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

by Michael Phillips

  I did know him, and I felt honored. So why did the tears keep trying to rise up into my eyes all of a sudden?

  Because something deep inside was already telling me I had to set aside even the secret dreams I had harbored on my twenty-first birthday without realizing it.

  God had shown me true manhood. Yet he did not want me to place my trust or my sense of belonging even in that, but only in him.

  He had shown me that maybe I could be the marrying kind. Yet he did not want me to place any trust in that, either. He had shown me who I truly was, not so that I could give myself to a man . . . but so that I could first give myself to him. Only in him could I find my deepest belonging, my true heart’s home.

  Oh, it was such an agony to realize that now God had put within my grasp, for the first time in my life, the very things every woman longs for . . . only to now request me to relinquish them back into his hands!

  God, why have you given me all this, only to make me give it back to you? I sobbed, crying in earnest now.

  The voice I heard deep in my heart was so quiet, so soft, I had to stop the horse a second and just sit still, straining to make sure it was what I thought it was. But there could be no mistake. Though the thought had come from somewhere inside me, I know it was God speaking in answer to my prayer.

  Because I want to show you how much you can trust me . . . in everything. There is no area of your life where I will not give you all that is best for you—only first of all you must empty your hands of your OWN desires . . . and do nothing more than trust me.

  I thought of all the possibilities that had been going through my mind for some time about my future. Were all of them things I was still holding in my hands? Were they things I was trusting in instead of in the Father?

  I also thought of Christopher. With a pang I suddenly realized that all this time I had been silently hoping for some word from him upon which I might have based a hope for the future.

  Then a more recent memory came back to me. At the convent the first time, I’d been so deeply touched by the sisters’ devotion to Jesus. I wanted that for myself too—I wanted, above all things, whatever God had for me, to be his handmaiden.

  “Oh, God,” I breathed quietly, “that is still my heart’s desire. I do so want to be altogether and entirely yours.”

  A silence came over me.

  Gradually I saw that as neither my work in Washington nor even the convent could be a substitute for my true place of belonging, for trusting God with my future as his handmaiden . . . neither could Christopher—even though he was entirely God’s man. For me to hold on to my own hopes would be to give God something less than full and complete trust, and a lesser degree of devotion than I had prayed to give him under that oak tree at the convent.

  My prayers of that day now rushed back into my memory. “Whatever future you have for me,” I had told him, “let me just know that I am completely yours. Use me and fill me with yourself. I am devoted to you, Lord Jesus. Let me love you and serve you.”

  Even as mature as Christopher was as God’s man, and as wonderful a place as the convent was, they could not become a substitute in my heart for what only the Father could provide. Now that I had faced the anxieties and remaining areas of mistrust of my deepest being, and laid them, in willing and choosing relinquishment, into the Father’s hands, there need be no fears, doubts, or uncertainties about what the future held. With a foundation of trust in the Father solidly established, whatever was built upon it was sure to stand.

  I had to empty my hands before the Father—completely.

  “Father . . . Father,” I prayed, “I give it all to you—my future, my life, my decisions . . . Christopher, my desires and hopes . . . my writing . . . where I should go, what I should do . . . everything. Oh, God—”

  I could pray no more. I leaned over against the neck of the horse and sobbed.

  Never, in all my life, had I felt so utterly empty . . . so alone.

  For just those few minutes, even God himself seemed to have left me. I had emptied my hands, and my whole being felt as though it had been emptied along with them.

  In the few hours of this day, God had given me everything . . . and then he had asked me to give it all back to him.

  I felt as if all the past was new. Everything had been remade. Memories were new. Words I had heard from Ma now meant more than before. I saw her love more clearly. I saw myself more clearly.

  The future, too, was new. Possibilities had dawned. God had removed all the limitations I had once placed upon myself.

  And yet in the present . . . all was gone.

  I had emptied my hands of every possibility, entrusting all to the Father . . . and there truly was nothing left for me to hold on to. I belonged, in empty abandonment, only to him.

  I sat there quietly weeping for a while. The tears I shed were not tears of sadness, but the pure, cold tears of empty trust. To make the sacrifice of giving all to the Father was my choice, and yet to do so cannot be said to be a happy thing. But it was the right thing, the true thing.

  As I wept tears of fulfilled abandonment, a quiet sense of God’s presence gradually began to steal over me. I felt him wrapping me up as in a giant quilt, with his hands folding the corners of the blanket of his tender love about my raw heart and emotions.

  He had stripped me bare of all hopes and earthly desires and ambitions and dreams other than to be completely his. Even in the emptiness there was a certain stark purity and singleness of motive, no longer mingled with the slightest anxiety about all the earthly questions: where? what? who? why? when? None of it mattered anymore—only to be his . . . to trust him . . . to belong to him.

  I knew everything had been stripped away. And in that, I knew God was with me.

