Love Finds You in Nazareth, Pennsylvania

by Melanie Dobson

  He blinked and then forced himself to look down at his hands. Perhaps among the Indians God would purge his desires, even change his heart. If God didn’t turn his heart toward Susanna, he would pray that he could break free of the chains that seemed to bind him to Catharine.

  Closing his eyes, Christian focused his mind on his prayer until their elder, Francis Graff, arrived along with Brother Edward, the laborer from the Married Brothers Choir, and Sister Annabel, who oversaw the married sisters. Elder Graff pushed his spectacles up his nose, and with Edward and Annabel on each side of him, he called for Joseph and Rebecca Wittke to come forward.

  Joseph lumbered to the front of the room. His clumsy hands and feet often distracted from a heart willing to work and serve, but Christian hoped this man would join them on their journey. In the months Christian had known him, he had never heard Joseph complain about their work or their travels or what God required of him.

  As Rebecca joined Joseph at the front, Elder Graff unscrewed the red leather cap of the glass tube and slipped three pieces of parchment inside. When he held out the tube, Joseph pulled out a paper. He showed it to Rebecca first, and when he held it out to the elder, the man announced the answer to be a yes. Joseph gave a short nod before they walked back to the benches.

  A second couple from Marienborn went forward. This brother had told Christian that his new wife didn’t want to go and, unlike Christian, he preferred to build for their community instead of ministering outside it. When the lot rejected their travels to Gnadenhutten, the man smiled in relief as he returned to the bench.

  Next Elder Graff called Christian and Susanna’s names. His wife joined him at the front of the Saal, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her or even at Brother Edward. He was ashamed of his feelings for another, embarrassed at his neglect of his wife. Instead of meeting her eyes, he bowed his head as Elder Graff prayed. Then the man held out the tube.

  Christian reached into the glass, the crisp edges of the paper teasing his fingers. In that moment, he stopped praying for God to allow them to go to Gnadenhutten and begged Him silently as he selected a paper.

  He slowly pulled out the paper and opened it.

  Then his hand dropped to his side and he bit back the curse that had frequented his lips often before he’d come to know the Savior.

  Once again, the lot told him no.

  He twisted the paper in his hands. How could God put such a passion, such an overwhelming desire in his heart, and then deny him the opportunity to go? And how could God require him to stay here in this small settlement with Catharine when he was fighting so hard to flee temptation?

  The other men had stepped back toward the long bench after they received their answers, but Christian stood like a statue as he opened his hand and stared down at the paper, as if the word might somehow transform into a yes.

  “What does it say?” Susanna whispered.

  He handed the paper to her, and she turned it over. Then she gave it to the elder.

  Christian’s fists tightened as he eyed the glass tube in the elder’s hand, the other two pieces of paper taunting him. What would the elder do if he threw the tube onto the ground and watched it shatter? What would the others do if he refused the will of the lot and demanded to go on this mission?

  But even as he wanted to smash the glass and tear into tiny shreds the papers that determined the course of one’s life, he stepped back to the bench. If they wouldn’t send him this fall, he wanted to be chosen on the next mission, in the spring, perhaps. His fury would only ban him from the Brethren and from ever journeying to the Indians.

  He turned and took a long stride back toward the bench, but Susanna stopped him, whispering for him to wait.

  Stopping, he turned toward her. In his own frustration, it hadn’t occurred to him that she might be angry as well. For the first time since they married, Christian looked directly into the light blue of Susanna’s eyes, but instead of anger, he saw compassion in them. And kindness.

  “What is it?” the elder asked.

  Everyone was looking at Susanna, and he stepped closer to her.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked quietly so that none except the elder could hear.

  She cleared her throat and lifted her head. Instead of answering him, she turned to the elder, her voice strong. “Perhaps the problem isn’t with the answer. Perhaps it is with the question.”

  Elder Graff cocked his head. “There’s no problem.”

  Her voice quieted. “I wonder if this answer is for me alone and not for my husband.”

  When she looked back at him, Christian studied the gentle strength in her eyes, trying to understand what she was saying. The lot’s answer was for both of them, wasn’t it?

  The elder twisted the tube in his hands. “You think he should go without you?”

  “I—I don’t know for certain,” she said softly. “But I’ve been ill, and I wonder if the Savior means for me to recover more before our next mission.”

  The elder pushed his spectacles up on his nose and focused his eyes on the tube. Then he closed his eyes and began to pray for wisdom in sending Christian alone, but Christian couldn’t concentrate on the man’s words. If the lot concurred, was it possible that their leadership would let him go to the wilderness without his wife?

  As he finished his prayer, Susanna slipped back to her bench, and Christian watched her retreat in awe. In spite of her desire to travel to the Indians, she was letting him go without her.

  But was he abandoning his wife by leaving her behind? This wasn’t like going to Nazareth when she was sick; they’d only been separated for a few days and he could have visited her whenever necessary. If he went on this mission, he would be gone for months. Once they left, there would be no visits back to Nazareth until their journey was complete.

