“Aunt Mary hitched up the wagon and drove me the five miles. Later that evening I was taken to yet another aunt’s house, who finally told me, since there was no place else, that if I could find a job I could stay there with her family.
“Well, there is no need to recount every detail of this part of my life except to say that by my late teen years I was crushed to a pulp. I managed to find work here and there. God took care of me, but those were very, very hard times. Over and over I was told that I wasn’t ever going to amount to anything. Not only did my relatives seem to feel no need to display any compassion, they also seemed to consider it their duty to remind me over and over how worthless I was, which they lost no opportunity to do. This is something about the human species I have never understood, and still do not understand—why there seems an inborn compelling to ridicule and hurt and make fun of those less fortunate than ourselves.
“In all honesty, I must confess that I could not help being angry at the relatives on my father’s side. There had been a great deal of money in the family at one time. Many of my half brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles owned nice large farms. Yet no one lifted a finger to help me or my brothers and sisters. Those on my mother’s side showed no more compassion, as is clear enough from my first hours in Willard. My aunt at least let me stay with her, and for a couple of years I managed to find enough work here and there to pay her for my board and room.
“I mention this anger to show that spiritually, during these years of my late teens, what was growing within me was not faith, but resentment. When you are very young, all you do is hurt, without thinking about why. As you grow, however, you begin to wonder why you have been singled out for such hardships. The minute you begin asking that question, frustration and bitterness—and usually anger—set in.
“This anger that I felt toward my relatives as the years passed I gradually transferred to God, as many people do. I thought that God had altogether forgotten me and did not care any more about me than anyone ever had. I was worthless in everyone else’s eyes . . . I figured I was worthless in God’s eyes too.
“Sometime during these years, therefore, I determined that I was not going to believe in God anymore. Thus, I declared myself an atheist. What had God ever done for me? I thought. Why should I bother about him?
“I had an older brother, however, who had had just about as tough a time of it as I had and had felt the same rejections from the relatives. Joe had struck out on his own quite a while before and was now married and living down in Mansfield. More important, he had become a Christian. When I was eighteen I went to visit him, hoping he might be able to help me get a job.
“So I went to my brother, and he saw in an instant that I needed help, emotionally, spiritually, and every other way.
“‘You know what would be good for you, Chris?’ Joe said, ‘—school . . . maybe even a Bible college.’
“‘Bible college?’ I replied. ‘But I’m an atheist.’
“‘God loves atheists just as much as Christians,’ Joe replied with a smile.
“I didn’t have an answer for that one!
“But I loved to read and learn. Secretly, in fact, I had harbored a dream of going to college someday. Of course I never saw any way such a thing would ever be possible. My brother’s bringing up the subject suddenly brought the dream to life.
“‘But I’ve got no money,’ I said. ‘How could I ever afford to go to school? Besides, I’m not interested in going to college to study the Bible.’
“Not only was my brother a Christian, he had attended a Bible college in Richmond, Virginia, for two years himself. And now came the surprise.
“‘Tell you what, Chris,’ he said, ‘if you will agree to attend the Richmond Bible Institute, I’ll back you up to make sure you don’t get into any financial difficulties.’
“I could not believe my ears.
“My brother believed in me enough to make such an offer! It was a shocking thought. The wheels of my mind quickly began to turn. His offer would give me a whole year to find work. If I could work along with my studies, I could begin saving money for future years . . . and continue going to college!
“Even though I still believed myself to be an atheist, this Bible college would give me a chance to realize my dream of obtaining a higher education. Though I did not know it at the time, God really did have my life in his hands.
“Of course I agreed to my brother’s proposal.
“Over the course of the next few years, after I traveled down to Richmond, life gradually began to look up for me. I met people in the city who accepted me, not because I was or was not a Hutterite or anything else . . . but just because of who I was.
“You cannot imagine what that was like for a young man who had never experienced full and unconditional acceptance in his life.”
Sitting in that pew and listening to Christopher talk, I again found myself thinking of things he had told me right after our meeting, this time about his desire to tell people of God’s love. Now I saw that desire from a larger perspective: I found growing within me an enormous hunger to help people be complete. To help them become full people, to help them know their heavenly Father intimately and wonderfully, to help them to see and know God and be his sons and daughters, to know that he was not a faraway God Almighty and Omnipotent somewhere in the distant heavens, but that he was a close and present and tender and compassionate and loving Father to them. And it was this hunger that led me toward the ministry.
“I cannot point to a day or an hour when I suddenly believed in God again,” he was telling the congregation. “I suppose perhaps, in a way, I never really stopped believing in him. When I speak of ‘believing’ in him again, maybe what I mean is when I was able to admit to myself that I believed in him.
“The process was gradual. But as I read and studied and interacted with people at the school, studying not just the Bible but all the disciplines of learning, over the course of time I gradually knew that I did believe and had really believed all along. As I matured, I came to recognize that God had been watching out for me and protecting me and nurturing me all through the years of pain and inner conflict over my worth. The acceptance I began to feel from others, I began to feel from him too.
