The Braxtons of Miracle Springs

by Michael Phillips

  The journals of the Braxtons have only just begun—and that is a story that will last the rest of our lives! I am excited to think of all the Lord will do in our years together.

  I cried when Christopher finally was able to tell me the whole story about his growing up. You see, he’d lost a mother too, but his story stayed sad whereas mine turned out happy.

  Then we both cried and laughed together in our thankfulness to God for how he had saved us for one another and had brought us together.

  To think that Christopher had found a wife just lying by the side of the road unconscious, two and a half thousand miles away from her home! If that wasn’t God’s provision, I don’t know what it could be called!

  If I had to single out the most meaningful thing about being married, now that I am privileged to call myself a “married lady”—though that sounds so old—I would say it’s being able to talk back and forth like that with someone who understands you as completely as anyone is likely to.

  Christopher and I promised one another that we would keep talking like we did on our honeymoon—sharing everything and anything we were thinking and feeling and never holding even the tiniest thing back from each other—all the rest of our lives. If two people are communicating, we figured, even if things sometimes come between them, they should also be able to work them out.

  Chapter 3

  Unknown Danger

  In a run-down Sacramento hotel, an evil-looking man set down the newspaper he had been reading and smiled an even more evil-looking grin.

  His face was dark and weathered, and a long scar ran from the lower side of his left cheek down over his jawbone onto his neck. The smile was a menacing one, and it made the man look older than he really was because several teeth were missing from his mouth. Those that remained were an ugly yellowish color. The gleam that shone from his eyes could only have been caused by one thing—hate.

  How could I be so lucky? the man thought.

  This was exactly what he had come to California for, and now he had located them without even having to bribe, threaten, or kill anyone. This was going to be easier than he imagined!

  He opened the day’s edition of the Sacramento Bee once again to the second page where a headline had drawn his attention: HOLLISTER BRAXTON WED IN MIRACLE SPRINGS.

  Slowly he read through the article again.

  In a ceremony yesterday in the small former mining community of Miracle Springs, former Alta reporter Miss Cornelia Belle Hollister was married to Mr. Christopher Braxton of Richmond, Virginia. The bride was given away by her father, Drummond Hollister, former California state assemblyman. Present with Mr. Hollister was his wife, the bride’s stepmother, Almeda Parrish Hollister, the bride’s three sisters, Emily Hollister McGee, Rebecca Hollister, and Ruth Hollister, and her two brothers, Zachary Hollister and Thaddeus Hollister. The Reverend Avery Rutledge of Miracle Springs performed the ceremony. The bride wore a blue-lace gown with an embroidered satin belt and carried a white Testament that had belonged to her mother, the late Agatha Belle Hollister. The couple plans to reside in Miracle Springs, which is located in the foothills north of Sacramento.

  The man threw the paper down on the floor with a laugh, then rose and left his room for the saloon. This fortuitous news called for a celebration!

  Chapter 4

  Our First Home Together

  On our first morning in Sacramento, we came downstairs to breakfast in exuberant spirits, hardly even feeling tired despite how little we had slept.

  Then I took Christopher out for a day’s tour of California’s capital. We hired a buggy and horse and went everywhere. We went inside the new capitol building, and I told Christopher as much as I knew about Pa’s time there as state assemblyman. As we rode about the city, I showed him where I’d given speeches for the Sanitary Commission and on behalf of Mr. Lincoln’s election.

  “You really stood up in front of big crowds of people and gave speeches?” asked Christopher, looking around at the mostly empty park. “And this whole place was full of people?”

  “Well, mostly full,” I answered.

  “There must have been five hundred people listening to you!”

  “I didn’t say my speeches were any good!” I laughed.

  “If people listened, they must have been,” rejoined Christopher. “Imagine—my wife . . . a politician and speechmaker! I wish I could have seen it.”

  The city was growing so fast that much of it was even new to me. I was looking around with eyes even more full of wonder than Christopher! The state continued to grow so fast, and new people poured in almost daily. It wouldn’t be much longer before train tracks connected California with the East, and then probably even more people would move west!

  By the time afternoon came, we were starting to get real tired. We decided to postpone the rest of our visit about the city for the next day and went back to the boardinghouse.

  When we got back to our room and plopped down in two chairs, we just sat in silence a minute or two, too tired to do anything else. Then I became aware that Christopher was staring at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “I was just thinking how beautiful you are,” he said.

  “I am not,” I said, laughing.

  “I mean it, Corrie—you really are. I know what you’ve told me, how all your life you thought you weren’t. But depth of character has made you beautiful, Corrie. It always does. Humility and maturity take over a face and eventually outshine whatever other lacks may once have existed—if they existed! You may never see it, Corrie, but you really have become a beautiful woman, as all God’s true women do in time.”

  I couldn’t help starting to cry. How fortunate I was for the man God had given me!

  “Thank you, Christopher,” I said. “You’re right; I don’t see it. I still see the same Corrie as always when I look in the mirror. But I know you would never say a word that hinted at empty flattery. So I will treasure what you say.”

