someday marry but because I had the Lord himself to be with me no matter what happened—forever. That's when I first began to feel free to call God Father in a way I never could before.”

The memory of telling Becky about it brought back so many feelings that I felt my eyes starting to fill with tears. We were both quiet a few minutes.

“I'm glad you told me that, Corrie,” said Becky. We were quiet again and walked in silence for a while. Finally I reached over to lay a hand on her shoulder.

“Can you trust me enough,” I went on, “to accept what I might say to you as from someone who has felt what you are feeling, even though, as you say, maybe we were different in many ways too?”

She turned to me with big eyes.

“I'll try,” she said softly.

“As I listen to you, Becky, and from everything I know about you as my dear, dear sister, I sense a heart that really desires what God wants, even though at times it is difficult and your soul wants something for itself—like to be married. Is that how you feel?”

Becky nodded.

“Sometimes those feelings struggle against one another,” I went on. “I have known that struggle. But I have come to believe there is a special place in God's heart for young women who have the opportunity to learn to trust him in ways that those who marry young never experience. These feelings you are now having, the ones I encountered when I was in the East—those are not feelings Emily will ever be able to share with us. Some of us marry. Some don't. That is in no one's hands but the Lord's alone. What is most important is how we respond to the Lord as he makes his will for each one of us known. Do we begin to feel an underlying resentment that blames God that we are not married? Or, even though it is hard, do we learn to trust God? Do we learn to say to him, like Mary,
‘I am the Lord's handmaiden
, be it unto me according to your word'?
”

Becky said nothing, and we continued walking slowly alongside the stream. She seemed to be thinking seriously about what I was saying.

“That is a difficult thing for a young woman to say,” I added. “It is never easy to relinquish something we dearly want. And yet I think those very words of Jesus' mother are often the door into deeper intimacy with God.”

“But
why
wouldn't God want me to be married?” Becky blurted out finally. “Does he want me to be miserable and lonely all my life?”

“Oh, Becky, of course not!” I cried as her tears began again. I wrapped my arms around her, patting her slim shoulders, waiting for the weeping to subside.

Presently she pulled away, gave her head a little shake, and pulled up the edge of her skirt to wipe her eyes. Then we continued to walk, passing the mine—quiet this Sunday afternoon—and continuing along the path into the woods.

Lord, what would you have me say now?
I prayed silently.

It was probably five minutes before either of us spoke again.

“What do you think, Becky,” I asked finally, “is it more important to do God's will than to be married?”

Becky nodded.

“Jennie thought it was more important to be married than to do God's will, and now look how miserable
she
is. You talk about being lonely, but your temporary loneliness is nothing compared to the garden of weeds she has planted for herself and now has to watch sprout.”

Becky took in my words without replying.

“Maybe you will never marry, Becky,” I added. “I don't know what the Lord has planned for you. But if that should be the case, the only way to really come to terms with it is in thankfulness to God.”

“It's hard to be thankful for that.”

“That may be. But do you know why you truly
can
be thankful?”

“Why?”

“Because the Lord has something even more wonderful planned for those of his Father's daughters who don't marry.”

“What could that be?”

“His own intimate companionship. He has chosen such a woman for
himself
, to walk with him as his
own
bride. And Jesus, more than any mortal man that ever walked the earth, is a faithful and loving life-companion.”

The Lord had shown me this truth when I was in the East and wrestling with this very thing Becky was now facing inside herself. But I could tell it was new for her to take in.

“You should have seen the joy the Sisters of John Seventeen had,” I added. “It was so wonderful to be part of it—it was that joy that made me consider joining them.”

We walked a distance longer as she mulled over my words in her mind.

“If you can only try to take a long-range, lifelong perspective,” I said after a bit, “it may be that you will look back with huge thankfulness that the Lord kept you single for a long while, protecting you from the heartache that might have resulted from a wrong or hasty marriage.

“Believe me, there is a lot of heartache over at the Woodstock home these days! And just think how awful it would have been had I married Cal!

“It really could be that the Lord has chosen you to walk with him and him alone, and that really could be a great blessing. On the other hand, maybe he wants to nurture you for several more years, preparing you and preparing your future husband so that a much stronger marriage can result.

“What is another five or ten years, if it means you are that much more mature spiritually and emotionally by then? What are a few more years of singleness if they mean the prayerful and thankful wait enables God to bless you with a man who is close to God—and loving and understanding to his wife?

“Wouldn't you rather wait until age forty, if that meant having a happy marriage to a mature man, than marry too soon and then discover your husband was not as kind and loving as you thought, like Jennie has sadly discovered? Speaking for myself, I would sooner have waited another ten or even
twenty
years for Christopher!”

Becky sighed. I think she knew I was right, but the words
ten
and
twenty
sounded so long to her right then. Twenty more years would almost be her whole life all over again! To her ears, I might as well have said
forever
.

“As I look at it, Becky, I think a happy late-life marriage that would endure into old age would be far better than an early marriage that is full of conflict and pain. After my visits with Jennie, frankly, I do not see your situation as so awful. I know it may seem lonely at times. But I happen to think that possibly the Lord might have just the sort of man you desire picked out for you, but that he is waiting for the right time in order that your marriage will be founded on maturity rather than immaturity.”

“I hope you're right.”

“Do you trust him enough to say,
‘Lord,
if I spend my life single, I will thank you . . .
if I marry at forty I will thank you . . . if
I marry at sixty I will thank you . . . I trust
you, Lord . . . be it unto me according to your word'?
”

By now we had gone about to the end of the path. We stopped and slowly turned around and began walking back the way we had come.

“I don't know, Corrie,” sighed Becky at length, “sometimes I think that there just aren't men like Christopher for girls like me. Maybe you found the only one.”

“I don't believe that for a minute, Becky,” I replied. “Good, godly, gracious men do exist for young Christian women who are willing to seek and pray for them, then put the timing into the Lord's hands and not try to hurry him along in his work. They may be few and far between. But the Lord is fashioning men who want nothing but his will. They are worth waiting for. Even worth waiting twenty or thirty years for!”

“You didn't have to wait thirty years, Corrie.”

“Perhaps not. But I was willing to.”

“Being willing isn't the same as doing it.”

“Maybe it was because I was willing that I didn't have to.”

“You mean if I am willing, maybe I won't have to wait thirty years either?”

“Perhaps not. But then once you
are
truly willing, such a question would never occur to you.”