A New Beginning (19 page)

One day midway through the summer I put in a full day at the freight company. Actually, putting in a full day wasn't so terribly unusual. Almeda was getting so she didn't want to spend so much time in town every day and had asked me if I wouldn't mind putting in some extra hours. The business seemed to be weighing on her more than usual, and I was happy to carry more of the responsibility if I could. Christopher joined me some days as well, and we enjoyed working together.

On this particular day, however, I was the only one of the family present, and it seemed like everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong. One of the warehouse workers came in about ten in the morning to inform me that he was quitting.

“Have you talked with Almeda?” I asked.

“I figgered you could tell her as easy as me.”

“But you're going to finish out the week?” I said.

“No, ma'am—figgered on collecting what pay I got coming, and then being on my way.”

“What, you mean . . . you don't mean
right now
?”

“If that'd be all right, ma'am,” the man nodded. “I'd like to get what's coming to me.”

“You're not even going to finish the day?” I asked, beginning to get annoyed, for the man's irresponsibility had already cost us more than he was worth.

“Didn't figger to, ma'am.”

“But what about the Blackett order? Aren't you halfway through it?”

“I figgered Weber could finish it.”

“Marcus is gone on deliveries all day.”

“Jason . . .”

“Jason is home with his sick wife,” I retorted. “I promised Mr. Blackett that order would be finished today!” By now I was thoroughly exasperated.

“I tell you, I gotta be going, ma'am. Could I get my pay?”

“You're not getting a cent from me,” I said. “You come back and talk to Almeda!”

As soon as the man had gone, I turned to good, faithful Mr. Ashton, our office manager, and said, “I'm sorry you had to see that.”

“Don't worry about me, Corrie. I've seen Almeda chew out a few sluggards worse than anything you ever said.”

“Would you mind giving me a hand in the warehouse?” I said. “I'm afraid you and I are going to have to finish the Blackett order ourselves.”

Mr. Ashton rose, placed a little sign on the door saying where we'd be, and followed me out the back door. I didn't like to ask him to help because his back wasn't the best and he was probably not even as strong as me, but we had no choice. Besides Marcus and Deal, who'd just quit, and Jason who was home with his wife, there was no one else. At the time we were a man or two thin but hadn't been able to find anyone else to hire. Now we were really shorthanded!

Sweating all over, and with my back starting to hurt, we finished up the order about noon, then hitched up a team to the wagon. I asked Mr. Ashton to drive it out to the Blackett place, explain the situation, apologize for the inconvenience, and ask Mr. Blackett if his men could unload the wagon. I went back into the office and sat down behind the desk, already tired and mentally frazzled, though the day wasn't even yet half over. I hoped Christopher might stop by to visit for a while because he was working at the McCrary place just about half a mile from town, but he didn't.

A couple of hours later, two men came in within five minutes of each other. I'd hardly seen anyone for two hours, and then there they both were in the office at the same time. Both were relative newcomers to Miracle Springs who didn't know me, didn't know Almeda, and didn't care about anything except getting their orders settled as quickly and as cheaply as possible. But both orders were complicated and it took more time and patience than either man had to see to all the details. I wished Mr. Ashton would get back!

“Look, young lady,” said one of the men finally, “I've got other places to go. Can't you hurry this up?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, “I'm shorthanded today and am doing the best I can.”

“I never had problems like this down in Sacramento.”

“Yeah, and prices are cheaper down there too,” now put in the other man sarcastically.

“The price on this harness is set by the manufacturer,” I said, “as is the price on that jack and the others items of
your
order,” I said, turning to the second man. “We charge no more than they do in Sacramento.”

“Maybe,” he replied, “but they'd have everything in stock and we wouldn't have to wait for them.”

I bit my tongue and didn't reply, and I did my best to finish filling out the two orders cheerfully. By the time both men left, they were still griping about our prices and delays, and I was steaming inside all over again. I wanted to shout at both of them, “Don't you know this business has been serving the people of Miracle Springs for almost twenty years and that my stepmother has given her life's blood for it?”