  Almost immediately came the clear awareness of what I was to do next. It was time to turn my steps in the direction of the setting sun . . . westward. That was my earthly place. There I would return. It was time to go home.

  I turned the horse’s head around and immediately started back toward town.

  As I rode, the wrapped-around-me presence of God worked its way in tighter and tighter, getting inside me, filling up all the places I had emptied of myself. Before long, it was not just a blanket of God’s love around me, but a sense of being filled up with him from the inside. Such a new feeling of fullness came over me. But not a fullness with all the thoughts and feelings and dreams and ambitions and possibilities of my own that I’d been wrestling with. Rather, a fullness of God’s being filling me up and replacing all those Corrie things.

  It felt so wonderful! The Father’s love and Spirit filling me was so much better than myself filling me!

  As I rode, I remembered my twenty-first birthday, the very words I had prayed on that day. Lord, I had said, help me to cultivate what you’ve given me. Don’t let me waste anything.

  He had done that in so many ways over the years since. He had given me so much and allowed me so many opportunities to use and cultivate and expand it.

  But the most important part of that prayer had come last of all. Back then I’d also prayed, Help me to grow to the fullest so I can be the person you want me to be!

  I had just turned twenty-one. I thought I was becoming a grown-up woman. And in many ways I suppose I was. But twenty-one is still young when later you find yourself looking back from an older vantage point. And the prayer was only the beginning. The fullness of God’s answering it would take years. And now today, more than seven years later, I could see that God had been working all this time to answer that cry of my spirit.

  How could I have known when I prayed that prayer that to grow to the fullest would mean having to empty myself to the emptiest? Even today, conscious of abandoning myself more completely to him than ever before, I realized that I would probably, years from now, look back on this day and see how much further I had come than what I could envision now. “Growing to the fullest” was an ongoing and never-ending process.

  That day at the c
onvent I had had similar thoughts, and I had given myself to Jesus in a fuller way than any time before. Yet now I could see that, even though I’d felt married to him in a way, there were still places within myself that I’d held back, not even knowing it. Today’s abandonment to him went deeper yet, into corners and recesses of my heart I hadn’t even known existed. I wondered if times like this would come again, when he would probe still further.

  I smiled to myself. No doubt they would! But today was today . . . and for today I was thankful, even if there would come further days of having to empty my hands all over again in the future. He had fulfilled and completed the prayers of devotion I had prayed at twenty-one and at twenty-six, and for right now that was enough.

  Today I found myself filled with the wonderful knowledge that God had and would continue to answer every prayer I had ever offered him. And with that knowledge, such a quiet joy began to escape from my soul—a joy of peace and contentment, and such a freedom from anxiety.

  I belonged! And I knew where!

  Was I to be a writer for the rest of my life? Was I to become a nun, to marry, to travel, to minister to the sick and suffering, to have a family, or to live alone, to work in California, or someday return again to the East? I didn’t need to know! I could totally trust that the Father would go before me and direct me in whatever way he intended.

  I didn’t need to graduate from a university to be a good writer, he had already shown me that. Neither did I need to return to the Convent of John Seventeen to be entirely God’s woman. I could live the life of dedication and separation and commitment to Jesus anywhere. Neither did I have to marry to be a worthwhile woman. Being “the marrying kind,” as I’d thought about for all these years, was no longer of any meaning. I was God’s woman, and that was the only kind of woman I ever wanted to be!

  All the rest would fit together perfectly as he ordered my steps! All I needed to do was submit my heart, and my next steps, to him, surrendering empty hands—over and over, every day, every week, every year—so that he could fill them with his purposes.

  I could hardly contain the magnitude of the revelation! And yet, how could I find words to put it on paper? How could I bring into focus the order, the direction, the quiet peace, and the sense of utter contentment it gave me?

  I didn’t know what was out there for me now—in the next three or seven . . . even the next twenty years. But I sensed that today was the beginning of something wonderful—something my eyes couldn’t see, though my spirit was already catching a glimpse of it. The emptiness and aloneness I’d felt earlier was slowly replaced by a growing anticipation—that good things were ahead now, even better than I could have planned myself! Service to others, sacrifice, perhaps even pain, but also a deepening trust in the Father, and thus growth and joy as well—all these and much more I knew God had in store for me.

  I was nearly back to Bridgeville now. Such a multitude of thoughts and feelings filled my heart. But mostly it was a feeling of being complete and whole and full.

  Dear Christopher,

  As you will see, I am writing this from New York. I am in a boardinghouse in the town near our old home. I have been here two days. Now at last I see the Lord’s purpose in leading me back to this place. I feel more prepared than ever to move forward into whatever he has for me, now that I have been here again. I feel more whole than three days ago, and perhaps more at peace with myself, my life, my family . . . and my future.

