A Home for the Heart

by Michael Phillips

  Oh, Christopher, do you understand what I am trying to say? It always seems that I am babbling when I try to convey the deep things I am thinking about to you. I hope you occasionally make sense of my words!

  Always before, the only thing I considered was whether something seemed right for me to do—for me. I wrote because I wanted to write. I went to the East because it seemed right to me to go, and I came back to California because that, too, seemed right to me.

  Now that I am back here, however, and everyone asks me, “What are you going to do now, Corrie?” and I am faced with writing offers and other possibilities—I can no longer decide by asking what seems right to me. Now it has to seem right . . . for us.

  This brings me to the bigger question, “What is right for us, Christopher?”

  Does marriage have to bring an end to goals and dreams you had before? Should it? Does the larger question of sharing your life with another mean that lesser personal goals disappear? I do not think this is true, yet certainly they must change.

  Oh, so many questions!

  What do you think I should do about Mr. Kemble’s offer? I need your help and your prayers. Should I sign the contract? Might God want me to? The staff position he is offering would require a lot of time and work, and I don’t want to find myself in the position of having to choose between you and my writing. But that’s silly, isn’t it? I just don’t know where my writing fits in with our future.

  I want you to tell me exactly what you think about this. Please be really honest with me.

  Christopher, it seems that my thoughts run in circles these days! So many thoughts chase one another, and sometimes I can’t seem to make them stand in line.

  For example, I feel such a peace about us. You’re too much a part of my life for me even to pretend otherwise. Yet I have to confess that sometimes I am overcome with fear that something will happen and I will lose you, Christopher, and then I can’t bear it.

  I’m sorry for thinking it, yet I am sure it is the Lord leading me in these thoughts. For then I realize I have to be willing to bear anything for God’s sake—even losing you. I must be willing to do what he says in all things. Isn’t that what it means to be Christ’s follower?

  I know that is what you want for me, and for yourself too. Yet . . . if I’m truly a disciple, it won’t matter whether you want me or not. However, I want to be a disciple . . . and your wife. And I really do believe the Lord has brought us together. . . . Do you see what I mean about the circles?

  Oh, Christopher, I long so to see you face-to-face.

  As much as I like to write, it is sometimes hard to be writing to you, because I want to talk to you directly and ask you questions and tell you things. And I so miss hearing your voice. Do you remember last Good Friday, when you talked to me about choices, and about Jesus’ willingly choosing to do what he did?

  That’s what I miss—talking and listening to you. There is so much I want to write, but I can’t write all day long!

  Where will we go together, Christopher? What will be the road the Lord will set us upon to travel together?

  Not knowing that, how can I know what the future will hold? Not knowing that, how can I make a wise choice about writing or about Mr. Kemble’s offer . . . or about anything?

  Maybe I should just ask you: What do you think I should do . . . what do you want me to do? Whatever you say, I would willingly and eagerly agree to.

  I hope you make sense of all this!

  Yours,

  Corrie

  Dear Corrie,

  Of course I understand! Everything is different for me, too, now that you are part of my life, though the differences for me are different than the differences for you.

  Did I really just say that? Do I sometimes make absolutely no sense to you?

  What I meant was that the difference you speak of has to do with your former independence. You are now trying to look anew at your future through interdependent eyes . . . to consider me and our life together as you make your decisions.

  For me, however, the change lies in looking toward my future at all. After I left the pulpit and went to work for Mrs. Timms, I did not look ahead in any way. I simply endeavored to be faithful day by day to what was put before me. Envisioning the future was too painful, because I could not do so without the past coming back from my church experience to haunt me.

  Now, suddenly, I find the sun has risen over the horizon of my future! Doors have been thrown open wide that I thought were closed to me forever. Far from being too burdensome to contemplate, the thought of sharing my future with another now seems almost too wonderful to be true!

  To answer your question—of course you are right in thinking that a husband and wife must first and foremost be together in all things. I like what you say, that they must be going along “the same life’s road as partners and comrades and friends.” That is most certainly what I want to be with you—your partner and comrade and friend, sharing the adventure of life with God!

  I’m sorry, though, but I cannot tell you what you ought to do about the newspaper offer. Of course, I want nothing but what is best for you—what makes you happy, and what brings you satisfaction and fulfillment. To achieve that end will be one of my highest objectives in life. But there is always a deeper question than happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment. You do not need me to tell you what it is, for you already know. The most important question is not what I want you to do, but what God wants you to do (and what God wants me to do . . . and what God wants us to do). That is the highest question of all, the one we must ask about everything.

  I too am sometimes haunted by fears similar to the ones you confess—fears of losing you. And what you say about it is absolutely right. We must be willing, even though we hope and pray such is not the case.

