Land of the Brave and the Free (Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister Book 7)

by Michael Phillips

  Ma was just trying to help me prepare for life and not depend too heavily upon a man—as she had done with Pa, only to be left alone with five kids to raise. But I often got confused about what she was really saying to me. I was afraid to just ask her.

  She didn’t want me to put so much importance on the things most folks considered important, such as the way you looked on the outside. I think in her own way, Ma wanted a lot more for me than she’d ever wanted, or even thought she had a right to want for herself. I don’t know if she ever quite settled it inside about Pa leaving us. I remember her saying she had forgiven him. But as I thought about it, she must’ve been awfully concerned about me not making the same mistake. I know there must’ve remained a powerfully deep hurt in her, though she never let on. Love for him . . . and forgiveness . . . but hurt, too—all mixed in together.

  I think she may have been trying to protect me from loving a man on account of not wanting me to ever face the hurt she had. Maybe it wasn’t so much my not being the marrying kind as her thinking it best for me to keep my distance from marriage altogether. Then I remembered again the words I’d thought of an hour ago: I just gotta figure how to lead her a different way than . . . expectin’ she’ll be gettin’ married . . . it’s gonna cause her too much heartache.

  All her words came back again. I’m just plain scared for my little girl. I don’t want her puttin’ no high expectations on marriage. . . . I don’t want no man ruinin’ her life . . . the sooner I can convince her that marriage ain’t for her, the sooner I’ll rest easy.

  Suddenly a whole new light began to dawn on Ma’s words! She’d planted one seed . . . but I’d grown another! She’d planted a seed of love and protection and wanting only the best for me . . . but down inside had grown a weed of thinking I wasn’t worthwhile enough to be married because no man would ever look twice at me.

  I had completely mistaken her words!

  Mrs. Lucas had said it right to Ma: Her bein’ pretty or not has nothin’ to do with what you’re thinkin’ right now, and you know it.

  And Ma had answered, I reckon you’re probably right.

  Ma wasn’t saying I was ugly! She was saying she was anxious for me, and figured she had to find some way to turn me in a different direction from marriage so I didn’t spend all my growing-up years thinking about it, and wouldn’t get my head turned once I got older.

  Her bein’ pretty or not has nothin’ to do with what you’re thinking. The words rang back and forth through my brain like a gong. I’d heard them when I was seven, but only the seeds about not being pretty had planted themselves inside me, and I’d carried them with me like weeds ever since!

  Other memories were now flooding through me!

  Pa used to call me “his prettiest little lady” when I was young, before he left. It felt good when he said it. Somehow along with his smile, it helped me to know he loved me.

  But then as soon as he left, and after I heard Ma and Mrs. Lucas talking, and through the next years hearing Ma make occasional comments about Pa and Uncle Nick and knowing her hurt, I guess I figured Pa had been lying to me about my looks—or at least exaggerating just to make a little girl feel good.

  But I couldn’t help being confused, wanting to remember what he’d said, yet knowing that Grandpa Belle said Pa was a no-good man, and Ma saying I wasn’t pretty.

  Now I could see that I had it all wrong, and that Ma didn’t intend for me to feel either ugly or confused. She just figured she needed to work as hard as she could to focus my mind in other directions than putting a lot of stock in things that she had found caused grief and pain. She was determined that I not know the hard life she had known in marriage.

  More words from the overheard conversation came back to me.

  “Corrie’s special, Aggie. . . . The Lord put somethin’ different inside that girl of yours.”

  “I don’t want no man ruinin’ her life before she finds out what that special thing is.”

  It was all coming so clear now!

  Ma used the only way she knew to convince me to set my sights on other things in life than just marriage. Not because I wasn’t pretty! Ma and Mrs. Lucas had called me special! They said that the Lord had put something different inside me . . . something special. And Ma wanted me to find it, and right then she herself was so hurting about Pa that she figured any man in my life might keep me from finding it! She could have no way of knowing what a fine man Pa turned out to be!

  Even if I had been one of the prettiest girls she’d ever seen, Ma might have done the very same thing, just to discourage me from what she thought might bring me pain someday, and to make sure I found whatever it was inside me that God had put there.

  Ma had done her best to protect me! And in a roundabout way she helped to build character into me, because for all the years of growing up, I looked to the things inside me instead of the outside. She helped me learn to concentrate on the heart—my own and other peoples’ too—instead of just their faces. I never fussed much with dresses or fixing my hair the way Emily and most girls did. Somehow, what Ma said to me through the years about not being the marrying kind put something inside me to motivate me to become important in other ways than what most people might settle for. I doubt she even knew what she was doing or what was going on inside of me. But I think I determined from the time I first heard her and Mrs. Lucas talking that I’d have to do something different in life than counting on just being married. I had to be a different kind of person on the inside to make up for what I wasn’t on the outside.

  Without knowing it, Ma had planted dozens and dozens of good seeds into my character—seeds of deeper qualities than can ever grow when people are fussing about their looks!

  I jumped up off the ground and ran across the meadow, crying and laughing all at once.

  I felt so light! I ran and ran, throwing my arms in the air, made a circle, and ran back to my tree.