  While here, I believe that God has shown me what I am to do. At least what I am to do now—the next page of the book, even if not the whole next chapter. You have to write one page at a time, you know, whether it is words in a journal or days of a life.

  It is not to become a nun, or to remain with the sisters at the convent, as much as I love and admire them.

  Neither is it to return to Washington. I feel strongly that my time in the East is at an end. What I am writing to tell you, therefore, is that as soon as I return to the convent, I will immediately begin making preparations to gather what belongings I have and then make arrangements to return, by train and stagecoach, to California. The Lord has shown me, I believe, that for now my future is there.

  I remember saying to you once that I didn’t belong down there, that I was no Southerner. Well, though I was born here in New York, in this very town where I am now sitting, in fact, I do not belong here either. I do not belong in Pennsylvania or Washington.

  No, I belong in California. I’ve been gone just over two years. I left Miracle Springs in May of 1863. It is now time I made the return journey.

  I wanted you to be the first to know.

  I would so much like the chance to talk to you. I am so full of our Father’s goodness to me right at this moment that it needs somebody to share it with. Sometimes when you’re alone, the Lord is able to show you things and speak to you in a way he maybe can’t at other times. Coming here has been like that for me.

  I cried a few tears and walked along some old familiar paths. In the end God showed me that he was the only foundation I could build my life on. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell you all of what that realization means and why it was so hard to come to. But now is not the time for that.

  Now I know . . . at last—I am such a slow learner, it seems—that I belong (no, not really even in California) to him, to our Father! That’s what he had been trying to show me all along. He is the next chapter of my life, and the light at the tunnel’s end . . . the place where my life is full and whole and complete. It’s exactly what you said in your letter to me at the convent about tunnels. Now the truth of it is lodged deep in my being where I do not think I shall lose sight of it again.

  I am so thankful to God for you, my friend, Christopher Braxton. You showed me what a true man could really be made of. I used to dream of meeting a man someday whose life and character reflected the selfless, giving, sacrificial qualities of God’s nature. Now I am happy and blessed to say I have met such a man, and I will forever be grateful for that. God made use of you in more ways than you can presently know to plant a new level of trust within me for him. I will never forget you, and will always pray for you and give God thanks for you.

  I reckon you can read the other letter I sent now if you still have it, and want to read it. It won’t matter much now. What I was so worried about is, I pray, gone from me. God took a lot of things out of my hands while I was here. I should say I gave him the things I realized my hands were clinging to. But as he always does, he gave me back a hundred times more than what I gave him!

  I hope you might think about me sometime, and maybe want to write again. I enjoy your letters and hope we might correspond. It would be good to have someone to share my thoughts with by mail. A journal is good, but not always enough. Anything that you send to Miracle Springs, California, will get to me. Everybody knows me there.

  Remember me as a sister who cared deeply for you, and who will always be grateful to you—for saving my life, for nurturing me back to health, and for showing me many attributes of our Father. And thank you again for the journal! I treasure it and will fill it only with the choicest gems of truth I can find—some of them things you said to me.

  God bless you always, Christopher!

  Cordially,

  Corrie Belle Hollister

  During the train ride back from New York, my mind was strangely clear of distractions and any anxieties about Christopher. I had not allowed myself to build too many castles in the sky anyway, but now that I had settled things within myself about the past, so much about the future was clear, too. I knew at last where my home was—both inside me, and where I physically belonged too—and I was content not to look elsewhere for either.

  So my mind was thinking more clearly than it had for a long time, and I found myself reflecting once more on the war and on the articles I had been trying to start that had twice bogged down before. A further perspective began slowly to dawn on me, and suddenly I saw a parallel between the war in the development of our countr
y and what I had just experienced while at Bridgeville.

  As difficult as it was, I had written on a moving train before, so I got out my papers and pen and ink and tried to put some of these new thoughts down in writing.

  How does a person, or a family, or even a nation grow out of its childhood and adolescence, to come at last into its adulthood?

  It must, one would think, reach a certain age in its growth and history where it can begin to look upon itself with a rationality not given to many children. At that point in the development of its personality, it must look upon itself with self-analysis and introspection, and ask, “Who am I . . . what am I . . . where have I come from . . . where am I bound . . . of what stuff am I made?”

  Not only do people ask themselves such questions as they mature, they also find themselves facing such inner issues at moments of crisis, conflict, and crossroads in their lives, when new levels of personhood and character must be sought. Men and women face such times. Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, families and friends must all learn to weather times of adversity and conflict for their relationships to come out stronger in the end.

  Those moments serve to illuminate and define personality and character. Out of such travail, boys become men of valor, girls become women of courage, and brothers learn to put behind them the differences of adolescence, to clasp hands as men and become one.

  In every aspect of life, defining moments ultimately come.

  This had certainly happened to me! If the last several days had indeed been a “crossroads” in my life, I hoped it had helped me define who I was as a person too.