  Susanna’s head bowed when she sat down, and he wished he knew what she was thinking. Did she really want him to go on this mission without her? If he wasn’t abandoning her, if he wasn’t forsaking what God meant for him to do, he would be fleeing the temptation that plagued him. Perhaps God did will him to go—time for both of them to heal what ailed them.

  Elder Graff folded three fresh pieces of parchment and slid them into the tube before he prayed again that God speak through this lot, that God show them whether Christian should go ahead without his wife or stay in Nazareth.

  Christian held his breath as he reached into the tube to pull out a paper and then hesitated as he wrapped his fingers around it. The answer crinkled against his palm—the answer that would change their lives. The lot had seemed to mock him in past months. He couldn’t allow himself to hope that this time would be different.

  Brother Edward prodded him. “What does it say?”

  Christian cracked open the edge of the paper and then handed it to the elder before he looked at it.

  Elder Graff reached for the paper and showed it to Edward and Annabel before he spoke. “Brother Christian will be joining the others on this mission.”

  Joining the others.

  He stared at the man in disbelief.

  This time the lot had given him what he wanted. He was going with the Wittkes to Gnadenhutten, to share the love of Christ with the Indians. He wanted to shout with the joy that bubbled up in him, but when he glanced over at Susanna, he saw tears in her eyes.

  She had given him a gift. A gift he would never forget.

  He turned away from her, returning to his seat in the silence.

  How could he ever be the husband he should be to a woman so selfless? In her love, his guilt ballooned. The lot had been wrong in Marienborn—she should have been married to one of the other brothers, one that was much more devout than he. It made a mockery out of her faith.

  He looked over at her, but her head was bowed again and he wondered if tears still filled her eyes. And if she was crying because she wanted to go. Or because she didn’t want him to leave.

  He bowed his head and prayed silently that he would make good us
e of Susanna’s gift to him, that the Indians would accept a gift as well—the gift of Christ’s love for them.

  And perhaps when he came back, he would be free of his feelings for Catharine. Perhaps he could begin to love the wife God had given him.

  Elder Graff cleared his throat and then called for Elias and Catharine.

  Christian’s head jerked up. They were supposed to send a third couple to the mission field, but he never imagined that the elder would ask the Schmidts to go. The Count had personally sent Elias to serve in the building of Nazareth, not to go on a mission.

  In spite of his determination to flee, in spite of his desire to break free of her hold, Christian watched Catharine stand and, with her air of elegance, saunter toward the front of the room to join Elias.

  Perhaps, since the Disciple’s House was almost finished, the elder wanted the Schmidts to go back to Bethlehem. Or maybe they were being sent someplace else. He didn’t care where they went, as long as Catharine wasn’t going to Gnadenhutten.

  But then Elder Graff began to pray about sending the Schmidts out to the Indian village, and Christian fell back against the seat. Elias was one of the best builders in their community—he wasn’t a missionary.

  Even as the elder prayed for wisdom and direction, Christian prayed that the lot would keep Elias and Catharine in Nazareth. Or send them someplace else. Anywhere except Gnadenhutten.

  Elder Graff held out the tube to Elias, and after Elias drew the lot, a smile spread across his face. It was the elder who made the announcement. “The Schmidts will be joining the others.”

  Christian leaped to his feet. In that moment, he didn’t care what the others thought about him. He wanted to protest the decision of the lot but quickly realized he would have to explain why, and the truth would ruin all of them.

  His head spun as he rushed toward the door. Five months in the wilderness. Five months of seeing Catharine for hours without the protocol and schedules of this community. He could avoid her in a place like Nazareth, but it would be impossible to do so on a mission trip. The entire time, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from thinking about Catharine instead of about his wife.

  And he really wanted to start thinking about his wife.

  He opened the large door and stepped outside.

  When the ceremony was over, the women would hug Catharine and Rebecca and tell them how blessed they were that God was sending them. The men would congratulate Elias and Joseph and tell them the lot had chosen well.

  Christian loved God with his entire being, but he was beginning to hate the lot.

  Chapter Seven

  Wind rattled the dormitory windows as Annabel extolled the virtues of marriage with an enthusiasm that would have made the finest preachers in Europe proud. Susanna picked at the lint on her petticoat as the woman marched up and down the aisle, her audience both newly married women and seasoned wives sitting on neatly made beds. The longer the woman preached, the further Susanna drew into herself.

  Standing in the Saal, she had seen the sorrow in Christian’s eyes at the lot’s initial rejection of their journey. He wanted to go on this mission even more than she did, and when she’d looked at him this morning, she knew she had to let the lot make a decision for him alone.

  It wasn’t Christian’s fault she was so weak. Even though she desperately wanted to be well enough to journey with him, her body must not be ready. He may never love her, but she didn’t want him to resent her. She couldn’t allow her health to hold him back from his calling.

  “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife…” Annabel tapped on the black Bible in her hands, but she didn’t open it to quote the Scripture. Clearly she was an expert on the subject. “…and they shall be one flesh.”

  Catharine sat on a narrow mattress beside Susanna, and Annabel stopped her march directly in front of them, towering over them.

  “The man and his wife were naked in the garden, and they were not ashamed,” Annabel preached. “Nor do you have to be ashamed with your husbands.”

