For Time and Eternity (17 page)

Forgive me, too, Lord, for not feeling connected to you through your Word.
And that’s when I remembered. My journal.

“I’ll be right back.”

Lighting a candle from the lamp’s flame, I went into our bedroom and to the wooden trunk in the corner. I lifted the lid and sifted through the first layer of treasures—baby things, mostly, dresses and caps and even a christening gown I’d made before realizing that my new faith called for no such garment. Underneath were some of my old dresses that hadn’t fit since giving birth to Melissa, and at the bottom, packed away since the building of this home, the tattered notebook I’d brought with me all the way from Iowa. Holding the candle aloft, I let it fall open, my breath catching at the sight of my own unsteady script. Here, in these pages, the Word of God, faithfully copied from the text, word for word. Not a single letter altered. These pages were the place where my very self encountered God himself. Where I recorded whatever truth he had for me.

This was what I would share with my daughters.

I walked into the front room, where Melissa was spinning a small toy on the tabletop and Lottie was snuggled into Kimana’s lap.

“When I was a little girl,” I said, resuming my place, “my parents required me to read a chapter of the Bible every night and to record a verse from that chapter. I’d almost forgotten all about it.”

Melissa was immediately intrigued. We’d just built a schoolhouse close enough for her to attend, and she was quite eager to go, as I’d done little more than practice the most rudimentary of reading and arithmetic with her up to now. She reached out. “May I see?”

“Of course.” I slid the book across the table and allowed her to choose a page to open. She scanned it, scowling.

“I’ve never seen you write this much before.”

“It’s not an easy thing for me to do,” I said. “I’m not very good at it. Sometimes it’s much easier to tell stories than to read and write them.”

“Is that why Papa always reads to us?”

“Partly.” I allowed my eyes to linger on the journal page while I considered her question. The last thing I wanted to do was discourage my daughter from learning to read and write simply because it was difficult for me. “But since Papa is going to be gone for a while, I guess I’ll have to get back into practice.”

Interestingly enough, I’d begun my practice of copying verses when I was reading the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible. I had argued with my mother, begging to wait and commence this practice when I started again with Genesis, but she refused. It was a summer evening—just like this very one—and she insisted this was the only way I’d have to practice my penmanship until school started again. In response, I’d chosen the shortest verse in the chapter, and there, living in what had been called the new Zion, the words fell over me like so many stones mined from the quarry. Years and miles away from the first time I touched a pencil to the page, I ran my hand over the words, cleared my throat, and drew up my courage.

“This is from the book of Revelation, chapter 2, verse 4.” Another deep breath. “‘Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.’” Tears filled my eyes, and I looked up, trying to blink them back, but to no avail.

“Why are you crying, Mama?” Lottie asked.

“That’s it?” Melissa said, unmoved. “That doesn’t even mean anything. Why would you write that down?”

I couldn’t answer. I sat in my chair, eyes lifted to God, and wept. “How could you have known? All those years ago? I was just a child.”

“Mama?” Lottie sounded concerned. “Why are you crying? Is it sad?”

“No,” I said finally, wiping my eyes and nose on my sleeve—something I never allowed the girls to do. “And yes, a little. You see, it’s like I’ve found something I thought I’d lost.”

“Like a treasure?” Lottie asked.

“Very much like that.” I longed to take my little girl into my arms, but she seemed so content on Kimana’s lap. In fact, Kimana’s eyes looked hungry with more promise of life than I’d ever seen in them before. This, truly, was a moment orchestrated by God, and I would do nothing to disturb it.

“So what exactly does it mean?” My older daughter’s voice held more than a hint of skepticism.

“I’m not exactly sure about the details,” I answered honestly. “It’s been so long. . . .” My words trailed as I reached for the Bible and turned to the last book, skimming the verses until I found the second chapter. Fearful of stumbling over the words, I read them to myself first before imparting them to Kimana and the girls. “This is the word of God going to a church in Eph—Ephesus. He tells them that they are good people, and that they have come through many hardships, but they have abandoned their first love. . . .”

“So who was their first love?”

“Their God.” Kimana answered Melissa’s question with quiet assurance.

