He shifted his weight and the bed creaked. “We keep sinning because we're sinners, honey.”
“But Jesus died for my sins. Why am I still a sinner?”
Her father gently stroked her hair. “You remind me so much of your mother,” he said. “She was light-haired with skin as fair as porcelain.”
“Aren't our dishes made of that?”
He nodded. “Imagine your mother's face as delicate and beautiful as the teacup your aunt uses.”
Elisabeth sighed. “I want to be a Christian like Mommy.”
Her father embraced her. Her cheek lay against the wool of his vest and his watch chain tickled her neck. “Just like you, your mother worried and worried about her faith until it all came to her one night in our little church.”
“What came to her?”
“She heard the truth, that's all,” her father said. “She'd heard it all her life, but she didn't catch it until then.”
“I want to hear the truth,” Elisabeth said.
“Such wisdom from a wee one,” he said, pulling back to look at her. “Tell me what it means to be a Christian.”
“To believe in Jesus,” she said. “And to live for him,” she added quickly.
“Is that so?” he asked. “The Bible says we are known by the fruit we bear. You try to live for Jesus, Elisabeth. I know you do.”
Elisabeth scowled. “Doesn't God want me to?”
“Sure, but why?”
“Daddy, I'm asking
you.”
Dr. LeRoy stood and stretched, and Elisabeth did the same. His yawn was contagious too, but she fought sleep. If her own mother had the same problem she did, and
she had
found the answer, Elisabeth would not rest until she found it too.
Her father sat again. “Listen carefully, Elisabeth. Your mother finally realized what grace was all about. It means we don't have to please God, because we can't.”
Elisabeth was confused. “You mean we're not supposed to try toâ”
He cupped her face in his hands. “We try to live godly lives to show our thanks to him for grace. Nothing we can do on our own can please God. You know the verses.”
“âFor by grace are ye saved through faith,'” she said, “âand that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.'”
“We're saved by the grace of God, Elisabeth. Living godly is noble. But don't do it for any reason other than to thank God for the gift of grace. Otherwise, you're still trying to earn his favor.”
L
osing her mother in childbirth had been a blow, but Elisabeth lacked little else. Despite her father's counsel, even as a child Elisabeth learned that the first ward was the place to live. “The riffraff in the other wards gossip about first warders,” her aunt said. “But you know they strive to move up here themselves.”
Elisabeth felt priceless when her father's countenance brightened at the sight of her at the end of the day. “Homework report,” he would announce, and she brought him up to date. “Um-hm,” he repeated, studying her work.
“Are you tired, Daddy? You're breathing hard.”
He inhaled deeply. “Be sure to get more exercise than I do,” he said. “And be careful of your diet.” He patted his ample belly. “This is a self-inflicted handicap, but such things are also genetic. You'll have to be careful.”
Her father's height camouflaged his true weight, which Elisabeth guessed at nearly three hundred pounds. He changed the subject. “Isn't learning an adventure?” he said, a smile burning through his haggard face. “Education gives us a passion for life!”
She nodded, aware of his stare. Normally he lingered over her schoolwork, making sure she understood the material, but now he just gazed at her. “You look more like your mother every day.”
“Those smelly ladies at church pretend
they're my
mother,” she said, shuddering at their smothering embraces.
“They're just affectionate.”
Elisabeth shrugged, not letting on that she always shut her eyes and imagined her own mother. She had not even told Frances about that.
Aunt Agatha did not hug her, and for that Elisabeth was grateful. She had heard her aunt sobbing in her bed, railing against God for taking her loved ones. That made Elisabeth cry too, and at times
she
raged against injusticeâagainst the unfairness, for instance, that Frances Crawford enjoyed both a loving mother
and
a father.
But Elisabeth would not complain. She remembered what her father had told her: “Always look on the bright side. Half the people I treat would be helped merely by a more positive outlook.”
“I know,” she said. “See?” She flipped to the back of her school writing tablet, where she had listed, “My blessings: God. Christ. Holy Spirit. Bible. Church. Father. House. Warmth. Brain. Curiosity. Books. Lamp. Food. Bed. Clothes. Training Hour. Friends. Aunt Agatha (sometimes).”
When Elisabeth's body began to change, her father seemed to change too. He grew more careful around her, speaking more circumspectly.
“Who's going to tell me about the things of life?” she said.
He looked away. “Such as?”
“You know. Men, women, husband and wife things.”
“There's time for that,” he said, busying himself in one of her books. Elisabeth wondered if she had broached a subject not proper to discuss.
