Pages of Promise (27 page)
“You’ll have to come to Chicago and spend some time with me,” Lenora said every Christmas. At the last reunion there had been something more pressing than usual about her invitation. Her sharp, hazel eyes had held Mona’s, and the younger woman had the idea that her whole personality was exposed to Lenora.
“I’ve got to talk to
somebody.
” She located the number and called, and after warm encouragement from Lenora to come, she thought,
I must be losing my mind going to see a Salvation
Army lassie—but I can’t talk to anyone else, and I’ve got to have
some help.
Mona arrived at the Salvation Army headquarters in Chicago, and she was shown to Lenora’s office. The colonel, as Lenora was called, was in a modern office with every kind of up-to-date equipment surrounding her. When Mona entered, Lenora gasped and said, “Look at you!”
As soon as the door closed, Lenora wheeled herself around and came over and lifted her arms. “Give me a good Hollywood kiss,” she said. She took Mona’s kiss on her cheek and said, “Now, are you hungry? Do you want lunch?”
“Not really. I ate on the plane.”
“Then come along and let me give you a tour. That’ll make you hungry!”
Mona laughed at her aunt’s enthusiasm, and the tour of the organization was revealing. She discovered at once a strange marriage of spiritual content to expert business practice.
“We try to do two things here in the army—one is to present the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior to everyone who will hear. That’s what General Booth, the founder, had in his heart,” Lenora said. “The other thing we try to do is to help those who need it.”
“You certainly do that, Aunt Lenora—or must I call you Colonel Stuart?”
Lenora laughed and shook her head. She was a youthful-looking woman in her sixties, and her ash-blonde hair was streaked with light gray, but her crippling injury had neither affected her zest for life nor her general health. She spoke in glowing terms of the work that the army did all over the world. Finally she said, “Now, we’re going out to dinner and celebrate.”
“What are we celebrating?” Mona said.
Lenora took Mona’s hand, and she smiled. There was a sweetness and intensity about her that was missing in most people.
“To celebrate my niece coming to see me after all these years.”
During the days, when Lenora was busy, Mona spent some time simply wandering around the city, and she visited her aunts Rose and Christie and some of her cousins, but every night she and Lenora talked together until such a late hour that Mona felt guilty, knowing that her aunt had to get up early in the morning.
On the third night at eleven o’clock, Mona looked over at her aunt, who was quietly studying her. “I shouldn’t be keeping you up this late, Aunt Lenora.”
“Of course you should. I’ve had the best time ever since you’ve been here. I don’t usually have time to get lonely, but I like to have family around.”
“I know you miss Uncle Amos.”
“I do, indeed. He came every week, at least. We went out to eat together and talked about the days of our youth. Yes, I miss him a great deal, but I visit your Aunt Rose a lot, and Maury, and I hear great things about Richard.” Lenora paused. “But you haven’t told me your problem yet. I know you have one.”
Mona knew that the moment had come. She shook her head in despair. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Aunt Lenora. I have everything I always thought I’d want, but I’m not happy. I’m miserable, and I don’t think it’s going to get any better.”
Lenora smiled and wheeled her chair closer so that she could put her hand on Mona’s knee. “I wondered how long it would take you to get to this,” she said.
“You knew something was wrong with me, didn’t you?”
“Why, child, one look into your eyes and my heart just bled! You’re so lonely and hurt that people would have to be blind not to see it.”
“They must be blind then,” Mona said, shaking her head. “I haven’t talked to anybody about it. What’s wrong with me, Aunt Lenora?”
“You’ve heard of Saint Augustine?”
“Well, yes. A little.”
“A great man of God. He said, ‘There’s a vacuum in every human being, an empty spot, a God-shaped hollow, and until God fills that no man or no woman will ever know peace, or happiness, or joy.’ Isn’t that wonderful, Mona?”
“I–I don’t think so. I mean, what does it mean? It isn’t good to have a hollow space inside, is it?”