  “I mean every word. I love you, Corrie.”

  “I love you too, Christopher.”

  The rest of the afternoon and evening we spent reading and writing in our journals—and talking with each other, of course.

  We stayed in Sacramento four days, then returned to Miracle Springs.

  Just as we had talked all the way down to Sacramento after the wedding, we also talked all the way back home after our honeymoon in the capital was over.

  Home!

  Everywhere was home now—just wherever the two of us were. But we did need a place to settle in together and to start collecting things of our own.

  The subject of Almeda’s house in town had come up before the wedding. But the Duncans were still living there, and they didn’t have another house to move to. Besides, their rent brought in twenty-five dollars a month for Pa and Almeda.

  So in the end Pa and Christopher decided that we could live right there at the property at first—in the bunkhouse Christopher and my brothers had built off the barn.

  Tad and Zack were disappointed in one way because they’d enjoyed the independent feeling of staying out there with Christopher. They liked Christopher too, and the three of them had such fun together. But Zack would now get my room in the house, and Tad would have the room the two of them used to share all to himself. So they recovered from their disappointment fairly quickly.

  I was excited about the prospect. I’d get to be married and yet stay at home with Pa and Almeda and the family, all at the same time! What could be better than to have the best of both worlds rolled up into one? It didn’t bother me one bit not to have a kitchen of my own or even a house of my own. I was so used to sharing and having lots of people around that I wasn’t much in the habit of thinking of things as my own, anyway. After all, I had a husband to call my own, and that was the greatest part of all! What did I need with a kitchen? Besides, this kitchen had been all mine once—I’d had it practically to myself when we first came to California and found Pa.

  So my brothers
had moved out of the bunkhouse before the wedding. Christopher and I had begun fixing it up. And that’s where we went to live as soon as we returned home from Sacramento. We ate with the rest of the family. Christopher continued to work the mine with Pa and the boys and our old friend Alkali Jones and sometimes Uncle Nick. Life went on pretty much the same as before . . . except that now Christopher and I were married and didn’t have to say good night to each other every night.

  I suppose a lot of people get married and can’t wait to get away from their families. But it was great for Christopher to have a family to call his own after so many years of being alone. My own years in the East during the war had given me plenty of time to get my fill of being on my own, so I was just glad to be close to people I loved.

  It was such a happy time!

  Chapter 5

  A Visit with the Rutledges

  During his year in Miracle Springs, Christopher had come to know almost everybody. But as soon as we returned from our honeymoon we wanted to do some visiting around the community.

  Christopher had a pastor’s heart, even though he was no longer a pastor. He wanted to know everyone, know their problems, know what their families were like, know what the men did, how he could pray for them.

  He said that the time would come when we would become more and more occupied with our own lives. Right now we had the time to do some calling and to reach out together. He said that marriage signified a transition point when, after years of thinking mainly about ourselves, it was time for us to look outward and begin sharing life with others—each other first, then other people God might send our way.

  “I want us to use every opportunity the Lord gives us to the utmost,” he said one day when we were talking about it. “Later on, when we have a family that will keep us more occupied, and when we’ll be busy keeping up a home and tending a garden, then we won’t be able to spend as much time with people.”

  So throughout the rest of the spring and summer, usually on Saturday or Sunday, and on some evenings, we’d try to visit someone.

  As I said, we both knew most of the people in and around Miracle Springs already, and Christopher had worked for many of the men upon occasion. But it was different now visiting with these people as man and wife. There was a whole new dimension to it. Just as Christopher and I were getting to know each other all over again, so too were we as a couple going through that process with other people, many of whom I’d known half my life.

  Now I was a woman rather than the fifteen-year-kid who had wandered into town, orphaned—I thought—and bewildered, with two brothers and two sisters in tow. The sensations were so new and different. Especially the sensation of being Mrs. Somebody—Mrs. Anybody—for that is surely not something I’d ever expected to be called during all those years!

  Everyone seemed glad to see us!

  When we’d ride up in the buggy to someone’s house, they would greet us and invite us in for tea and something to eat. Overnight it seemed, I wasn’t a little girl in anyone’s mind, but a grown-up lady. I couldn’t help wondering if I’d ever get used to it! Maybe I’d been growing up more during the last few years than I realized. I suppose your personal maturing is not something you can see very clearly through your own eyes as it is happening.

  When we called upon Avery and Harriet Rutledge one Saturday morning, Rev. Rutledge was in bed. I thought it strange right off because it was late in the morning, and I knew Rev. Rutledge had always been an early riser.

  He got up and came out to visit with us a while along with Harriet and their eight-year-old daughter, Mary. But his face was pale, and you could see he didn’t feel very well.

  “Avery is still finding himself bothered by last winter’s influenza,” Harriet explained.

  “I don’t know what it is with this bout of it,” sighed Rev. Rutledge, sinking tiredly into his chair. “It keeps coming back to pester me. I just can’t seem to recover completely.”