I went back to my work as best I could. Mr. Ashton returned, and I was glad. When Mrs. Ford came in, I let him assist her.

“Good day, Mrs. Ford,” he said, rising and approaching the counter.

“Is my husband's saddle in?” she said without smiling.

“Not yet. We're expecting it any day.”

“He told me not to take no for an answer.”

“I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do to hurry it up. It's already on its way. I believe I told him it would be a week, and that was five days ago.”

“He said it should have been in by now.”

“As I said, it could be any day. We'll deliver it to your husband the moment it arrives.”

She turned and left in a huff, muttering something about the service not being what it once was and closing the door with an extra hard yank of her hand.

By the end of the day I was worn out emotionally and physically. I could see why occasionally Almeda needed a break!

I rode home, still not having seen Christopher since morning. As I walked into our little bunkhouse I was looking forward to a quiet cozy evening with him. I noticed how cold and dark it was inside, having had no people there all day. The air felt like it had stopped moving, and the very stillness was heavy.

I went to work quickly to make it feel like a home again. I built a fire in the stove and began stirring up a batch of muffins. I still had some stew left over from the day before. Most of all, I just wanted some time with Christopher to share my frustrations from the day.

As the house began to warm up I began to recover from my fatigue, looking forward all the more to sitting down with Christopher and enjoying our quiet and peaceful evening together.

I had the table set and the food all ready by the time Christopher came home. He was later than I expected, and I had begun to wonder what was keeping him. I went outside a time or two, looking up the road toward town and listening for the sound of his horse. I picked a few sprigs of lavender I had planted out of the yard, and with a few forget-me-nots made a pretty little bouquet.

I walked back inside and put the flowers in a vase and set it on the center of the table. Just as I was finishing with it, I heard a horse approach. I went out just as Christopher dismounted. He came toward me, smiled weakly, and kissed the top of my forehead as he handed me his lunch can.

“Welcome home!” I said. “A hard day?”

“Yeah, and I'm pretty dirty too,” he nodded. “I think I'll go out back and chop up some kindling.”

“Don't you want to get cleaned up?”

“Not just yet. And I've got to put the horse away.” He turned to go.

“But supper's all ready and waiting.”

“You go ahead. I'm not very hungry.”

With that he turned and went back to his horse and slowly led him toward the barn. I stood watching, wondering what was the matter. I sighed and walked back into the bunkhouse. I took out what he hadn't eaten from his lunch can, wondering why he hadn't finished the slabs of buttered bread and the apple. I rinsed the can out. A few minutes later I heard the sound of the ax begin chopping away out back.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I went outside and slowly approached. Christopher was chopping away as if it were morning rather than the end of a long day.

“What's wrong?” I asked as he finished one piece of wood and reached down for another.

He glanced up, seemingly surprised at the sound of my voice, with an expression almost as if he'd forgotten I existed. “Oh, nothing,” he said.

I stood there just a moment longer, then turned and went back inside, unable to prevent myself starting to get mad. I thought we were supposed to talk and share with each other!

I dished out some stew, buttered a muffin, and sat down at my place at the table and tried to eat. But I could only swallow one spoonful. It tasted terrible! Then I started to cry. What was going on?

Finally I got up and went across the room and sat down with a quilt on the little sofa, where I cried myself to sleep.

I woke up with Christopher shaking me and telling me it was time to go to bed. It was dark outside and obviously late. I didn't know what had happened to the dinner, but the chill told me the fire was out. I got up sleepily and we both silently prepared ourselves for bed. My heart ached.

When I woke up the next morning Christopher was already gone. When I saw him again the following evening, his spirits were better, though I never did find out what had been bothering him.

Christopher had told me earlier that I didn't need to do or learn anything particular in the way of being a pastor's wife and that it would happen naturally. At the time I hadn't really understood
what
it was that would happen.