“Not only did I come to realize that God accepted me, I began to realize that he loved me—in an active way, not merely passively, that he loved me energetically and had purposes for me which I could step into and be part of.
“What a change this was!
“It meant I was a person who mattered! I wasn’t a nothing as I’d thought all those years. I was somebody . . . because I was God’s son. I was actually worth something.
“God began—I can think of no other way of describing it—to reveal to me just what it meant that Jesus continually called him Father and told us to do likewise. I struggled and struggled with memories of my own imperfect father, trying to come to grips with why God had chosen such a flawed human relationship—that between fathers and their sons and daughters—to describe his relationship with the men and women he had created.
“This was a great internal battle for me,” said Christopher. “The mere word father conjured up images and emotions of hurt. The phrase God is a loving Father set up an oxymoronic dichotomy in my mind that I could not resolve. The concepts love and fatherhood did not go together.”
As Christopher spoke, I remembered the struggle I had had too with anger against Pa when we had first come to California, feeling like he’d run out on us. I’d had to learn how father and love could go together too, just like Christopher was describing.
“Yet once I began to see God’s Fatherhood with clarity,” Christopher went on, “I also began to see earthly fatherhood from a more proper perspective as well. Perhaps the time may come when I will have the opportunity to tell you in more detail what I believe God showed me in this way. But for now, suffice it to say that for the first time I began looking up into God’s face and trying to call him Father, knowing that h
e loved me, and then asking him what kind of man he wanted me to be.
“I say try because it was extremely difficult at first. I called God Father out of obedience to Jesus, who told us to address him in this way. Even the word Father was difficult to say in my prayers. I literally could not pray to God that way. Yet gradually I got more and more used to it. And of course I need hardly say that forgiveness occupied a great deal of this gradual process. As I learned to say Father to God, I found more and more forgiveness welling up within me for my own earthly father, and then, surprisingly enough, for all the others toward whom I had allowed bitterness to fester within my heart.
“You cannot imagine how transforming this process was, so much so that I began to hunger to share this wonderful newfound love with others who, perhaps like myself, did not know that God was a good Father who cared about them. If God could love me and pull me out of the hole of worthlessness in which I had lived most of my life, then he could do so for anyone! And perhaps I could help people to know what I had not known during my boyhood—that they were valuable in God’s sight.
“The more I thought and prayed and studied, the more I realized that every single human being is important in God’s sight. I hungered to tell this to people who, like myself for so many years, did not know that wonderful truth. I wanted to tell it to unbelievers and non-Christians. I hungered even more to help people in churches, God’s people, grow to know their Father more intimately.
“God created us as special individuals. He loves each one of us so much. How enormous these truths were for me! I had felt such rejection that when I realized I was a special and unique individual in God’s sight—everything changed.
“A great passion grew within me to help people become complete men and women—to point their eyes toward God, even when all else in life seemed discouraging and without hope. I wanted people to become sons and daughters of their very personal Father. And this was what ultimately got me thinking about the ministry. I never aspired to having letters after my name, only to be used by God.”
Christopher paused, then smiled.
“I told you at the beginning,” he said, “that I wanted to share with you not only my past, but also of my goals and dreams and why I entered the ministry in the first place. And this I have just said goes a long way to clarify those things. But let me continue with the rest of the background story.
“There were two parts of the Bible school—a regular college where, in addition to Bible and religion courses, all the standard academic disciplines were taught, and a seminary for the specific training of ministers. Regular college degrees were given, as well as divinity degrees.
“After two years in the regular college, I applied for the divinity program. I was twenty-one at the time. This seemed the most likely way to tell people what I now knew about God. It seemed to me that the best avenue through which to help people as I wanted to do would be as the pastor of a church. It seemed that in the church I could do the most good in helping people come to know their heavenly Father.
“I was accepted into the program. This now became my goal—to obtain a Doctor of Divinity degree and to enter the ministry. Since I did not yet have a college degree, the school allowed me to continue my studies at both the college and the seminary concurrently. Many of the classes were night classes, and thus I was able to work half days in order to support myself.
“My body had continued growing longer than for most young men, and even in time a bit of muscle began to appear on my once-scrawny frame. By the time I had moved from Ohio down to Richmond two years prior to this, I was able to get jobs fairly easily. Therefore, I worked my way through college and seminary at a granary, hoisting around hundred-pound bags of wheat. So I never actually needed the financial help my brother had offered. Yet his offer at the time had been what had made the difference in my decision.
“I graduated when I was twenty-five and then spent more than two years as pastor of a sizable church there in the city of Richmond, Virginia, which is where I happened to be when the war broke out. My stand on the war, however, fell uncomfortably upon the ears of the leaders of my congregation. My resignation was requested. That rejection caused my doubts and questions about myself to resurface—though never again did I question the love of God the Father.
“From that time until my leaving the East for Miracle Springs, I worked as foreman and caretaker of a small farm outside the city, which is where I was working when the Lord smiled upon me and brought your own Corrie Belle Hollister—as she was then—into my life.”
Christopher paused, let out a breath that seemed to say he was relieved to have everything said, and looked around the room.
“Well, my friends, there you have a brief capsule of my life’s story to this point. I do not know if that will help you with your decision, but I feel more comfortable in the realization that you now know these things about me.”
Chapter 14
The Answer
It was such a moving testimony that most of the women, and even some of the men, had tears in their eyes as they listened. Mr. Shaw stood up as soon as Christopher had finished his final prayer and walked to the front.
“I propose we put the matter to a vote before the whole church right now,” he said.
“Then you will not mind if I excuse myself,” said Christopher. “I would not have your discussion hampered by my presence.”
I rose to join him, and we walked down the aisle and outside, everyone smiling up at us from their seats as we passed.
“Oh, Christopher,” I said as soon as we were outside, “all I can think of is how sad it must have been for you after your mother died. I feel the same way whenever I hear that part of your story.”
“The Lord has a story for all our lives to tell,” he replied, “and every good story has its sad times, otherwise the happy parts wouldn’t be as wonderful.”
He smiled tenderly at me, and I could see what he meant right in his face. Christopher became very quiet as we walked slowly away from the church.
“I’m so proud of you,” I said.
“I’m afraid it was far too long,” he sighed.
“You said you wanted them to know Christopher Braxton all the way to the bottom. Now they do.”
“But I should perhaps have spread it out over a couple of weeks.”
“We don’t have two weeks. Besides, you told me once that if you ever had the chance to preach again you would tell people enough beforehand either to nail your coffin shut or welcome your ministry with open arms. I would say you did just that.”
“I always become self-conscious after I have spent myself with a lengthy outpouring.”
“Self-conscious? That’s not how you sounded to me. You sounded sure of every word.”
“I am sure when I am speaking about who God is and what he does. But then often that little boy jumps back to the front—the little fellow I told them about in there, timid and fearful and convinced no one cares for anything he has to say.”
“But that little fellow is just going to have to realize that he is a man now—a strong man, one of God’s men—and that people want to hear what he has to say.”
Christopher sighed again. “I’ll try to remember,” he said, smiling back to me.
“So, Mrs. Braxton,” he said after a moment’s pause, now trying to sound cheerful, “what do you think of the prospect of being a minister’s wife?”
“It is certainly a new twist to this new life we’ve started,” I replied, trying to laugh away my lingering sadness. “And not one I expected!”
“You knew what you were getting when you married me . . . didn’t you?”
“I don’t suppose I ever thought through what it would mean to me if the offer of a church did come along. Even though all this time since we decided to go east you have been talking about the ministry, the thought of being a minister’s wife hadn’t really sunk in.”
“Does it frighten you?”
“I don’t think so. I suppose I’m
a little apprehensive. What woman wouldn’t be? What if I don’t measure up to people’s expectations? Most of these people still think of me as a little girl. But the prospect of being here in Miracle Springs outweighs all those fears.”
“I want you to be as free of doubts about this—if we do stay, and if it turns out they want us—as are the people in the church,” he said, motioning back behind us.
“I want you to be where God wants you to be,” I said, “serving him among people as I know your heart yearns to do. Of course I want to stay here. But most important of all is the fact that you are my husband, Christopher. Where you go, I will go. What you do, I will do. You are the head of this marriage. I want you to be happy and fulfilled. That’s what will make me happy. If it is in the East, I will be thankful, if here in Miracle Springs, I will be thankful. What do you think—do you want to accept the invitation here?”
“I can honestly say that I could be happy and content either way. Of course, the thought of having a position from which to minister to a wide range of people and to be able to communicate God’s truths—the thought of it is wonderful. We might go to the East and have no such opportunity present itself. And now, here is such an opportunity right in front of us. Who can deny that it appears to be God’s leading? Yet truthfully, Corrie, the ambition toward the pastorate was burned out of me during the years of my pruning at the Lord’s hand while at Mrs. Timms’ farm. My desire to go east was not born out of ambition, only ministry, and here it seems to be right in Miracle Springs. I want only what God wants, and nothing more. If that means for you and me to take the Rutledges’ place as the ministers of the Miracle Springs church, then I will rejoice. What he wants will be best. That is what I want.”
Before I could say another word, we heard voices. Turning back, we saw people coming out of the church.
“Didn’t take them long, did it?” said Christopher.
As Pa and Almeda came out and down the steps, I saw them speak to Tad, Becky, Zack, and Ruth, then the three older ones fell in step behind them, while Almeda took Ruth’s hand. Their faces were very serious.
A New Beginning Page 7