A New Beginning (6 page)

There were probably more people at Avery Rutledge's funeral that Saturday than had been together in one place in or around Miracle Springs . . . ever. Even for the church picnics.

People came from as far away as Marysville and Auburn. Harriet was so moved to see what an impact her husband had had in so many lives. Many who came were people she didn't even know.

The church seemed extra full the next morning too. I don't know it if was out of respect for the departed minister who had been responsible for building the church in the first place or from curiosity about what my husband was going to say.

The first part of the service went pretty much as usual, with Mr. Harding, Pa, and Mr. Shaw all sharing announcements and scripture readings and Almeda leading the hymns with Harriet at the pump organ. Finally it came time for the sermon. Mr. Shaw introduced Christopher.

“I don't suppose Christopher Braxton's a stranger to any of you by this time,” he said, “although you also know he's been planning on leaving our town two days from now with his wife, our own dear Corrie who used to be a Hollister. Most of you know by now that the church committee—that's me and Katie Belle, Douglas Harding, and Agnes Bosely, along with Harriet Rutledge, who we made a new member just this week—we've all asked Christopher to stay on in Miracle Springs and be our new pastor. He hasn't said yes or no yet, only that he'd pray about it, which I reckon is all you can expect from any man, and that he'd try to give us his answer today. So I'm going to turn the rest of the service over to him, and he can say anything he wants to us.”

Mr. Shaw sat down. Christopher got up from beside me, walked to the front of everyone, took his place behind the small lectern, and gazed out toward us a long time without saying anything. I was so nervous. It was March 14. We were supposed to leave on Tuesday, and now all of a sudden our future was completely up in the air again.

Everyone was watching him, curious about what might be coming. Most folks had gotten to know Christopher pretty well in the more than two years since he'd arrived in Miracle Springs. But the one side of him they didn't know much about was the preacher side. It didn't seem like there was anybody else in the community who
could
take Rev. Rutledge's place. Yet now that the committee had asked Christopher to, everybody was wondering what kind of preacher he actually was. He'd done the funeral yesterday, of course. Besides that, folks had seen him work with his hands, and they'd talked to him, and they knew that he was my husband and was a good man. Now they were about to see a whole different side of him, and so they were naturally curious.

So was I. Even I didn't know what Christopher was going to say.

“I know you are bound to be all ears,” he finally began, “about what I am planning to say. You are no doubt wondering both about what my answer is going to be
and
, if I do say yes, about what kind of preacher I might make after you have been so used to our friend and brother Avery Rutledge for so many years. I am not certain I can satisfy you on that score today, because I am not really planning to preach a sermon. There are a number of things I feel I need to share with you before a decision is finally arrived at. Very personal things. I think you will see the reason for what I say in a few moments.”

He paused and took in a deep breath.

“When your committee came to see me on Thursday, the evening after Avery's passing, asking me if I would consider becoming your new pastor, I said to them, as Patrick has told you, that I would think and pray about it. Under any other circumstances I would have added that I also needed to talk with my new wife, whom you all know far better than you know me.”

Heads turned my way and I tried to keep from getting too red.

“But in this case I did not say that, because I realized—and I know Corrie would agree—that this was a decision I had to make myself . . . between myself and the Lord. The thought of leaving Miracle Springs has not been easy for Corrie. She has been wonderfully trusting, but that decision was mine, and therefore to change it will have to be mine too.”

I couldn't help feeling a little bad inside, because after Christopher and I had our long talk about trust, I wished I had been
more
trusting. But I appreciated his words nonetheless.

“Well, I
have
prayed about it,” Christopher continued, “and the answer I am going to give you this morning is that in all fairness to you I think you need to know me better before either you
or
I reach a final decision in this matter.

“Therefore, I am going to tell you about myself this morning. I am going to tell you how I came to be here in Miracle Springs. I am going to tell you what kind of person I am, what kind of dreams and goals I have. Most important, I am going to tell you where I came from, what kind of person I used to be, and why I dedicated my life to the ministry in the first place. I feel it is important that you know me this well. I want you to know what you would be getting for your money, so to speak—although I would take no salary as your minister even if you do decide to continue your invitation to me.