  As I see it, willingness is the key to many, many doors of growth. In this life, God is always in the process of pruning away our self-wills. Even though the knife hurts when the branches are cut away, he only does it to strengthen his life within the main trunk of our lives. Don’t you love the lessons of John 15?

  Still, one of the reasons I am so confident that it is God’s ultimate will for us to be together is this. If he had said, “Christopher, you put together a woman who has all the qualities you find desirable in a wife, all the characteristics you admire, and a personality which blends with yours completely, and I’ll give you that woman,” I don’t think I would have devised anyone so nearly perfectly suited to me as he did when he made you!

  I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to contemplate you as my wife! I get carried away like this whenever I think of you!

  As to the specific thing you ask me about, I cannot say whether it be something God wants or does not want. Even if I did know, I am not sure I would say. Perhaps later it will fall to me to make these kinds of decisions for both of us. But right now it seems to me that this is a decision that rests between you and God.

  I will pray that God will show us both the answers to the various decisions we are facing.

  How good God is to us, is he not! to give us such common goals and visions about what we want our lives to be!

  Equally yours,

  Christopher

  Chapter 15

  Unexpected Mail and New Questions

  The week after Mr. Kemble’s visit, Pa had to leave for Sacramento for an important session of the legislature. He was gone two weeks.

  When he came home, he said, “I told you, Corrie, you’re gonna be the most important Hollister in this state!”

  “Why’s that?” I laughed.

  “’Cause everywhere I went, people were asking about you, asking if you were home yet, asking when I was gonna bring you to Sacramento with me so they could meet you, asking when they were gonna see some more of your writing. You’re a celebrity! I tell you, Corrie, I reckon just about everybody knows the name Corrie Belle Hollister.”

  “Aw, go on, Pa—that can’t be true!”

  “I wouldn’t li
e to you!”

  Almost as if he had planned it, two days later I got another letter in the mail, this time from the San Francisco Register.

  Dear Miss Hollister,

  We at the Register have followed your writing for several years with the keenest interest and respect. You have a very personal method of communicating that would be of great interest to our readership.

  With all due respect to your previous relationship with one of our competitors, we would be honored to be allowed to submit an offer for your consideration. For articles printed in the Register our minimum fee would be fifteen dollars, and more for those considered of a significant nature.

  We would also be honored to discuss with you, during your next visit to the city, the possibility of your joining our permanent staff. Such a position which would carry a monthly stipend of twenty-five dollars, plus an additional payment for each article written.

  If such an arrangement would fit into your plans, it could be structured in any manner in which you deemed beneficial.

  Respectfully yours,

  G. Smythe, Editor

  San Francisco Register

  And then still another letter, similar though not as specific, came the next week from the Sacramento Bee.

  I couldn’t believe it! How had all these papers suddenly found out that I was back in California? Maybe Pa was right, and the articles I had written when I was back East had gotten more attention at home than I’d realized.

  I still didn’t agree with Pa about being a celebrity, but something was up—that was for sure.

  Following the letters from the Register and the Bee were occasional solicitations from still other papers inquiring about articles I might like to write for them. I also received two invitations to speak, one from the Christian Women’s Society of San Francisco, the other from the Legislative Ladies Auxiliary in Sacramento. Both groups said I could speak about anything I wanted, but were especially interested in my experiences during the war and my visits with President Lincoln.

  I must admit I was gratified by the offers, but I didn’t know what to do about them. Now I had an even longer list of decisions to pray about!

  All I would have had to do was agree to even some of the offers, and suddenly I would have been right back into the same kind of busy life I had been living for the past five or six years.

  One day I went into my room, closed the door, sat down on my bed, and began to pray.

  God, what do you want me to do? All of a sudden it seems that there are so many opportunities staring me right in the face. I always figured before that when something came up, that was a sign that you were behind it and wanted me to do it. But now here are a bunch of things coming along that I’m not sure that’s true about. Do you bring things into our lives that you don’t want us to do, but you bring them along so that we’ll have to think about them and ask you about them?

  I stopped.

  What a huge new thought that was!

  What if God allows things to come along that he doesn’t want us to do, but that look at first glance like something he would want? What if he allows them to come just so that we will think and pray more seriously and consider the consequences more than we have before?

  Perhaps that is part of the growing-up process for God’s children. Perhaps that is how God intends to make spiritual men and women of us, by giving us harder and harder decisions to face, decisions with more consequences . . . and giving us a greater share in the making of the decision.

  Maybe he intentionally makes his leading more difficult to figure out because he wants us to think about what his purposes might be on deeper levels than we did when we were young.

  These were all such new ideas.

  I thought about them all the rest of that day, and these ponderings started another whole vein in my correspondence with Christopher. Late that night, I pulled out the letter from him I’d just gotten the previous day, read it over again, then I stayed up past midnight writing back to him. Afterward I could hardly hold in my anxiety in awaiting his reply.