  “Then we shall pray for you all the more diligently,” said Christopher. “In fact, would you mind if I prayed right now?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Father,” Christopher prayed, “we do not understand sickness. But we know you are good and love us. We ask that we would allow our infirmities always to draw us closer to you. We all pray now for our dear brother Avery, that your healing and comforting and energy-giving hand would be upon him, and that you would restore him to the full vigor of your life within him.”

  “I appreciate that, Christopher. It is nice to be on the receiving end of prayer, for a change. I am going to enjoy having you around. This is quite a young man you’ve found for yourself, Corrie,” he added, turning to me with what smile he could manage.

  “I know that,” I said. “I am more grateful to God for him every day!”

  “Good. And you just keep thanking God for him, even when he does things to irritate you,” rejoined the minister with a glance and smile toward Harriet.

  “Surely you never do that to your wife,” remarked Christopher with a grin.

  “Never intentionally. But you know how thickheaded we men can be sometimes.”

  “Unfortunately, I do,” rejoined Christopher seriously, his grin now turning to a knowing nod.

  “Those are the times we need patient wives who don’t give up on us. I’ve had one of the best,” he said, looking lovingly toward Harriet. “And I know you do too,” he added, with another glance and smile toward me. “I’ve known this young lady for many years, Christopher, and I know of her spiritual fiber probably as well as anyone. So I would say to you, as I did to her—you’ve found yourself quite a young lady.”

  “I am more thankful to God than you can imagine,” replied Christopher.

  “Thank you, Avery,” I said, embarrassed but appreciative of his kind words.

  “Tell me,” the minister went on, “now that you are married and settling in to your new life together, what have you found to be the reaction to your most unusual engagement—if you could call it that—and your decision, Christopher, to work for Corrie’s father a year?”

  Christopher and I both looked at each other and laughed.

  “How do you mean—other people’s reactions, or our own?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, speaking for ourselves, if we had it all to do over again, I don’t think we would change a thing. What would you say, Corrie?”

  “Just exactly that,” I replied. “Christopher is so much a part of the family already, and he and Pa and Almeda are such friends and know each other so well—I can’t imagine getting married when all the people involved are still more or less strangers. I agree—I wouldn’t change a thing. The longer two people wait, the more they go through together, the better they get to know one another’s families . . . the stronger the marriage will be in the end. We’re only sorry that Christopher’s parents weren’t able to be a part of our happiness.”

  “What about your family, Christopher?”

  Christopher and I glanced soberly at one another.

  An uncomfortable silence had already begun when Christopher finally answered. “That is a long story, Avery,” he said. “I think we’d best save it for another time.”

  “And what about other people,” asked Harriet, trying to bring the conversation back to happier subjects. “How have they reacted?”

  Once more Christopher and I looked at each other, and this time we could not help smiling.

  “Everybody thought it was the most peculiar thing they’d ever heard of,” I said, laughing.

  “They thought we were downright crazy would be more accurate!” added Christopher.

  Harriet now laughed, too.

  “You’ve got to admit it was a little unusual,” she said, “as much as I admired you for it.”

  “Yes, I know,” sighed Christopher. “But the normal and usual ways of doing things don’t always lead to the best results. I learned that sad-but-true fact from the church I pastored in Virginia.”

  “I would say
just the opposite is usually the case,” added Rev. Rutledge.

  “Exactly,” rejoined Christopher. “Sometimes you have to do the unusual if you want to make a difference in the world.”

  “I take it you’re such a man,” said the minister. “You want to make a difference?”

  “You bet I do!”

  “How?”

  “I want to make a difference in how people think about God and how they live their Christian lives. Surely as a minister you’ve felt the same thing—”

  Rev. Rutledge nodded as Christopher went on.

  “—that people are so prone to consider their Christianity just one little aspect of their lives—and perhaps not even the most significant aspect—like a dress shirt they get out and put on once a week, rather than as the dynamic, life-giving, challenging, thought-provoking, obedience-prompting foundation for every breath they breathe twenty-four hours a day.”

  As Christopher spoke his blue eyes glowed with the passion he felt for his faith. I was reminded all over again why I loved him so much and how thankful I was that the Lord had saved us for one another. To marry a thorough one-hundred-percent Christian like Christopher would have been worth waiting for until I was fifty . . . or even sixty.

  “Of course I have felt it,” replied Rev. Rutledge. “I’ve got to confess, however, that early in my ministry I was probably such a one myself.”

  “I can hardly imagine that of you,” said Christopher.

  “Thanks in large measure to the challenging honesty of Corrie’s father one day at a memorable Christmas dinner,” Rev. Rutledge went on, “I was awakened to just the need you speak of.”

  “I’ve heard nothing about it.”

  “Ask Drum to tell you. I’ve never stopped being thankful to him for it, and we’ve been fast friends because of it. In the years since, I have indeed experienced that same desire to wake people out of the lethargy I was myself in for a number of years. I suppose it is the fate of the minister to feel that tension. It is clear you still have the heart of a pastor beating within you.”