One day her father sent her to a nurse friend of his at the hospital for a physical exam. Elisabeth blushed when the woman gave her a cursory once-over and said quietly, “Your father has asked that I explain what you might expect for your monthly cycle.” The nurse also gave her a booklet on sexuality.
Elisabeth was so embarrassed she could not look at her father or speak to him for days. And it seemed that was fine with him.
They became cordial again, then more familiar, and were soon back to a friendly routine. He had to be as aware as she that there was a subject neither would acknowledge. Elisabeth wanted to ask if it was customary for one's mother to discuss such matters, but she dared not broach even that. She told Frances, “I will speak frankly to my children, at least my daughters, about these things.”
With Elisabeth's increasing knowledge of the mysteries of life, her view of God and faith began to mature as well. “I finally understand the virgin birth,” she whispered to Frances. “Don't laugh, but I always thought a virgin was just a young woman.”
Frances shook her head. “Mary kept Jesus from being born with Adam's seed.”
“I finally understand how Jesus qualifies to be the spotless sacrificial lamb of the Old Testament,” Elisabeth said. She found that miracle every bit as dramatic and impressive as the Resurrection, and suddenly the picture of redemption and salvation began to crystallize. How often had she heard Pastor Hill say that one death could cleanse the sins of all, “because the lamb that was slain was the infinite God of the universe”?
The truth of it hit Elisabeth hard one humid summer Sunday night when the pastor preached on the subject of the cross. He asked the congregation to “close your eyes and imagine Jesus hanging there just for you.” In the dark silence Elisabeth trembled, believing that if she had been the only person in the world, Jesus would have died just for her. When Pastor Hill whispered, “He loved us, every one, as if there was but one of us to love,” she burst into sobs.
Barely thirteen, Elisabeth developed a hunger to understand everything about God. She made an appointment with Pastor Hill and was shocked to find him nearly as embarrassed to talk to her about the deeper things of God as her father had been to talk to her about the secrets of life. Jack Hill had been pastor of Christ Church since long before Elisabeth was born. It was he who had brought life to the doctrine of grace, giving such peace to Elisabeth's mother.
Pastor Hill was tall and knuckly, a hardware store clerk Monday through Saturday mornings. His office, such as it was, occupied a tiny alcove off the dining room in a modest parsonage in the third ward, where he and his wife had raised six children. Elisabeth and the pastor sat with his pine desk between them. He wore his Sunday suit, stiff collar pressing his Adam's apple. She wondered if he spent his afternoons dressed like that, studying and preparing his sermons. She would be impressed if he had dressed just for their meeting, but she thought it imprudent to ask.
“I just want to know if I have it all,” Elisabeth exulted, accepting his offer of a chair and fanning herself as she spoke. “I always loved the faith, but I thought so much of it was a mystery, like the Trinity.”
Pastor Hill stared at the wall behind her. “Much of the faith is indeed a mystery,” he said. “Salvation itself is a mystery, as Paul writes.”
“But it's less mysterious now, Pastor. You make everything so clear.”
The pastor sat back, clearly embarrassed. “Well, Elisabeth, you've had wonderful training at home, and I know from your teachers and my own observance that you know your Bible.”
“I only thought I knew it. There's so much there! I, uh, just wondered if there are more secrets or mysteries.”
Pastor Hill studied her. He hollered to the kitchen. “Margaret, could you join us?” His wife was red-faced and stocky with raw fingers, her hair piled atop her head. She was sweating through her blouse as she dried her hands.
“Margaret,” he said, his voice thick. “You know Elisabeth, of course.”
“I've known her all her life, Jack,” she said, smiling. “The spirit and image of her beautiful mother.”
“But did you know she is an answer to prayer? Have I not been praying for years for a young person in love with Christ?”
Margaret nodded. “You have.”
Elisabeth hadn't come to be singled out. “Is there more of God?” she managed finally.
Mrs. Hill smiled but appeared on the edge of tears. “There is all of God that you want,” she said.
“The Trinity and salvation,” she said, nodding. “I'll accept the one by faith, but the other is much clearer now.”
The pastor seemed amused. “I have studied Scripture since Bible school and find salvation God's greatest mystery. I'm grateful Paul writes that we âmay know.' I rest in that.”
Elisabeth immediately said, “First John 5:13, âThese things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.'”
Pastor Hill nodded, moisture from his forehead collecting in the creases beside his mouth. “Unfathomable love and grace is beyond me and most everyone but young girls.”
Elisabeth scowled, wondering if he was criticizing her naivete.
His sad smile was like his wife's. It was as if he could read her mind. “I pray you will always stay close to Christ, despite any cost. True devotion requires sacrifice.”
“It hasn't so far,” she said, and that made him smile again.