  Chapter 16

  Mutual Commitment

  Dear Christopher,

  You are right, God is so good to us!

  I hope you did not misunderstand me before. Laying down my previous independence so that we might share life together is not, as you seemed to think I said, burdensome to me. I rejoice at the thought of it! I only say that it is different than it has been before, and that is an adjustment I must make in ordering my thoughts and decisions.

  It seems, however, that I shall have ample practice in making such adjustments. I have already written you about the offers I received from the Register and the Bee. This week I heard from two other newspapers and also from two groups that want me to come speak. I have not yet responded to any of these offers, but they have certainly sent me to my knees—and now to my writing table, to seek your counsel.

  Thinking and praying about the future of my writing from the perspective, as you said, of what God wants has opened a whole new region in my brain. Have you ever considered that perhaps God brings things to us that look like they are from him, but that he doesn’t want us to pursue? That he might give us opportunities that he wants us to say No to instead of Yes?

  At first the very idea of it was perplexing. Why would he do such a thing? Surely God is not one who would intentionally confuse us.

  Then I thought, maybe his reason is to help us learn to distinguish between good things . . . and the best things.

  I have found that in praying about the opportunities I am facing, I have been forced to consider everything from a much larger point of view, looking not just at right now or even next year, but also at what is really important over a whole lifetime.

  I have found these thoughts leading to another question: What are the very best things in life? What is the most important thing to spend one’s energy on?

  This has caused me to contemplate where God may take us together in life. What best things does he want Corrie Hollister and Christopher Braxton to be about?

  Will our lives matter?

  What will we do that will be significant when we are old? What will we look back on and say, “That counted for something that was a best thing, not merely a good thing”?

  Will we have helped anyone?

  Will anyone know God more intimately because of us?

  Will we have made any difference in God’s kingdom?

  What value does life have if we do not do these things?

  These questions in turn led me to thinking a new way about all the decisions facing me. They have caused me to ask: Is my writing, for its own sake, of value?

  It used to be enough for me just to write about anything, as long as I could communicate something that seemed to me to be true. At first I wrote about blizzards and nature and trees and people. After that I began writing about elections and politics, then about war and the Union cause.

  Now, perhaps in all those things I did write about truth. But who will know God better because of what I wrote about Mr. Lincoln or the war? Who will know God better because I wrote in support of Mr. Fremont and Mr. Stanford?

  Has this larger perspective come into my consciousness because I am older, or because I know you and we have talked about these things? Wherever it comes from, I now find myself wondering if what we do, in order to be of lasting value, doesn’t need to have some connection to helping people . . . and not just helping them, but helping them know God better?

  That is what I desire my life to be about.

  I want to help people with you, Christopher. I want to be part of your compassion for the men and women that God sends our way. If my writing can do that, then I hope it pleases God to use it. But if it does not serve that end, then perhaps there are other avenues the Lord would have me journey down with you.

  You must have considered all these questions. The passion to help people know God burned in you. That is why you went to seminary and entered the ministry.

  Now you wr
ite that for the first time in years you are considering the future. But what do you think when you look forward? Do you think you will ever go into the pastorate again? What will you do? Will you farm, as you have been doing for Mrs. Timms? Will you load sacks of grain on those strong shoulders of yours? What will you and I do together? Where will we live?

  How can I possibly commit myself to any plans about my writing when so much is undecided about my life with you? Even though our union may be more than a year away, time passes quickly and I want to begin now ordering my steps with you, not on my own.

  Am I being too terribly presumptuous to talk so freely of our future together? Forgive me, dear Christopher! But I cannot think of any of these things without you at the center of them.

  Yours,

  Corrie

  Dear Corrie,

  Perhaps you are being presumptuous. But who am I to say, for I suffer from the same presumption!

  Yes, I do think of the pastorate at times, and yet returning to the pulpit is not something I seek. To tell you the truth, the thought of it frightens me more than excites me. After my previous experience, though I trained for it and desired it in my youth, I would approach such a position now with trepidation. I fear I am not one who could, with good conscience, temper my convictions to please the power brokers of a congregation—and alas, such seems the requirement upon which a so-called “successful pastorate” is based. Thus I cannot at present envision any church having me.

  Having said that, however, let me add that my passion for ministry is undiminished. The ministry, in its broader sense, I still seek with my whole heart—ministry to people, to individual men and women and children, the ministry of spreading truth, the ministry of taking cool cups of the water of the gospel to a thirsty world.

  The burden of my heart is exactly as you wrote in your last letter—your words ringing with such resonance in my being. Your questions, the cries of your heart, echo mine exactly.

  Will our lives matter? you ask. Will we have helped anyone? . . . Will we have made any difference in God’s kingdom?