“I am grateful to God for what he has done in me, yet in many respects I have had a difficult life. I feel it is imperative that you know of my background in some detail. I do not believe in the old horse dealer's adage that says let the buyer beware. If there is something wrong with the horse, it is incumbent upon the seller—if he is a Christian—to make that fact known to the buyer before the transaction is made. ‘Let the buyer beware' is but another way of saying that you may deceive anyone you want, as long as he doesn't find out until it is too late for him to do anything about it—hardly a virtuous creed by which to live.

“I live by a different creed, one where openness and honesty and forthright integrity are at the top of the list. In honesty, therefore, I am bound to tell you that there are a few things wrong with this lame nag who is standing in front of you today—if I may prolong the equine parallel probably longer than is beneficial!—and whom you are considering employing to shepherd this small Miracle Springs church. I would be remiss if I did not point out these flaws and then allow you to reconsider your decision.”

Christopher paused to take in a breath. A few chuckles went about the room from his comparing himself to a lame nag of a horse, but the illustration did relax everybody, and now they sat back in their seats to listen.

“In other words, I am perhaps not all I seem at first glance,” Christopher went on. “I would have you know me, and know me well, before any final decision is reached. You may learn more about me and decide this is not the kind of man you want as your pastor, and I want that option to be plainly in front of you. I will not accept your call simply on the basis of the committee's kind offer. I would only accept if a majority of the church, after knowing me better, agreed that they were comfortable and happy with the selection.”

My heart was pounding as I listened. Christopher sounded as if he might take the position! As if reading my mind, his next words resolved that part of the question.

“So
my
half of the answer to your gracious request, Mr. Shaw,” he said, looking at Patrick Shaw as he spoke, “and you others of the committee—Katie, Douglas, Mrs. Bosely, and of course you, Harriet—” he said, glancing toward each of the others one at a time, “is this—that if the church wants us,
after
you hear my story this morning and have a chance to weigh its implications, then Corrie and I will remain in Miracle Springs, and I will become your pastor . . . and Corrie and I will
together
seek to serve and minister among you.”

The words were no longer out of Christopher's mouth before a shriek of happiness sounded, and suddenly I realized it had come from
my
mouth!

I jumped out of my seat and ran up to Christopher and threw my arms around him, right there in front of everyone, while he watched in astonishment. What kind of undignified behavior was this, he must have thought, from the young lady who might well become the next minister's wife? But I couldn't help it.

“Oh, Christopher,” I whispered in his ear, “I did trust you, and I do trust you . . . and I will be content to be with you wherever you go . . . oh, but I am so happy, I can't deny it!”

I took my arms from around him and turned around. Suddenly it dawned on me what I had done. There was the whole church looking at us and clapping, my own family most of all. I felt my face getting ten shades of red all at once, and I hurried back to my seat amid laughter which now mingled in with the applause.

“Perhaps you may find my
wife
the unsuitable half of this arrangement!” said Christopher.

Now everyone did laugh, including Christopher. Gradually the commotion settled down. Christopher waited until quiet had again descended, then took a deep breath and started in.

“The man you see before you and whom you know as Christopher Braxton,” he began, “is much different from the Christopher Braxton who grew up in the farming regions of the Ohio valley.”

He paused momentarily. “The big problem I had when I was growing up,” he went on, “was simply that I did not feel that I was any good, or that I ever could be any good or could amount to anything. The memory of that feeling still lives with me and cannot help but affect the man I am today. These memories sometimes affect my confidence and weigh me down with inner burdens of insufficiency, even after all these years. I do not think I exaggerate,” he added, “when I say that scars remain upon my soul from those years which will probably be permanent in this life. And it is because of these scars that I compared myself to a lame nag a few moments ago.”

He paused and smiled lightly, though, I thought, a little sadly too.

“I would like to tell you briefly how these scars came to be on my soul, because if you take me, I'm afraid the scars come too, as part of the package that makes up the man called Christopher Braxton.”

He stopped again and breathed in deeply, then began his story in earnest.

“My father was married twice,” Christopher said. “I was a son of his second marriage. By his first marriage he had a number of children, but then his wife was killed in an accident. Some time later he married my mother, who was seventeen years younger than he. My father was a great deal older than me, and thus I never knew him well.

“My father was of Hutterite German, or Anabaptist descent. He spoke a form of the German language known as
high
German. The name Braxton, of course, is not German. Originally we were known by the name Brandeis, but my grandfather changed it when he emigrated to the United States. My mother was of north German extraction and spoke a dialect known as
low
German. But the difference between my father's people and my mother's was more than that of language. The closest parallel I can make in our own country of this distinction would be the social and prejudicial division between black and white.

