Chapter 46
The Angels Singing

Once again we walked into the bedroom. This time Uncle Nick went in with us.

Katie was sitting upright, propped up by several pillows. Her face was red and her eyes puffy, but she wasn’t crying any more, and there was a look of determination on her face.

“Please forgive me, Almeda . . . Corrie,” she said. “Please have patience with me for my rudeness.”

“You are forgiven,” said Almeda softly, smiling at Katie. I walked over to the bedside, leaned down, and gave Katie a hug. She put her arms around me and squeezed me in return. The feel of her arms around my shoulders filled me with such happiness I started to cry again. I pulled back and sat down across the room. Almeda again sat down next to the bed.

There was a long silence. Finally Katie spoke again.

“Do you really believe that God intends everything for our good?” she asked. For the first time her voice sounded as if she genuinely wanted to know.

“Oh yes, Katie,” smiled Almeda. “He is more wonderfully good, and his ways are more wonderfully good than we have the faintest notion of.”

“Then why did my parents die . . . why did he take my baby?” said Katie, starting to cry.

Almeda took her hand. “I don’t know, Katie,” she replied with tenderness. “There’s so much we can’t understand about life. Corrie lost her mother also. I have had to struggle with all of the whys my past life. There are hurts every man and woman has to face and wonder about. There are disappointments. We can be lonely. We lose things and people who are precious to us. But there is one thing I’ve learned in the years since I gave my heart to the Lord, and I think it’s just about the most important lesson our life in this world has to teach us. Do you know what that lesson is?”

Almeda stopped and waited. Finally Katie spoke up. “I don’t suppose I do,” she said.

“It’s just this, Katie,” Almeda continued, “that when life’s heartaches and hurts and disappointments come, running to God, not away from him, is our only hope, our only refuge.”

“Is that what I’ve been doing—running away?”

“I’m not sure, Katie. I don’t know that it’s my business to say. Only you would know for certain. But you haven’t been running to him.” There could be no mistaking the love in Almeda’s voice, in spite of the directness of her words. I knew that at last Katie realized Almeda loved her and wanted to help her. She began to weep softly.

“I know you’ve suffered hurts and losses, Katie,” Almeda went on. “But they’ve made you bitter and resentful toward God, when actually he was the one you should have gone to for help. He would have borne the pain for you. But by keeping him away, you had to bear it all alone.

“Katie, I’m so sorry about your daughter! I grieve with you! But don’t you see, the only place for the pain to go is into the hands of Jesus. Otherwise it will tear you apart inside. Instead of turning from him, and blaming him, and crying out against him, he is the one you must go to. He did not take your daughter to inflict hurt. He loves that precious little girl, who is now radiantly alive in his presence, more than any of us ever could! And he loves you, Katie! His arms are wide open, waiting for you to run into his embrace. He is waiting to enfold you in his arms and draw you into himself, waiting to pour out his love in your heart, waiting to fill you with his peace.”

Still Katie wept softly.

“I’m ready to listen to what you want to tell me,” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. “But I don’t know what to do, how to do what you say, even if I want to.”

“There’s nothing to do, Katie, except to receive the love he offers, the love his arms are waiting to wrap around you.”

“How do you receive his love?”

“Just by telling him you want to be his.”

“You mean . . . praying?”

“It doesn’t matter what you call it, Katie,” said Almeda. “God is a friend we can talk to. He is also our Father. We can crawl into his lap and let his arms wrap us up tight, and we can tell him we’re tired of being wayward children and we want to stay close to him from now on. Whatever you say, however you say it, he understands. And once you open up your heart to him like that, he will be with you from that moment on, for the rest of your life. With you, and inside you! The Bible says that he actually takes up residence inside our hearts and lives with us forever. It’s what Jesus calls being born again. That’s what it means to give your heart to God. It’s what Mr. Parrish helped me to do, and it changed the whole course of my life forever.”

A long silence followed.

Without another word, very softly Almeda rose from her chair. With the slightest gesture of one hand she motioned for Uncle Nick to take her place beside Katie’s bed. Uncle Nick got up, a momentary look of confusion on his face, not exactly sure what she meant. As he approached Katie and sat down in the seat where Almeda had been, Almeda and I quietly left the bedroom and closed the door. Then we left the cabin and started toward home.