“Why, it’s the way we were made. The first humans were made like that, to have communion with the Lord God, and when they violated God’s commandment and couldn’t face him anymore, that’s when all the misery of this world started.” She spoke quietly and reached over and took her Bible, which was never far away. After reading several Scriptures she said, “You’re unhappy because you’re not complete. You need Jesus Christ.”
“I’ve heard that all my life, and I know you found completeness, and my parents certainly have, but Stephen and I have missed it. He’s bitter and angry and hates the world.”
“I know he is. I write to him often, and I pray for him every day. God’s not through with that young man yet.” Lenora fell silent for a moment and then said, “But what about you? You’ve heard the gospel, but I want to share it with you again. What Jesus has done for me . . .”
Mona listened. She ordinarily did not like to be preached to, but there was something in her aunt that held her captive. Lenora read the old Scriptures over again: “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”; “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish”; “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief”; “Ye must be born again.”
“Do you believe all of these things I’m reading out of God’s Word, Mona?”
“Yes, I believe them, but I don’t know how to—well, I don’t know how to make them real. Suppose I did give my heart to God and got saved. Would I have to play a trumpet in the Salvation Army?”
“Would you be willing to?” Lenora’s reply came back like a shot.
Mona lowered her head. “No,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t be willing to do that.”
“Then you’re not ready. Jesus calls us to be his disciples, his servants, and the first thing that we learn in the Bible is that God’s children are called to obey. I have no idea whether he’d call you to toot on a trumpet, but until you’re ready to do it, you’re not ready for Jesus.”
“I don’t know what to do. I wish God would just
make
me do what he wants.”
“He’ll never do that—though most of us who are Christians think we would like it if he did. Did you ever hear of John Donne?”
“The English poet?”
Lenora nodded. “He wrote a poem in which he said he wanted God to just
make
him be good.”
“Do you have a copy?”
“Yes—right here,” Lenora said quickly, tapping her temple. “I memorized it a long time ago. My favorite part goes like this:
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
Mona listened carefully. “That’s very strong stuff, Aunt Lenora—I can never be chaste until I’m ravished. And I can’t be free until I’m imprisoned? How can that be?”
“I think all women and men are in some sort of a prison, my dear. For some it’s alcohol, for others lust. And we must be, in effect, made captive by God himself. When we are his prisoners, then we are really free for the first time. But we must give ourselves to God’s will, and he will not make little puppets out of us. He’s looking for sons and daughters not robots and slaves.”
Mona’s eyes filled with tears, and her voice trembled. She pressed her hands against her lips and tried to control herself. “I don’t know what to do! I just don’t know, Aunt Lenora!”
Lenora had counseled many women, and this one, being of her own blood, was especially precious to her. She prayed silently for a moment or two, letting her eyes close, then she opened them and said, “I think you know too much, Mona. You’ve heard the gospel all your life, and you’ve become hardened to it in a way. Here’s what I want you to do. Go someplace—doesn’t matter where—lock yourself in a room, get out in the middle of the woods where you can holler and nobody will hear you. Stay there, and begin to call on God. Don’t give up. God has been seeking you, but now you must seek him.”
The cabin on the Buffalo River was set in the most isolated place that Mona could find to rent for a week. “It ain’t much. Not for a lady like you,” Jack Simms said. He was a little awed by talking to a real live Hollywood actress. “It’s just one room, and there ain’t no electricity nor even running water. Just drink out of the creek. No bathroom, you understand. You wouldn’t like it.”
“I’ll take it for a week. Could you take me there?”
They bounced over crooked roads, through first-growth fir and pine timber that towered over them, and then he left her, with a week’s supply of food.
The sound of the jeep diminished, and she walked outside and took a deep breath. The trees were whispering overhead in the breeze, the sky was blue, and the creek purled beside the little cabin, tinkling as it fell over the stones.
She had never been alone like this in her life, and there was no way out until Simms came back for her.