“We lived in a mostly Hutterite community, where my mother was considered an outsider—almost like a Negro living in an all-white community. The Hutterites looked down on the ‘low' Germans in exactly the same way many whites look down on Negroes or Indians, and my father rarely visited with our relatives on my mother's side of the family because—at least so it seemed to me as a young boy—they were viewed as inferior. My father only wanted us to visit with his Hutterite relatives. Why he married my mother in the first place is a bit of a puzzle in my mind. But he did marry her, and this was the situation when my earliest memories begin to gather themselves in the distant regions of my brain.

“But it was really no advantage to visit our relatives on my father's side of the family either. When we saw them, all the relatives treated myself and my four brothers and sisters like dirt. We were a family, as it were, caught between the two worlds of
high
and
low
—outcasts really, not accepted by either, and looked down upon by both. Throughout my early years I continually heard things like ‘You're no good, Chrissy.' Therefore I grew up with that feeling that I was worth nothing as a human being. I knew I was a second- or even a third-class citizen.

“The one bright spot in my life was school. I didn't necessarily get treated any better there because we lived in a Hutterite community. But I loved learning. Books and stories were like treasures to me. They offered me a way to escape my pain.

“If anyone had said to me in those days, ‘Someday you will be the pastor of a church . . . there will be people you will speak to . . . you will teach and help them . . . you will counsel and marry them . . . you will stand in front of large groups of men and women,' I would have laughed at the impossibility of the very idea. The thought that I might someday do something—
anything!
—worthwhile was incredible to me. What could I—little Chrissy Braxton—possibly be but a complete failure?”

Even though I had heard the story before, it was still difficult for me to imagine Christopher as feeling worthless. From the moment I met him, he had seemed so inwardly strong and so sure of himself. If it hadn't been for him, I would not even be alive right now. The thought of our first meeting sent my mind back to those first days when I'd awakened on Mrs. Timms' farm in Virginia after my injury. Even now I could see, in my mind, that strong yet tender face looking down at me—the same face I saw now behind the pulpit of my church.

“My father was in his late sixties by the time I entered my teen years,” Christopher was now saying. “He had been a good man early in life, even a godly man whom many people looked up to. But besides losing a wife, he had lost a great deal of money when a depression hit. So by the time we children of his second family came along, he was aging and feeling many frustrations. He was beginning to show signs of mental infirmity, and from time to time he really treated us badly. When we misbehaved, even for some minor offense, he grabbed us by the hair and hit us with his hand. I was a timid and self-conscious boy, and the fear this caused within me was devastating. There is no other way to say it—I was terrified of him, even though, as I say, he was not by nature a cruel man.

“So I did not have the experience of a warm and loving and personal father. At that point in my life, if someone had told me, in trying to communicate God's great love and goodness, that he was my Father and loved me like a Father, my response would have been to stare in bewilderment. If God was like a
father
—as I envisioned the word—why would I want to have anything to do with him?

“When I was fourteen, after an illness of about a year, my mother died. She was only fifty years old at the time, and there were still four of us children at home. At the age of fourteen, I watched my own mother die, and let me tell you—I was not prepared for that. If any family needed a mother, ours certainly did.

“The very night of my mother's death, at one o'clock in the morning, knowing that my father, now approaching seventy, could not possibly take care of us children, our high German relatives from his side of the family came in and broke up our home. My brother went to an older married sister, I went to a half brother by my father's previous marriage, my younger brother went to an aunt, and my younger sister went to a different aunt. My poor younger sister spent the next years moving around from relative to relative and suffered far more than even I did.

“In any event, I lost my mother and my immediate family all in the same day. These changes came at such a critical time in my growing young life, when I already thought of myself as worthless. You can imagine how much deeper the wounds that were already there
now
went within me. As I said, I went to live with an older half brother and his wife, and I knew they didn't want me.”

I felt tears creeping up into my eyes as Christopher related his story. So much of what he'd told me those first days and weeks at Mrs. Timms' about his struggles in his church had taken on even deeper meaning as I learned about his early life in more detail. How much more painful it must have been for him than I realized at the time.