Now I was beginning to find out!

It was just involvement with people every day. That was enough to keep me growing, and not always in pleasant ways. That involvement with people wore on Christopher and led to unforeseen burdens and sometimes silences that weren't always pleasant, as happened after that long frustrating day I had worked at the freight company. But even when our times with other people were on the pleasant and enjoyable side, it was just taxing suddenly to have so little time alone for ourselves. That was the hardest part—the demands of time.

“One of the main things, Corrie,” Christopher had told me earlier, “is simple hospitality. The pastor's home, even if it is just a bunkhouse, has to always be open to people. But that won't be hard for you, because you enjoy having people over anyway. Why, the Hollister place has had people coming and going ever since I came here!”

I figured I could do that well enough. It was fun to have people over to our place and to fix a nice dinner or serve coffee and cake and to sit and talk and pray with them as Christopher's wife and helper and partner.

But I also began to learn that there was more to hospitality than I might have thought at first. It was also a kind of warm hominess pointed in a different direction than toward the people of the community—toward Christopher himself.

Sometimes Christopher came home positively excited about the work he had been doing or some conversation he had had, and he would proceed to tell me all about it. That's how it was after the talk with Mr. Henry about the anger rock.

But then there were other times when he would be real silent all evening, like when he'd gone out to chop wood. I couldn't help but think he was upset with me, maybe about the way the supper tasted or how the house looked. My mind would start racing, and I'd listen to all the talk we'd had that morning over again to myself, wondering what I might have said or done to make him get so quiet.

Sometimes I'd get up the courage to ask if something was wrong, and he'd look at me with a funny expression, then sort of half smile and shake his head and answer no. Sometimes he'd sigh and start to tell me about some poor man or woman he'd met up with that day and how he'd been praying for him ever since.

It was always difficult for me, because I was so prone to take things on myself and think that something was my own fault when Christopher wasn't talkative. But gradually I realized that there were emotional demands to pastoring that were even harder to bear sometimes than the physical demands of hard work.

I began to see that hospitality meant more than just having folks over. It meant providing a safe and peaceful and restful place for Christopher, where he could talk with me when he wanted, but also where he could be free not to talk too. Sometimes he just needed to be quiet to think and pray or reflect on what might have happened during the day—or even to go out and chop wood and ignore me if he needed to, without my getting upset about it. He needed our home to be a sanctuary and a retreat for
his
soul, just as much as other people might have needed it to be a friendly place to visit when they needed to talk about something.

Even as I write that, it sounds easier than it was. It
wasn't
easy to learn. And I didn't just learn it all of a sudden. I continued to struggle to learn it, and I am
still
having to learn new aspects of it every day. That was
really
a hard day when I cried myself to sleep. But I tried to learn from the experience.

Our lives weren't just our own anymore. We belonged to the whole community. There was a certain sacrifice that went along with it, of both time and emotional energy. Not only did I need to be gracious to people when they came to visit, I needed to allow Christopher the freedom to continue thinking and praying for them or even carrying a burden on their behalf after he came home, without trying to claim all his energy and attention for myself.

As I said, that was not easy. All I'd had to worry about before was myself. I could read or write or take off on horseback anytime I wanted to. Being married had, of course, changed that. And now being a pastor's wife had changed it all the more. There wasn't the same freedom as before. Now I had to be there when Christopher needed me. Being hospitable meant putting others ahead of myself, most of all my husband and the ministry God had led him into.

They say you don't really learn to appreciate what your parents did for you until you have children of your own. I suppose your eyes are not fully opened to anything until you have looked upon it with the eyes of your own personal experience. In the same way, I'm sure you cannot really see what being a wife is all about until you
are
one.

Now I was one. And now I began to see that a lot of what Almeda did for Pa and Aunt Katie did for Uncle Nick, and what Harriet had done for Rev. Rutledge, was practicing hospitality toward their men as well as toward their families and visitors, making their homes a place where they could regain their strength to go back out to do what God had given them to do.