  Catharine elbowed Susanna, and Susanna flinched. The part about leaving her parents didn’t frighten her—they’d left her a long time ago—but how was she supposed to be with a man she didn’t know and be unashamed?

  She squirmed on the edge of the straw mattress.

  “Hold still,” Catharine whispered, and Susanna squeezed her hands together in her lap, trying not to think about being alone with Christian.

  “In Nazareth we schedule an hour each week for a woman to be with her husband,” Annabel explained.

  Susanna secured her hands under her legs as Annabel proceeded to describe their wifely duties in even more detail than the laboress had in Marienborn.

  The laboress back at the castle had stumbled over her words as she tried to explain how a man and his wife became one flesh, seemingly as embarrassed as most of the single sisters. But Annabel wasn’t embarrassed in the least. She’d been married for two decades now and obviously enjoyed her role as educator.

  As Annabel moved back down the aisle, Susanna edged back on her pillow.

  When she was a girl, she used to dream about marrying one of the boys in their small village. There was one boy in particular, by the name of Jonathan Bauer, who used to follow her home from grammar school and try to impress her with his talent of skipping rocks across the pond. He’d never stirred her heart like she had imagined of the man she would marry, but he’d made her smile.

  She’d known so much about Jonathan Bauer. She’d known what made him angry and what filled him with joy. She’d known about his little sister’s illness and the older brother who often provoked Jonathan to wrath. Even as a girl she’d wanted to join the Brethren with her parents, but some days she wondered what it would have been like to stay in their village and marry someone like Jonathan. Someone she knew.

  The Brethren did things so differently than the people in the world, but in their differences, they had been able to leave the world and cling to their faith without the persecution that threatened many of Christ’s followers across Europe. When her father began to be persecuted for his faith, her family fled Moravia and joined Brethren from across the German states at the small village on Count Zinzendorf’s estate called Herrnhut—Watch of the Lord—so they could serve God freely together. It was worth the sacrifice of leaving their country and home and even Jonathan Bauer to worship and serve their Savior without persecution or scorn.

  Like Catharine, Susanna wasn’t certain that the Brethren’s way of separating husbands and wives, parents and children, was the best way to live, but they did avoid many temptations by separating the sexes. Men and women alike were able to devote their lives solely to God without the burden of parenting or marital conflict.

  Susanna had dedicated her life to serving God, no matter how difficult. She wanted her faith to be alive and strong and real, unlike the faith of so many they’d left behind in Europe. Still, some aspects of this faith scared her.

  She wanted to please both God and her husband, but it didn’t matter what Annabel said, nor did it matter how handsome or respected Christian was. She wasn’t ready to join him in the marital bed.

  Catharine groaned beside her. “That woman makes it sound so—prosaic.”

  “How do you know what it’s supposed to be like?”

  Her friend giggled. “Oh, I know plenty.”

  “If you find pleasure in your husband,” Annabel said behind them, “he will find pleasure in you.”

  Susanna squeezed her eyes closed, wishing she could block out the sound of Annabel’s voice as well as the sight of her. This wasn’t what she’d dreamed about when she thought about marriage—a rushed appointment of two strangers coming together as one. At one time she’d wanted her husband to court her, even for a small season, and ask her parents for her hand. And then she’d wanted her husband to take her far from her little village so together they could see parts of the world she’d only dreamed of visiting.


  What would Annabel think this afternoon if Susanna stuck her fingers into her ears and started singing? If the woman didn’t stop talking about wifely duties, she just might do it.

  Catharine sighed. “What’s the point of being married if all we do is talk about what to do with our husbands instead of actually doing it?”

  “Hush.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Susanna hesitated. She couldn’t tell her friend about her fears; no wife should be afraid to be alone with her husband. “I’m still not feeling very well,” she whispered.

  “You’ll feel much better after your hour with Christian.”

  She was certain that she would not.

  Annabel was beside them then, her hand on Catharine’s shoulder. “Did you have something you wanted to say, Sister Catharine?”

  Catharine straightened her back, as poised as she always was. “I was wondering when I could cleave to my husband.”

  A few of the women snickered.

  “The couples leaving on the mission will visit first.”

  Susanna’s stomach fluttered again.

  “So I can see Elias tomorrow?” Catharine persisted.

  Annabel stepped around them and slid a piece of paper out of her Bible. “Catharine, you are scheduled for Friday.”

  “But that’s two days away—”

  Annabel ignored her.

  “And Susanna.” Susanna held her breath as Annabel scanned her paper. “You are scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

  “Lucky,” Catharine whispered.

  Susanna didn’t feel lucky at all.

  In the candlelight, Catharine pulled the thread through the white cotton to monogram her pillowcase with her new initials. All she really needed was a stitch of red to separate her linens and underclothing from the others, since the rest of the women used black or blue thread to monogram their things, but she liked sewing her married initials on everything she owned.

  The candle flickered beside her and women rustled in their beds around her. Some of them were reading, others stitching. Two women were nursing their babies before they put them down in wooden cradles beside their beds. Susanna had left to bathe for her meeting with Christian in the morning.