“I’m glad Erich is down at our place,” Almeda said after we were a ways along the path. “The two of them need to be alone for a while.”

“Why did you get up so abruptly to leave?” I asked.

“Was it abrupt? I didn’t mean it to be. I just knew there was nothing else for me to say right then. The next step was Katie’s to make, and I felt it was best she have some time to reflect on everything I’d said. God’s timing cannot be rushed.”

“I know,” I said with a smile. “You’ve taught me that.”

“Katie has finally stopped fighting against God. That is a good beginning. How far she goes now, and at what pace—that will be up to her. But I would never want to push someone too fast. We do great harm when we impose our own timetable on the work of the Spirit.”

We walked on to the creek and alongside it in silence.

“What do you think will become of Katie and Uncle Nick?” I asked finally.

“Oh, Corrie,” said Almeda excitedly, “life is just beginning for them! Everything that’s happened up till now has just been preparing them for this time, getting them ready to walk with God in a new way. I truly believe that!”

“And the baby?”

“Sometimes I don’t understand God’s ways anymore than Katie does. But he turns all for good—when we let him. The two of them losing their daughter is no exception. If they allow him to use it in their lives, it will draw them both closer to him . . . and to each other.”

We walked the rest of the way without talking again. When we got home, Almeda lay down.

About an hour later I saw Uncle Nick coming toward the house. Pa was out in the barn. I’d been talking to him and was just coming out when Uncle Nick came up. He had a great big grin on his face and his step was lighter than I’d seen it for several days.

“Where’s Almeda?” he said.

“In bed.”

“And your Pa?”

“In the barn.”

“Well, get Almeda up and I’ll go fetch Drum. We’ll be inside in a minute.”

“What for?” I asked, dying of curiosity.

“Never you mind! I’ll tell you all at once,” said Uncle Nick, heading off in the direction of the barn. “I got news, that’s all I’ll say.” He was still smiling.

A few minutes later Pa and Uncle Nick walked into the house, Pa’s arm around Uncle Nick’s shoulder.

Uncle Nick scooped his son up in his arms. “Well son, your ma did it!”

“Did what, Nick?” asked Pa. “Come on, out with it!”

Uncle Nick was beaming, both from embarrassment and pride all at once. “She prayed, just like you said she ought to, Almeda,” he said. “Dad blame if she didn’t grab my hand the minute you two left and say, ‘Nick, will you pray for me? I want the life that Almeda and Corrie and Drum and the others have. I don’t want to be like this any more!’ Then she started crying, and I didn’t know what to do. ‘Please, Nick,’ she said, ‘you’ve got to help me! I don’t know what to do, but I want to live with God. I don’t want to live alone in my heart any more.’

“So I just got up what courage I could muster. Except for that one time with you, Drum, I’ve never prayed out loud before, but I just said, ‘God, you gotta help us, ’cause I don’t know what to do. So I ask you to just help Katie, like she said, and show her how to let your arms go around her.’”

“Well, at that, she starting bawling as if she couldn’t stop, and I just sat there wondering if I’d said something wrong, getting kinda worried. She just kept crying. But then all of a sudden she burst out praying herself, and she prayed on and on, asking God to forgive her for being so ornery all this time, and for being angry and resentful and for treating people rude and for being selfish. She was crying out how she had hurt so deep inside, saying things I never thought I’d ever hear her say. It was like she was a different person once the shell around her broke apart. There was a look of pain on her face worse than when she was having the baby. She seemed far away in a place all alone—it was a place even I couldn’t reach her, though I was sitting beside her holding on to her hand. She was talking to God like I’d never imagined anyone doing, as if he was sitting on the other side of the bed from me—saying . . . all kinds of things.”

He stopped and took a deep breath.

“And . . . ?” said Almeda expectantly.

“I guess you could say she and God were having their own private time together. She said, ‘God, I’ve been so lonely, my heart has felt so cold . . . but now I feel like a little girl again . . . Oh God, why did you take my mother and father from me . . . why did you leave me all alone? I felt so unloved, God . . . no one needed me or wanted me. And now my baby’s gone! Was it because of me that you didn’t let me keep her . . . wasn’t I good enough? Oh, God!’ And then she really started to wail—stammering out stuff about being mad at him and getting angry when people would talk about him, and resenting people who went to church. She cried, ‘Nobody ever really understood me, Lord . . . no one wanted to be near me, and I took it out on you . . . oh, forgive me—please, Lord! I don’t hate you . . . I’m not angry at you any more . . . I need you . . . I want so much to trust you . . . so much to feel your love, to know that your arms are wrapped around me like Almeda said. Oh God, I want you to hold me like my daddy never could!’”

Again, Uncle Nick stopped. All the rest of us were silent, hanging on his every word. It was such a moving story, there was nothing to say!

“That was about it,” he said, but then a sheepish expression came over his face. “After she was done praying,” he continued, “she opened her eyes and looked over at me with a smile, just about the happiest look I’d ever seen on her face. Then she said, ‘Oh, Nick, you’ve been standing with me a long time, and putting up with a lot from me. How can I possibly thank you?’”

“Well . . . what did you say?” asked Pa when Uncle Nick stopped.

“Aw, not much. I just told her I loved her and that it weren’t no big thing I done. Then she opened up her arms to me, still smiling, and I sat over on the edge of her bed and leaned over and gave her a hug. And, tarnation if she didn’t nearly squeeze the insides out of me! That’s when I knew she’d got back most of her strength!”

“Hallelujah!” said Almeda quietly. “God is good!” She closed her eyes, and I knew that inwardly she was giving praise to God.

We were all awestruck at what we’d heard.

“God bless her!” said Pa. “I told you if you prayed for her, everything would come out right in the end, Nick.”

“What happened to Aunt Katie?” asked Tad, not quite understanding all that was being said.

“The angels in heaven are singing, boy,” said Pa, “that’s what.”

“Your Aunt Katie just gave her life to Jesus, Tad,” said Almeda.

“What did you two say to each other after that, Uncle Nick?” I asked. Another sheepish look came over his face.

“Well, if you wanna know,” he said, “I prayed again. You see, I’d been sitting there listening to everything you said, Almeda, and it was going down mighty deep into me too. Now you all know I went to church when I was a kid, and that was fine as far as it went. But then I went my own way for a lot of years, as you know better than anyone, Drum. And now I been trying to live my life a mite different, now that I’m married and got myself a family. And I been praying like you said, and trying to remember what I used to know about being a Christian.

“But while you was talking, Almeda, it just sorta dawned on me all of a sudden that I didn’t know if I’d ever actually done what you was talking about—prayed, you know, and told God all that about wanting to be different and have him live in my heart. I reckon what I’m saying is that I didn’t know if I’d been what you called born again myself. I just couldn’t say for sure. So I figured it couldn’t do no harm to pray all that again, even if I was already on my way to heaven.

“So I did. I prayed it just like Katie’d done. I was still holding her hand, and I closed my eyes and told God I wanted him to live with me too, just like Katie, and I asked him to help me, and to help us both do what he wanted us to, and to be the kind of people he wanted us to be for a change. And when I was all done I stopped, and then I heard Katie whisper a real soft Amen. I looked down at her and her eyes were closed again, and the most peaceful look was on her face. I just sat there a long time, her hand in mine. And pretty soon she was asleep, with just a faint smile still on her lips. So I slipped my hand out from hers and came straight down here to tell you what we done.”

Our house was so quiet! The only dry eyes in the place were Tad’s and little Erich’s.

Pa’s hand was on Uncle Nick’s shoulder again. “You done good, Nick,” he said. “You done what you needed to do. It takes a real man to do what you did, to stand up in prayer for himself and his wife. Aggie and your ma and pa’d all be proud of you.” He paused just a second or two, then added, “And I’m right proud of you too!”

“Amen!” said Almeda.

I was so happy! We all were. And even though nobody said anything for another spell, all I could think of were Pa’s words. And I knew he was right—there was rejoicing going on right then in heaven!