He gazed at her, and she wondered if the meeting was over. She had more questions now than when the conversation had started. He reached for his Bible. “I need to tell you,” he said, “that when you feel drawn closer to God, you must remain open to his call. The nudging in your spirit may be evidence that God wants more from you. And Jesus said that to whom much is givenâ”
“âOf him shall be much required,'” Elisabeth said. “âAnd to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.' Luke 12:48.”
“You are remarkable,” the pastor said, leafing through his Bible. “Elisabeth, Paul counts all things but loss compared to knowing Christ and knowing the power of Christ's resurrection. The power that raised Jesus from the dead can work in our lives. Think of it! But see what follows. As Shakespeare would say, here's the rub. Read it.”
“â⦠and the fellowship of his sufferings.'”
The pastor appeared to look upon her with pity.
“What does it mean?” she said.
“The more of God you want, the more of Christ you'll get. Most are content to stay out of the deep water.”
“I can't tell if you're warning me or encouraging me.”
“Both, Elisabeth. God does not call us to a closer walk to make our lives easier. Pray about your desire for a closer walk,” he said. “I know few with the stomach for the cost. If you are called, you must go. But the rewards are few.”
He seemed to rouse from a reverie and smiled at her. “There have been costs,” he said. “But I am without regret.”
Elisabeth wanted to ask what his walk with God had cost him, but she dared not. “I've taken too much of your time,” she said.
“Not at all,” he said. “Let me pray for you before you go. Margaret, would you be so kind.” Mrs. Hill laid her hand gently on Elisabeth's shoulder as the pastor knelt. A lump rose in Elisabeth's throat.
“Fairest Lord Jesus,” he began, “to you who promise to be both mother and father to the orphan, I plead for a touch on Elisabeth's life. She seeks a closer walk. May she be willing despite a cost you never reveal in advance, lest we faint at the weight of it. May she follow completely the one in whom there is no change, neither shadow of turning.”
The pastor remained kneeling as if too spent to rise. Mrs. Hill's cheeks shone with tears, and Elisabeth could not even express her thanks.
E
lisabeth walked home at twilight. She was about to cross to the other side of West Michigan Street when she saw Will Bishop ahead on his bicycle, gas lamp lighter held aloft. In knickers and cap, he pretended not to notice her, as usual. They had known each other all their lives. One of her earliest memories was of tussling with him in the church nursery.
Elisabeth thought of avoiding him for his sake, not for hers. Poor Will was painfully shy. She couldn't decide what would be best, to spare his having to acknowledge her or to educate him in the social graces. She decided on the latter.
“Good evening, Will,” she said, stopping before him as he prepared to light a lamp.
“Oh,” he said, as if surprised. He left one hand on the handlebars and touched his cap with the other, seeming to forget he was holding the long wick. “Hullo, Elspeth.”
“Careful there,” she said. “Don't set yourself afire.”
“No'm,” he said.
“I'll let you shorten my name,” she said. “But you must not call me ma'am until I'm older.”
“Sorry.” He looked away miserably.
“I'm teasing, Will. Call me anything you wish, as long as you call me your friend.”
“Okay,” he said. “Better keep going.”
“Nice to see you, Will,” she said.
“Yes'm,” he said, “I mean, friend.”
Elisabeth wished she could tell him about her visit to the pastor, but did boys ever even think about such things? She could barely get him to look at her, much less converse. She had once made the mistake of asking Will about his father, frequently the object of unspoken prayer requests. Will had merely shaken his head.
In youth group one night, a girl suggested a young people's activity might include an outing to see Mr. Bishop at the State Hospital in Kalamazoo. The youth group fell silent when Frances Crawford (who had lately earned the nickname Big Mouth) offered, “Isn't that where they send the loonies?”
Dr. LeRoy later assured Elisabeth that Mr. Bishop was “no loony, which is certainly not a term anyone should use for a mental patient anyway. He suffers from an undiagnosed memory malady, and it would serve you and your friends better to pray for him than to call him names.”
“Should we visit him?”
“I'm afraid he wouldn't know us.”
Elisabeth's friends said Will was handsome, but caring about that seemed frivolous. Frances accused her of being too serious and “way too spiritual. No boy's ever going to be interested!”
Elisabeth was impressed that Will seemed willing to work. He had a paper route, which he threw after midnight while outing the gas lamps he had lit just before sundown. He had his own little scavenger company, selling wagons full of stuff to the junkyard. And he volunteered to carry groceries, never charging but accepting tips. Elisabeth wondered if he said two words to his customers. She glanced back at Will as she headed home.
Still full of emotion from her visit with the pastor, Elisabeth was disappointed to find her father not home. It was just her and Aunt Agatha. The dreary woman seemed to need a target for her moods. “Where've you been, young lady? Your dinner's long cold.”