But I struggled to learn it almost every day, it seemed! When Christopher came home after my difficult day at the freight company, I'd tried to be hospitable with the supper and the flowers, but in my heart I got angry, which was anything but hospitable. As I said, it was a daily learning experience!

Late one other afternoon a week or two later, I was fixing supper and feeling frustrated because I had been trying to find time all day to squeeze in an hour or so to write in my journal about these new things I was trying to learn. But almost from the moment I'd climbed out of bed, the day had just been too full with unexpected interruptions. Christopher was working across the valley helping one of the ranchers brand some new cattle, and I hadn't seen him since seven that morning. I'd worked some at the freight company that morning, then Harriet had come over for lunch. Ruth was sick, and I'd helped Almeda for a while with her.

Then of all things, about three in the afternoon Mrs. Gilly and Mrs. Sinclair came to visit. When I looked out the window and saw them driving up in Mrs. Sinclair's buggy I couldn't help groaning. Oh, how I hoped they had come to see Almeda! But no, they got out and headed straight for our bunkhouse.

With a sigh, I went over to stoke the fire in the stove and put on the teapot. By the time I heard the knock on the door I had managed to find a smile, though my heart was not in the mood for the hour-and-a-half visit which followed.

I was so worn out by the time they left, from having to keep a smile plastered on my face and keep up my end of a positively uninteresting conversation about ninety minutes of nothing, with the feeling all the while that they were both looking for any tidbit of gossip they might pounce upon and proceed to spread throughout Miracle Springs. They would probably have been gone after twenty minutes if I'd intentionally let slip some little personal morsel about Christopher or me!

And now there I sat peeling potatoes when I really wanted to be writing, or outside on a walk, or someplace other than right there. I hadn't had a minute to myself all day.

Finally I just decided I was going to
take
the time.

I threw down my knife, wiped my hands on my apron, and walked to the tiny writing desk. If supper was a little late tonight, well that would be too bad. I flipped through my journal to the first clean page. The last entry had been almost a week ago. I couldn't believe it! I used to write pages and pages every day. Now I was lucky to get to my journal once a week!

I filled my pen with ink, and on the top of the page I wrote the words,
Hospitality and the Pastor's Wife
.

Then I sat staring at what I had written. My brain was blank.

I sat for five or ten minutes. Nothing would come.

Suddenly behind me I heard the door open. I jumped up quickly, for some reason embarrassed at the thought that Christopher would find me sitting at the desk.

“Hey, Corrie!” he said, walking toward me and kissing me as I turned around. “What are you working on?”

“Oh . . . oh, nothing—but you're a mess!” I exclaimed, trying to change the subject. He really was. His face was grimy and his clothes were covered with dust.

“It was filthy work, and I'm exhausted.”

“You're home earlier than I expected.”

“I'd have never lasted another hour. Luckily we got done.”

He started to take off his overgarments and toss them in the corner.

“I'm going to go take a bath in the creek. What's for supper?”

“Uh . . . potatoes and biscuits,” I said.

“Good, I'm starved.”

As soon as he was gone I hurried back to finish the potatoes and get them into the pot and boiling. It wasn't long before I realized how ridiculous I'd been—trying to write about hospitality when inside I was being just as inhospitable as could be, both to my visitors and my husband, and fooling myself into thinking I had anything worthwhile to say on the matter.
I guess hospitality isn't something you can write about—you have to do it!
I said to myself.

By the time Christopher was back from the creek and into a fresh set of clothes, supper was almost ready. But I'd forgotten to close my journal, and he glanced down as he passed at the empty page with the ambitious heading.

“What's this?” he said as he paused next to my desk. “Looks like you were getting ready to write something I would be interested to read.”

“I doubt that,” I laughed.

“Why?”

“Good idea . . . bad timing,” I said. “I don't think I'm quite ready to write about being a pastor's wife, even in my journal!”