A New Beginning

by Michael Phillips

  Chapter 38

  Learning to Be a Pastor’s Wife

  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!”

  Chapter 39

  The Freight Company

  Almeda turned fifty that summer. Pa was now fifty-three. I know the passage of years can’t help but bring changes, yet when you’re young you don’t stop to think about things with quite the same perspective as you do when you get older. So I think it came as a surprise to us “younger adults” one evening when Pa and Almeda asked us to all have supper together because they had something they wanted to talk to us about.

  “Almeda and I aren’t getting any younger,” began Pa, and I could tell from his expression that something serious was on his mind. “And we’ve been thinking and talking and praying about the future and about some changes we maybe ought to make.”

  We all glanced around at each other, wondering what he might be talking about.

  “The long and the short of it,” Pa went on, “is that we’ve been talking about selling the freight company.”

  He stopped to let his words sink in. I don’t know what anyone else thought. But the Mine and Freight—now officially the Hollister Supply Company—had been such a part of our lives since the very day my brothers and sisters and I had first set foot in Miracle Springs that I could hardly imagine our lives going on without it.

  “The business continues to grow,” now added Almeda, “and we are simply beginning to feel that it is too much for us. It seems as though the business needs new, young, fresh energy. Mr. Parrish and I had that kind of enthusiasm when we first began back during the gold rush. But times have changed. The demands on the business are different now. We’ve done our best to change with them, and yet at the same time we’re not at the stage of life when we have the energy or vision to begin all over again in new directions.”

  “What new directions?” asked Tad.

  “Nothing particular, son,” replied Pa. “We’ve just got the feeling that new times are coming. Why, the railroad’s going to link the country within a year. That’s bound to change a lot of things. More folks’ll be coming west. More lines are getting built right here in California. A business like ours that has to do with transporting things is bound to change by all that modernizing.”

  “We want to see the business continue to thrive,” said Almeda, “but we’re wondering if it might be able to do so better in someone else’s hands. You know—young, fresh, enthusiastic blood.”

  “But you are the freight company,” I protested.

  “Yes, dear,” admitted Almeda, “I have been. But perhaps that season is drawing to a close, as sad as it makes me to say it.”

  It fell silent around the table.

  “’Course any of you’d have first crack at the business and would be our first choice to carry on with it,” said Pa after a minute. “That’s why we’re talking it over like this, to ask you all what you think, and to see if any of you’d ever thought of taking a more permanent interest in things.”

  Again it was quiet a moment.

  “What would you do, Pa?” asked Zack.

  “Maybe become your deputy!”

  “No you won’t, Drummond Hollister!” exclaimed Almeda. “If we’re talking about being too old to keep running the freight company, then . . . well, I won’t finish what I was going to say!”

  Pa laughed. “I don’t know, son,” he said to Zack. “There’s plenty around here to keep me busy. Maybe I’ll do what most men my age do and raise a few cattle and horses to sell. We’re all right for money, especially if we sell the business. I’ll keep as busy as I want to with the mine—there’s still some gold there.”

  “What about politics again, Pa?” I asked.

  “Not for me, Corrie. Even with the train coming through here, I’ve got no intention of running back and forth to Sacramento again. The one thing I aim to do is enjoy my later years with my family. I’m staying put right here in Miracle Springs!”

  “We had thought at one time about you and Corrie taking over the business,” said Almeda, now turning toward Christopher. “But of course now that would seem out of the question.”

  “Why?” I asked. “If we’re not going to take money from the church, then we have to support ourselves somehow. Besides, I know more about the freight company than anyone but you—well, maybe you or Mr. Ashton.”

  “The question is, Corrie,” replied Almeda, “—do you really want to run a business yourself?”

  “There’s more to it than meets the eye,” said Pa. “Even as close to it as you have been, you don’t realize a tenth the burden it’s been for Almeda all these years. You just don’t feel it till you’re standing in those shoes yourself.”

  “Your father’s right, Corrie,” said Almeda. “I have no doubt you and Christopher could do a most capable job of it. But is it what the Lord wants for you? A business can be a huge emotional burden, just like a church.”

  “I imagine there are more similarities between the two than most people realize,” said Christopher, “and they take their toll.”

  “There are always pressing financial problems,” Pa put in, “situations with employees, disgruntled customers, orders that are late, competition, and a thousand complexities. I can’t tell you how many times Almeda’s come home plumb worn out from them.”

  “It is exciting and challenging if that is what you make the focus of your whole life. I have loved being in business all these years,” said Almeda. “But your father is right, there are burdens it brings. And when you have other responsibilities—as the two of you now do with the church and all its needs—then it becomes very difficult to have enough of you to go around.”

  “I see,” nodded Christopher. “These are all things we must seriously consider.”

  “The years, for example, when your father was in the legislature,” added Almeda, “—those were difficult years for us to keep up the energy necessary in the business, along with all the demands of his political role.”

  “Not to mention the fact,” laughed Christopher, “that I know nothing about business.”

  “Neither did I, son,” added Pa. “But these women of ours are mighty capable. I have no doubt Corrie could run the business just as good as Almeda did—if that’s what was the right thing.”

  “And that’s really the point, isn’t it,” said Christopher, “—what is the rig
ht thing? What does God want? Corrie and I will pray earnestly about it,” he said, turning first to Pa, then to Almeda.

  I nodded my agreement.

  “And, of course, we’ve thought of the rest of you too,” Pa said now to the others. “Zack, you’re pretty tied up with what you’re doing. Tad, I don’t know what you’re planning on doing, but—”

  “I’m going to sea, Pa.”

  Pa laughed. “I know I’ve heard you talk about sailing from time to time, and I see you reading them books about ships—you really serious, son?”

  “You bet I am, Pa. I’m gonna do it someday.”

  “And after that, what?”

  “Don’t know. Haven’t thought much about it.”

  “Becky?”

  “I don’t know, Pa,” Becky replied.

  Again there was a long, thoughtful silence.

  “What about Mr. Ashton?” asked Zack.

  “We shall perhaps talk to him,” answered Almeda, “but I am not certain he would be best for the future of the business, either. He is even older than we are.”

  “Well, we ain’t likely to settle anything here and now,” said Pa. “We just wanted to know what you all thought. Meantime, we’re gonna write to Mike and Emily and let them know what we’re thinking. We’ll keep praying, and all you keep praying, and we’ll see what the Lord wants to do.”

  Chapter 40

  Looking Toward the Future

  Along with everything else, 1868 was a presidential year.

  Andrew Johnson had become President after President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. He did his best to carry out Mr. Lincoln’s reconstruction policies, which were already in place. However, he was not as strong a leader as Mr. Lincoln and was not able to carry them out very well.

  Mr. Lincoln’s plan had been to view the southern states as never having been outside the Union. So immediately after the war they had been fully recognized as states just like always, and President Johnson had laid down conditions for the restoration of their state governments. New constitutions, legislatures, and governors had been established in these states, and their first act had been to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which abolished slavery.