“I didn't mean to make you worry.”
“About you? That's a laugh. Did your father know you would be late?”
“I didn't expect to be.”
“So, where were you?”
“Father knew where I was. Is it necessary for you to know?”
“I'd have been whipped, talking to an elder with such insolence. I'm entitled to an answer because I'm one of your guardians.”
“I was at Pastor Hill's home,” Elisabeth said, dropping onto the couch. “I'd love to tell you about it. He believes it's possible for a Christian to be called to aâ”
“I don't need every detail!” Aunt Agatha said. “Your plate is on the stove, and don't expect company. I've already eaten.”
“I'll manage,” Elisabeth said.
“And don't think I won't be telling your father what time you waltzed in here. The street lamps are already lit, forevermore!”
Elisabeth wouldn't deny that her aunt could cookâin fact, she took pleasure in saying so. The old woman clearly didn't know how to take compliments, but they certainly defused her. “Delicious as always, Aunt Agatha,” Elisabeth called from the kitchen.
“It would have tasted even better fresh!”
“That's why I'm so sorry I was late!”
“Let that be a lesson ⦔
“Where is Daddy, anyway?”
“You're old enough to quit calling him Daddy. You sound like a baby.”
“It's a term of endearment,” Elisabeth said. “Like when I call you Auntie.”
“You can lay that to rest anytime, too,” Agatha said. “Doctor Daddy is at the hospital in Schoolcraft, no surprise. Said you shouldn't wait up.”
“What's he doing there? Does he have a patient there?”
“I don't manage his day, Elisabeth! It doesn't strike me odd that a doctor is at a hospital!”
Elisabeth was still wondering about her father later while reading her Bible. Being hungry for it, despite having read it daily as a duty for years, was new to her. She dressed for bed and sat reading and praying. She had come a long way in a few hours, from believing she had the Christian life figured out to fearfully considering some divine call. But to do what?
No wonder her friends criticized her for acting older. She
felt
older. Elisabeth remembered fondly when Frances and her other friends were also interested in Bible stories and memorizing verses, Sunday school picnics, prayer meetings, camp, even protracted meetings.
“Protracted meetings!” Aunt Agatha repeated at dinner when she'd heard the phrase one too many times that summer. “James, I swear, it sounds like a dental society meeting.”
Her brother chuckled. “Agatha,” he said, “that would be an
extracted meeting. Protracted
merely means they are extended for as long as the guest speaker is drawing a good crowd and God seems to be workingâ”
“I know what it means, James! I was raised in the same home as you.”
“I wish you'd come,” he said, filling his plate again. “This year's speaker knew Mr. Moody personally.”
“You don't say,” she said. “Get Dwight Moody here and I
will
join you.”
“Moody's been dead since '99.”
“As if I didn't know that! Prop up his corpulent corpse, and I'll be on the front row.”
Dr. LeRoy stared at her. “That's disrespectful, even for you.”
“Even for
me?” Aunt
Agatha said. “What does that mean?”
“Who speaks ill of the dead, let alone of the greatest evangelist who ever lived?”
“You're putting Moody ahead of the apostle Paul?” she said, ignoring her food.
“How can you know so much of the Bible and turn your back on God?”
“We've been down this road,” she said. “You know well that I didn't turn my back on God. He turned his back on me.”
“I'm about to do the same,” Dr. LeRoy said.
“He did to you what he did to me!” she wailed. “How could you forgive him for taking your Vera? She was just a child!”
“The Lord giveth andâ”
She slapped her fork on the table. “Stop with the platitudes! More power to you if you let God tear your life apart and come back for more. When he took both Kathleen and my Godfrey, he took all he's going to get.”
“I wish that were true.”
“You two go to your protracted meetings and leave me in peace.”
“You know what I'm going to do there, Aunt Agatha?” Elisabeth said brightly.
“Besides roast in the August heat, pray tell.”
“Pray for you.”
“Just to agitate me?”
“No. Because I care about you, that's all.”
“That's all. That's all. You got that empty expression from your father, and you'd do well to expunge it from your vocabulary.”
“You're changing the subject,” Elisabeth said, “that's all.”
Even her father had to laugh, but he wound up apologizing to his sister. “I'll never really turn my back on you, Agatha,” he said. “I love you even when you're ornery.”
“That puts you one up on God.”
Dr. LeRoy shook his head. “No one will ever love you like he does.”
“He has a strange way of showing it.”
“His ways are not our ways. God works in mysteriousâ”
“I swear,” she said, standing and beginning to clear the table, “you have a platitude for every occasion.”
The banner, hung between two trees in the yard of Christ Church, announced the annual protracted meetings in August of 1913. Handbills and the newspaper revealed the meetings would feature well-traveled speaker Dr. Kendall Hasper. He was reputed to have taught at Mr. Moody's school in Chicago, at the famed Ravensway College in Great Britain, and at gatherings of missionaries on every inhabited continent.
The
Three Rivers Tribune
carried a feature on him. His exposure to foreign lands should alone draw huge crowds, the paper said, but “the world traveler also brings a message of hope and revival that should be uplifting to the entire community.”
Elisabeth always looked forward to the protracted meetings. A tent was erected but used only in the rain. A potluck picnic preceded each meeting, which began with the sun still high and hot and ended under a black sky. Rarely did sundown bring a chill in August.
Over the years, Elisabeth had been held spellbound under thundering evangelists and had tried to stay awake while missionary executives told secondhand stories from the field. She enjoyed speakers with flair, as long as they didn't strut. She had inherited that aversion from her father, who said, “The primary trait of a man of God ought to be humility.”
Elisabeth's friends had never before complained about having to wear their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes to protracted meetings. But now that they were young men and women, dress became an issue, especially with her girlfriends. They wore what they were told, but they groused, especially Frances.
Tradition allowed those Elisabeth's age to sit with each other for the first time, rather than with their parents, provided they behaved. Elisabeth wasn't sure she wanted to sit with Frances and her other friends. They were conspiring to pass notes. She didn't want to feel like a schoolmarm, as they labeled her. But Elisabeth was disappointed that church had apparently come to mean something different to her friends than it did to her.
Regardless, Elisabeth felt strangely warmed when Frances and Lucy, a younger girl, shyly approached a few minutes before the meeting. “May Elisabeth sit with us, Dr. LeRoy?” Frances asked in her most obsequious tone.
“It's all right with me, ladies. The choice is hers.”
Elisabeth gathered her Bible and her notepad and followed the girls to the other side of the makeshift aisle. It touched her to feel wanted. She knew she was different, that her vaunted maturity had alienated many friends. Elisabeth wasn't trying to act superior. She was serious, that was all.
The young people knew the curmudgeons among the congregation, those who seemed to think being a Christian meant being miserable. Her fun-loving father had disabused Elisabeth of that notion; she dreaded becoming one who wagged a finger at anybody having fun.
As soon as she settled in on the aisle next to Frances, Art Childsâone of the older boysâspotted Elisabeth's notebook. “Paper!” he whispered, grinning as he dug in his pocket for a handful of stubby pencils. Elisabeth pressed her lips together and shook her head, hugging her notebook to her chest. “Oh, pardon me, Miss Pastor!” Art said.
Elisabeth glanced down the row, and even the girls were ridiculing her. At the far end Will Bishop sat taking it all in. He looked somber, staring at Elisabeth as if he understood, his father's huge Bible in his lap.
The piano had been rolled to the side of the platform inside the church so Elisabeth's piano teacher, Mrs. Stonerock, could play with a clear view from the window to the song leader. They never risked carrying the piano into the weather.
With the first strains of the music, a crowd twice the size of the Sunday congregation looked expectantly to the platform. After a brief welcome by Pastor Hill and congregational singing, he introduced the special music. A long-nosed woman from a church in White Pigeon held her music before her in both hands, and with heaving chest produced a contralto soprano that needed no amplification.
Mortified, it was all Elisabeth could do to keep a straight face. She knew she should admire the woman's willingness to serve God, but all was drowned out by the swelling vibrato. Elisabeth's friends covered their mouths and turned colors.
A chuckle tickled her throat, and Elisabeth prayed she would not humiliate herself or her father across the aisle. Appearing to corral a smile, he raised an eyebrow when the singer modulated. Elisabeth felt a guffaw coming, and when her father turned and winked at her, she lost control.
Clenching her teeth left the rush of air nowhere to escape but through her nose. With her notebook and her Bible against her chest, she heard her own honking snort when everyone else did, and all she could do was drop her stuff, bury her face in her hands, and pretend to weep. Which made her friends laugh all the more.
Miss Soprano was so enraptured that her eyes were closed, her face beatifically pointed heavenward. The young people collected themselves as the solo ended, and Elisabeth busied herself helping Frances and Lucy pick up her things. She feared her father's scowl, but he pursed his lips and pantomimed a delicate applause that made her bury her face again.
Finally, mercifully, it was time for the honored guest. Elisabeth was tormented by giggles that threatened to expose her every time her mind drifted to the soloist. She hoped with all her might that Dr. Hasper could somehow captivate her.