  Ma had never meant that I was an ugly baby or little girl or teenager . . . or even woman! She only wanted me to be the kind of woman who didn’t depend on a pretty face . . . who never even thought of it! She wanted me to have a deeper character than that, with qualities that were worth more than the shape of my mouth and nose and cheeks!

  I had never been aware of any burden to Ma’s words about not marrying. I had grown used to them. They had become part of how I saw myself and how I looked at my life. But now, all of a sudden, a weight from them was gone—a weight I hadn’t even known was there!

  They didn’t matter anymore! Pretty . . . not pretty . . . marrying or not marrying . . . what Ma had said and what Pa had called me when I was little . . . none of it made any difference anymore!

  I was just . . . me! Exactly how God had made me. I could be a writer or a nurse . . . I could get married or not . . . I could be fat or thin . . . I could be pretty or ugly—none of it changed me!

  I was special! Mrs. Lucas was right. I was special . . . because I was me . . . and I was just exactly the woman God had made. That’s what made me special! Because he had made me to be the perfect Corrie Belle Hollister . . . me, and no one else!

  I threw myself onto the ground, rolled two somersaults head over heels, laughing, remembering being young again, but so free of the worry of what Ma or anyone thought. Then I let out a huge yell of delight that quickly died away in the surrounding woods.

  Laughing, and still crying, I rolled over on the grass onto my back and gazed up into the sky. One big branch of the oak tree extended out across my vision, and a few white clouds gently passed behind the green leaves of the foreground of my sight.

  “Oh, God, oh, God . . . thank you!” I sighed, breathing in deeply of the fresh spring air. “And Ma, wherever you are, if God lets you hear me—thank you too for everything you did and said, and for the person you helped make me. Maybe now at last I am ready to be a full-grown woman worthy to be called your daughter. At last I think I understand how much you loved me and all you wanted for me. You once told me, with your hand c
upped around my chin, ‘I reckon you’ll do okay, though, Corrie.’ I’ve never forgotten that, Ma. I hope I have done okay . . . and I hope I will. I hope you’re proud of me. I love you, Ma . . . now more than ever!”

  How long I lay under the oak tree I have no idea. It could have been ten minutes, it could have been an hour or more. I had the drowsy sensation that I may have even fallen asleep, but can’t be sure.

  When I did come to myself, however long it was, I felt such an enormous sense of quiet peace. A peace and contentment inside like I’d never known.

  I don’t quite know how to describe it. Things seemed settled, ordered, straight inside my mind and heart. Confusion about so much had suddenly disappeared—about Ma, about Pa . . . and mostly about me and what they thought of me. And what God thought of me . . . and therefore about the person I really was.

  I don’t exactly know how to say it, but I felt a contented, good feeling just about me . . . about the person God had made me.

  Slowly I stood up. I stood tall and stretched my hands high up over my head.

  I no longer felt like a little girl. From the moment I’d started walking around Bridgeville early this morning, the past of my early childhood had wrapped itself around me like a cloak, until I even began to feel just as I had twenty years ago. I was so glad for every second, every memory, every tear, every remembered word. It was as though each moment was part of a great cleansing flood of fresh water that had swept over me to wash away whatever remaining hurts or insecurities from the past might still have been clinging to me, so that I could go forward—into the future whole and clean and secure.

  Now as I stood and stretched, the memories from the past contained no pain, only smiles, and I realized my past was just that—past. In these last hours, I had lived out the last of my childhood, one final time in the depths of my heart. God had given me eyes to see everything about it as he wanted me to see it. And now, with that new perspective, the time had come to look ahead.

  Funny, I thought to myself, some of my most memorable thoughts and prayer times always seemed to take place around oak trees! There must be something about them that made my thoughts open and reach for heights like the branches of an expansive oak. There was the day of the town picnic when I’d first seen General Grant, and then the day at the convent two years earlier when I’d prayed about what it meant to be a woman. This day under this oak was such a fulfillment of that day and those prayers!

  I walked over to the oak again, wrapped my arms around its great trunk one last time, patted its rough, gnarled bark, and said, “Good-bye, Oak . . . thank you for everything.”

  I turned and strode across the meadow, bidding this place farewell, then mounted the horse and again made my way through the little wood. All these places had done their cleansing work in my spirit—the oak, the meadow, the house, the town. Now I just wanted to take a long, slow ride through the surrounding countryside, asking God to ready me for whatever lay ahead.

  As I rode, gradually thoughts began to come back to me from my train ride a few days earlier, thoughts about belonging, about Christopher, about where I belonged and what I was to do.

  You see, Corrie, I felt the Lord saying even as the questions and anxieties floated through my consciousness that had been so on my mind then, I wanted you to come here. This was the place for you to put away your past, your childhood, your youth, and even the years of your young adulthood. This was the place for you to come to me and discover who you truly are, as my daughter . . . and as my grown-up and mature woman. I am sorry I had to bring remembrances of pain to you. But sometimes I must take my children back in order to ready them to go ahead, to show them things they were unable to see long ago. You are as old as your own mother was when she lived here to raise her children, Corrie. You are no longer a child. You are my daughter and my woman. And you DO belong, Corrie. You belong to me . . . in my heart.