She went back inside the cabin. She smiled at the rustic simplicity: a bunk bed with a cotton-tick mattress over link springs, a table and three mismatched chairs, a roughly built cabinet, a bookshelf full of tattered, mostly western, novels. Nails served instead of a closet. She had been instructed on how to use the gas lantern, and there was a coal oil lamp with two gallons of coal oil “just in case.” An ancient cook stove with a pile of wood in a box beside it challenged her. She had never built a fire in her life, and she set about it at once. It was quite a chore, until she learned to use very small sticks as kindling to build it up. She unpacked her supplies and, since she had not eaten since breakfast, found a frying pan and cooked her first meal: bacon and eggs and black coffee.
She sat down at the table and started to eat, then halted. She bowed her head, saying, “I came here to find you, God, so I’ll do everything I know. Thank you for this food and this place. Amen.”
At first Mona thought she would lose her mind. The silence pressed in upon her. The sky was too large. She knew there were bears and wolves and coyotes in the vicinity. More than once she wanted to walk the five miles to the neighbor to call Simms.
She was not a solitary person. The hum of human voices, the motions of human bodies, the activities of the world had been her element, as water is element for a fish. During that first day and the next, she kept expecting to hear a voice and was anxious to see something besides the trees and the inside of the little cabin. She walked by the stream and into the woods, never going too far, for she feared getting lost more than anything. Evenings, she cooked her meal and sat on one of the chairs outside the cabin until the sky turned velvet black and stars began to spangle it. Then she went inside and opened the only book she’d brought—a Bible. Lenora had given her a few guides, and she read the Gospels through once, then started again. She went to sleep aware of the sounds outside the little cabin that gradually became her citadel.
After three days, she’d learned to sit and to be silent. She walked in the woods, at the same time seeking God, and she read the Gospels again and again.
On the fifth day, the sun had disappeared over the mountains, and she could barely see to read. She prayed and felt nothing. She read eagerly at first and then plodded on deliberately, stopping to ask God to help her.
Just before total darkness fell she sat outside with the open Bible on her lap. She prayed the same prayer that she had prayed, it seemed, a thousand times since she’d arrived.
“Oh, God, I need you so much! Please help me!”
She expected nothing, but—she felt tears suddenly rise in her eyes, and all of the Gospel events that she’d read began to come to her. She remembered how Jesus touched lepers and gave sight to the blind, how he loved the unlovely, and how women had been drawn to him. She sat for hours thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ, and something in her melted. It was as if a river of ice had thawed. The thick, solid ice broke into smaller chunks, and they were swept down the river, and then the river was free.
Mona knew that God was around her and was in her, and she began to pray this time with faith. “Oh, Lord Jesus, I have sinned against you and against my parents and my family and others. I do repent as you have commanded, and I invite you to come into my being. I will obey you the best I know how, but please save me, Lord Jesus.”
Lenora Stuart picked up the phone and said in her businesslike manner, “Colonel Stuart here!”
“Aunt Lenora!”
“Mona, it’s you!”
“Yes, it’s me, and I’ve got something to tell you.”
Something in Mona’s voice, a new element that had been missing, caused Lenora to cry out. “What is it, Mona?”
Mona was holding the telephone in the general store in Jasper. She was unaware that the clerk and several customers were staring at her, listening to every word she said.
“Get my trumpet ready, Aunt Lenora. If God wants me to toot, then I’ll toot!”
A
fter Jake and Stephanie’s wedding and honeymoon in Morocco, Jake returned to his duties at the
Examiner.
In late July, Stephanie was sent to Cairo after Egypt’s President Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Tension was high as Great Britain and France prepared for possible military action. Stephanie began developing special news gathering skills because of the prejudice against women in the Arab world.
Jake and Stephanie decided not to decide on anything for a while. He did begin pursuing possibilities for work with International News Service, but there were no guarantees or even the likelihood that he and Stephanie could be assigned as a team. So for the present, he concentrated on working rather than worrying about her safety or about their future. He wrote to her parents: