Chapter 22
Easter Sunday—New Birth

By the time we’d driven out to a little meadow a couple miles out of town, Mrs. Parrish had gotten out of me all the worries that were on my mind, and a few more even I didn’t know were there!

One or two questions was all it took and I gushed out with it all.

By the time I was done, I was crying and feeling like a baby, and feeling all the more foolish for thinking my anxieties had to do with growing up. Right then I’d never felt less like a woman and more like a little girl!

“And you feel both mixed up about all the changes that are coming, and a little guilty because you think you’re being selfish, is that it?” asked Mrs. Parrish.

“That’s about the size of it,” I answered. “Just when it seemed my world was getting smoothed out, now all of a sudden I feel like I did after Ma died, not knowing what’s to become of me.”

“Well, perhaps I can help,” she smiled. “Perhaps the Lord can help, I should say,” she added. “Come, let’s go walk. This meadow is one of my favorite places. I often come here when I want to get away and think or pray.”

She tied her horse to a tree, then led the way across the grass, greening and now growing briskly in the spring warmth.

“Let’s sit over there on those two large rocks, Corrie,” she pointed.

When we were comfortable, she took a deep breath, then began.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you some things for a long while, Corrie,” she said. “But the time has to be just right, or else it’s impossible to understand them. I could have said all this to you much sooner, and part of me wanted to. Yet I knew it would mean more to you if I waited until the time came in your life when you were hungry to know these things.”

She paused and thought a moment. “Corrie, do you remember the conversation we had our first Christmas together—when I took you and Emily and Becky to the dressmaker’s?”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Parrish!” I answered. “You told me a lot about what sin means, and how we all need Jesus in our lives to take away the sin. I wrote it all down in my journal.”

Mrs. Parrish smiled, then very seriously asked, “You do know that Jesus is still alive, don’t you, Corrie?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what today’s about—Easter. Everybody knows that, don’t they?”

“Maybe they know it in their heads, but do they fully realize what it means—in the daily moments of their lives?”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“Just this, Corrie—and this is the most wonderful truth in all the world. Since Jesus is alive, He is with us—right now, this very moment!”

“I guess I’ve heard that, but it’s kind of hard to catch hold of—I mean, you can never see Him.”

“That’s because He’s not present in His body, but in His Spirit.” Her eyes were glowing with excitement. “And there’s a very special place God created for the spirit of Jesus to live after He came back to life—to live forever! Do you know where I mean?”

I thought I knew what she was getting at. “Inside us?”

“Exactly, Corrie! In our hearts!” she replied enthusiastically. “In my heart—” she laid her hand on her bosom, “—and in yours, Corrie. That’s Jesus’ home, in the hearts of men and women!”

“Really?” Her excitement was catching. “In everybody’s?”

She gave a sigh, and a cloud passed quickly over her face.

“No, Corrie, not everybody’s,” she said.

“Are there too many people?” I asked. “And not enough of Him to go around?”

“Oh no, that’s not it at all! God is so big that He could fill up every heart on ten thousand worlds and still have only begun. No, the problem is that not every heart lets His Spirit live there, even though that was the reason it was made.”

“You mean God doesn’t automatically live in our hearts?”

“Oh no, Corrie. God is such a gentleman that He will never come into a place unless He’s invited. So He only lives in the hearts of the men and women who open the door to that little place down inside them. It’s like—”

She stopped and thought for a second.

“Well, think back to Christmas day and that wonderful dinner we all had together. What do you suppose Rev. Rutledge and I would have done if we’d driven up, gone to the house, and found the door locked? Then up drove Harriet and Hermon and they came and joined us. They asked why we didn’t go in, and we told them the door was locked tight.

“We knew your father was inside. What should we have done—gone out to your pa’s tool shed to find a sledgehammer to break down the door?

“No, we wouldn’t even have wanted to go in unless he himself, the head of the house, invited us in and opened the door to us. As it was, we went in and enjoyed a day of hospitality, good food, and wonderful fellowship, because your father invited us to come and opened his home to us.”

She paused a moment to let it all sink in.

“That’s how God is, Corrie. He wants to come in and make His home with us. But He waits patiently and never beats down doors. You see, there’s only one key to the door of every heart, and we’re the only ones who possess it. God may be all powerful, but on the other hand, that’s one thing God can’t do—force open our doors.”

She paused, and the most peculiar smile came over her face. I could tell that the words had sparked some memory in her own life. She said nothing for another moment, and I sat silently, feeling like I was watching her relive some time in her past—a happy moment, but one that carried with it a certain pain as well.

“So to answer your question,” she finally went on, “God wants to live in everybody’s heart, and I hope someday He will, I don’t know. But for now He only lives where the doors have been opened from the inside.”

Again she stopped and the same odd smile returned to her expression. “Opening the door can sometimes be very painful. I can tell you that from personal experience. I did not always see things as I do now, Corrie. God had to put me through some heartbreaking disappointments, and I resisted for a long while. Perhaps one day I shall be able to tell you about it,” she added rather wistfully.

“I would like that, ma’am,” I replied.

“But not today . . . to start on that story would take all afternoon!”

She laughed. It was good to see the joy return to her face. It seemed she had put her memories back into the closet of the past once again.

“Again, from my own personal experience, I can tell you that after God has come inside, everything changes. He helps our inner selves to become more like Him. God’s desire—in my heart, yours, your father’s, your uncle’s, Rev. Rutledge’s, or anybody’s—is to make us become like Jesus—not just in outer actions, but inside. With His Spirit living inside us, gradually we do become more gracious and forgiving and loving and unselfish and considerate on the inside.”

Even before she was finished I was crying again.

“And that’s what you want, isn’t it, Corrie?” she said gently.

I nodded.

“You want to be more like God wants you to be, but with everything making your life confusing right now, you realize you’re not at all like you think you should be, like you want to be? Is that something of what you’re feeling?”

I nodded again.

“I know that feeling, Corrie,” she said. “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re bad, to feel like you’ve failed, to feel like you’ve disappointed the people you love the most. And you see, that’s why Jesus wants to live in our hearts. He can help us!

“He can not only help you face your uncertain future, He can help you become the person you long to be deep inside. None of us is what we’d like to be. The Bible says we’re sinners. But God can help us. That’s why He wants us to unlock the doors of our hearts and let Him come in and live with us there.”

“That sounds too good to be true.”

“It’s just so good it must be true! Oh, Corrie, God is so good to us! He loves us more than we can realize and has such a wonderful life to give us! Yes, I’m a sinner, just like the worst man in Miracle Springs. But inside my heart the Spirit of God lives. And He is slowly remaking me, and teaching me to live and think and behave differently than I would if He were not helping me.”

“Oh, I do want to be good, Mrs. Parrish!” I exclaimed. “I want God to live in my heart, too, and to help me like He is you! Do you think He is there?”

“I don’t know, Corrie. He may already be there, drawing you toward Him. One never knows when that little invisible door opens and He slips in. I truly believe that the door of some people’s hearts’ open before they are ever aware of it, and God’s Spirit finds an easy and natural entrance, perhaps in the early years of childhood. Some hearts seem open to God right from birth.

“Others are born with great resistance, and it may take years and years of God’s patient knocking before they finally hear Him. For some persons there is an exact moment when they consciously open their heart. For others it is a gradual process. In your case, Corrie, I suspect that God has long been with you without your even knowing it. I sense that your heart is open toward Him, and that you want to be His daughter.”

Even as she spoke, I could feel my eyes filling with tears once more.

“I do, Mrs. Parrish!” I said. “I do want to be His daughter and to live in a way that pleases Him—down inside, like you said, not just on the outside!”

She tried to say something, but hesitated. I could see a tear falling down her cheek. At first I didn’t understand why, but I did later.

“You . . . you can’t know what joy it gives me to hear those precious words, Corrie,” she said at last, and her voice was husky with emotion. “And they please God far more than either of us can possibly realize. I sensed when I saw you in church this morning that the day had finally come when you would want to know these things and were really ready to begin living in a deeper way as a Christian.”

She paused, then looked into my eyes with the most wonderful smile on her face.

“Corrie,” she said, “I love you, and I know you are dear to God’s heart . . .”

She stopped, then reached across and took both my hands in hers. Then she closed her eyes and started to pray.

“Oh, loving Father! How I thank You for this dear friend you have brought to me! Show her, Lord, more and more of Yourself every day. Nurture her dawning faith, and let her reflect the image of Your Son. Strengthen her heart’s desire—”

She stopped. I opened my eyes to glance at her. She was softly weeping.

I closed my eyes again. I couldn’t help being a little nervous.

“God,” I prayed out loud, “I really do want to be good like You want me to be. And I want to be kind and loving like Mrs. Parrish talks about, on the inside. I want to be Your daughter, and I don’t know if that door to my heart’s open or not, or if maybe You’re already there. But if You’re not, I’d like you to be, and—”

Suddenly I couldn’t say anything more. I felt a rush inside me, like the breaking of a dam on a stream, like something was being pulled out from the very depths of me. My voice cracked and my eyes were full, but I struggled to get out the words—

“Help me, Lord. Help me to live like you want me to. Help me not to resent Miss Morgan’s coming. Help me to know what I’m supposed to do.”

That was all I could say for a minute. It was already more than I figured I could pray out loud in front of anybody.

But then almost without thinking, I added, “And I pray for Pa too, Lord, that you’d help him to do the right thing. Amen.”

Mrs. Parrish added a quiet Amen after mine.

I opened my eyes. Mrs. Parrish was looking at me with a radiant smile. Her cheeks were wet with tears.