  As he spoke these things to me, I saw that my fears, my anxieties, the loneliness of wanting somebody to care, and the deep gnawing pain of thinking that my value as a person was less because of how I might look . . . I saw that all these feelings really had only one name—mistrust.

  Did I really believe that God was my Father, that he had made me exactly as he planned, my looks and all? Did I really believe that I was of value to him? Did I really believe that I had nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, and no reason to feel lonely since I was in his care?

  I had always said such things.

  But was I now ready to take these truths all the way down into the core of my being and believe them in a fully mature way? If today was the day and this was the place to begin, was I prepared to base the rest of my life—an adult life, a life of spiritual maturity rather than adolescence—on them?

  Did I really trust my Father to be all and everything to me? Joining a convent would not answer that question. Going somewhere, doing something, traveling here, writing there, meeting people, even . . .

  No, I couldn’t say that. Those last words were special, words I could only write in my journal for my own eyes!

  No matter where I went or what I did or who I met or what situations I encountered, it was clear that nothing could answer that most important of life’s questions from the outside. The only place it could be answered was in my own heart: Did I really and completely and in every way trust the Father?

  That was the question that separated men and women from children, and determined when true adulthood began.

  “Father, help me!” I prayed. “I do want with everything in me to trust you more completely with every part of me and deeper than I have before. God, please do put within me the stature of your being. When people look at me, let me not worry about what they are thinking. Let me only walk as to reflect your character and your being to them. Help me not be anxious or afraid, Lord. I want so badly to lay down every part of my self that remains. Let me do that now, Father—here, in this place where you gave me life. As I have many times before, I give you all of me. Oh, God, take every piece, every scrap! Take them from my hands and let me cling to them no more. Let me partake of your nature, as Christopher said, Father, by willingly choosing to do as Jesus did, to willingly lay down everything that my own self may desire, and want from this day forward nothing but what you, my Father, will for me. Help me, God, for I do not trust that I can carry out such a resolve alone. But my heart cries out to live in such communion with you. I do trust you, Father, and love you, and know that my belonging from this day forward is in you.”

  My heart quieted. As emotional as the prayer had been, no tears accompanied it. Even as the words had poured forth from out of the deepest places within me, a calm sense of God’s presence had pervaded it all, as if he himself were prompting and initiating the very words coming out of my mouth, in answer to the desires of my heart that I could not express on my own.

  When my voice stilled, a peace of completion and wholeness flooded through me. I knew all the words had been answered already because they were God’s prayers flowing from his heart through mine and out of my mouth. I knew that I had stepped up to a higher plateau. He had taken my hand and pulled me into a higher region of walking in trust with him, a region from which I would never return.

  I rode on across pastureland and rolling hills and a few vaguely familiar pathways and roads. It was time at last to look forward and decide what I was to do now.

  “Lord,” I prayed, “this is what you’ve been preparing me for, I realize now. You’ve plowed up the soil of my heart, you’ve pulled up some weeds out of my past, you’ve shown me some of the good seeds Ma planted inside me, you’ve shown me that I am special and worthwhile in your eyes because I am just exactly the way you made me, and you’ve shown me that my belonging is in you and that I can trust you. Now, Father . . . show me what you want me to do.”

  Almost immediately my thoughts returned to that day when I turned twenty-one, the day I’d ridden Raspberry up into the foothills so I could watch the sunrise over the Sierra
s. In much broader ways—as I did on that day—I found myself contemplating the same things.

  Even though from my earliest memories I hadn’t expected to be married, still on that day a lot of my thoughts had focused on the kind of man I would want to marry if I ever did. I thought about the qualities of strength and masculine sensitivity, about inward strength of character, about a man standing up for what he believed in, even being willing to make personal sacrifices to do so. I remember thinking a lot about the unusual quality of a man who could share thoughts and feelings, and whose gentleness expressed itself in being able to be open and tender and unafraid of showing emotions. Most of all, I had thought about how wonderful it would be to have a deep spiritual friendship with a man that went deeper than merely being husband and wife.

  Then flashed into my mind all the thoughts I’d had on the train when reflecting about Cal, and what a different kind of man than he would be like—a man who looked for opportunities to help people and who was always asking what he could do for others, who always thought about truth, who tried to serve and do good and who was growing to become more loving and kind on the inside.

  I now knew such men did exist . . . in the real world, not just in daydreaming fairy tales.

  At twenty-one I had been mostly just daydreaming, still doubting either that I’d ever know someone like that, or if I did, there’d be any chance of him being the least bit interested in me.

  But now I had met a man like that! I knew someone who had all those qualities . . . and many more besides!

  Perhaps . . . just maybe, I could marry someday. There was nothing to prevent it. Ma’d only wanted to keep me from the suffering and pain.

  All of a sudden, it seemed as if the future had opened up before me in a way that involved huge new possibilities!

  I knew a man who was so thoroughly God’s man that he embodied every quality a woman could ever hope for. How was it possible that a church hadn’t wanted him for their minister? Any church should want a man of his fiber and depth and wisdom! Any church, any person . . . any young woman would be honored just to know him.