Christopher's words came back to me about his ouster from the Richmond church:
The following days and weeks were of such anguish and loss. My brain and heart were singed as with a
scorching fire, and there suddenly seemed nothing left to live for. Everything I cared about had been swept away as
by a hot desert wind—leaving nothing but the dry
sands of the Sahara in its place. I felt worse
than empty—emptier than empty. I felt a void, a
nothingness, a hot parching thirst but with no water to drink, no water anywhere
.

Now as he described the loss of his mother, I saw how terrible the loneliness from yet another rejection must have been for him.

“My half brother and his wife,” Christopher went on, “kept me for two years. One day my sister-in-law came and bluntly said to me, ‘You're sixteen now. We can't keep you here any longer. You're going to have to find someplace else to live. You're too old to go to school anymore. You need to find work and make your own way.'

“I was devastated. I knew nobody. I had no place to go. I'd never thought much about what I'd do when I couldn't go to school anymore. I didn't know
what
to do. Desperation grew in me. I knew they wanted to get rid of me . . . but I didn't know where I could go.

“The summer came and I knew I had to leave. What a terrible feeling it is not to be wanted—to know that no one on the face of the earth wants you. That's how I felt. Finally, it occurred to me that perhaps someone on my mother's side, the low German side, of the family
might
receive me better than those on my father's. All through the years,
both
sides of the family had treated us like outcasts. But I hoped, with my father and mother both dead, that my mother's relatives might feel a little more sympathy for my plight.

“So one day early in the summer I packed up all my earthly possessions, which only amounted to a few clothes and a book or two, in a case held together with string. I said my goodbyes to my half brother's family, though none of them revealed the least display of love or emotion at my leaving. Then I walked out the door, having no idea toward what kind of future my feet would lead me.

“I set out walking to the town of Willard, which was twelve or fifteen miles away. I'd probably walked a mile or two when a man in a farm wagon, pulled by two tired-looking horses, came up from behind and asked me if I would like a ride.

“‘Thank you!' I said, and jumped up beside him.

“I was glad for the ride. Once we were on our way, however, the fellow looked over at me with a gruff expression.

“‘Where you going, kid?' he asked.

“‘Willard,' I answered cautiously. My voice was scratchy and high because it hadn't completely changed to a man's voice yet. I was really young. Even though I was sixteen, I probably looked twelve and was so timid I was afraid of my own shadow.

“‘What you aimin' to do in Willard, boy?' the man shot back in a deep, angry-sounding voice. My spirit was already crushed. I was as worried as I could be, because I didn't
know
what I was going to do in Willard. Just the sound of the man's voice made me quake in my thin boots that hardly had any leather left on their soles.

“‘I . . . uh, figured to get work in the fields,' my high-pitched little voice answered.

“‘Willard's a tough place, kid,' he said. ‘'Sides, you're a mite on the scrawny side to get work in the fields. You ain't gonna get no work in Willard nohow!'

“I can still feel the hot tears as they began to burn out of my eyes at the man's words. I glanced away and said nothing more.

“After a while the man spoke up again.

“‘Where you wanna go in Willard?'

“‘My grandmother's house,' I answered, not daring to look over at him.

“‘Where does she live?'

“‘I don't know,' I said.

“‘How you expect to get there if you don't know where she lives?'

“‘I . . . I was there when I was younger,' I said. ‘I figured if I got to Willard, I . . . I'd be able to find it.'

“The answer seemed to satisfy him for the moment, and he said nothing more.

“I rode all the way to Willard with him, mostly in silence, my fear and uncertainty over my future mounting with every mile. As we finally rode into the small town two or three hours later, suddenly I saw a house I recognized as my grandmother's.

“‘Hey . . . there it is,' I said. ‘That's my grandmother's house!'

“The man stopped his wagon. I grabbed my case and jumped down.

“‘Thanks for the ride, mister,' I said.

“I walked over to the house, timidly climbed up the steps, knocked on the door, and waited. My mother's sister, Aunt Mary, an unmarried schoolteacher who still lived with my grandmother, came to the porch. She looked through the screen door hesitantly, then slowly opened it.

“‘Chrissy,' she exclaimed, calling me by the nickname my relatives had always used. Whenever I heard it I felt they were making fun of me. Now I was sixteen and still being called a little girl's name. ‘What are
you
doing here?' she said. There was no hint of welcome or tenderness in her tone.