“Yes,” I said. “You see, it doesn’t matter how good of a person you are or how much you overcome if you don’t know Jesus.”

“I love Jesus!” Lottie sang out.

“Of course you do, darling. We all do.” My glance around the table included Kimana. “But it’s important to love Jesus
and
know who he really is.”

“He’s our brother.” The girls spoke in unison.

“No,” I said with an authority that came from a power beyond myself. “He is more than that. He is our Lord. He is our Savior.”

“But he was born to God just like we all were.”

Something cold ran through my soul. My little girl, newly six years old, spoke with the same conviction in this teaching as I did in truth. I don’t think I ever had such spiritual poise as a child; indeed, I never had, else I would never have been so easily led away. We’d been taught so differently—I from hours spent dozing in a pew or struggling alone with Scriptures at our table, and she adoring at the feet of her father. Nathan took such delight in teaching his children, and I knew they would never be able to fully separate the doctrine of Joseph Smith from the love they felt for their papa.

“Listen,” I said, bringing my voice to a soft, warm place. “Just for now, for the summer while Papa’s gone, let’s try to learn some new things about Jesus. Things your papa hasn’t taught you.”

“Like what the Gentiles believe?” I could hear Nathan’s disdain coming through Melissa’s mouth.

O Lord, help me walk this bridge.
“Like what followers of Christ believe. What Jesus himself said to be true.”

“But God told Joseph Smith that all of the churches were wrong.”

I felt myself rising to an argument when Kimana softly interjected. “Melissa, little one, your mother wants to share her heart with us. Not just words from a book.”

Gratitude washed over me, and I reached out to touch the hand of this woman who, after so many silent years, was becoming my friend.

“That’s enough for tonight,” I said, closing both the Bible and my journal. “It’s getting late, and we can talk more tomorrow.”

Lottie, her mood largely unchanged, slid from Kimana’s lap and came over to kiss me good night. “I’m sorry the story made you cry,” she whispered.

“I’m not.” I held her to me and breathed the scent of her—sweetgrass and milk. “It’s good to cry sometimes. It gives our inside a good washing.”

Melissa, however, would have no such sentiment; she barely tolerated my embrace.

“I love you, darling,” I said, holding her stiff little body in my arms. “Say a prayer for Papa.”

“I do every night.”

Later, after supervising washups and tucking the girls in, I came back to the table, where Kimana—long past the time when she usually retired to her own little home—sat in the lamplight. She’d brought our
Book of Mormon
to the table, and it sat alongside the Bible and my old leather journal. Exhausted as I was, I joined her, and for the longest time we sat in silence. I stared at the ribbon of dancing girls painted on the lamp’s globe; she stared at me.

“Are they so different, these books?”

I nodded.

“I never knew.”

“Did nobody ever try to teach you?” The question burned because I certainly never had.

“When they first came here, into this valley, they tried to tell my people that your Jesus had been here before. Maybe walking this very ground and teaching our ancestors.”

“Do you believe that?”

Her face was the softest I’d ever seen it. “Once,” she said, “a long time ago, a little boy went to a stream to water his father’s horse, and he saw the most beautiful girl on the other side, gathering water into a basket. Because he was a boy and did not know what to do with such beauty, he picked up a stone and threw it across the river. The stone hit the girl here—” she tapped her finger to her temple—“and the girl cried, dropped the basket, and ran away.

“Years later, when he was a man, he went back to the stream to water his own horse, and there she was again. But they did not know each other because they were very much changed. Being a man now, and knowing how to impress a woman, he picked up another stone, this one flat, and skipped it across the river. It bounced straight into her basket. Her laughter made him brave, and he rode his horse to the other side of the stream. When he was closer, he saw the tiny scar where he’d hit her with the stone so many years ago.

“He touched the scar and said, ‘Could you ever love a boy who would do such a terrible thing?’

“‘No,’ she said, ‘but I could love a man who will skip a stone into my basket.’

“That is why young men skip stones along the river—to make up for the mischief they might have done as boys.”

I listened, puzzled at why she would tell such a story. My confusion must have been evident because she laughed.

“Do you wonder if that story is true, Mrs. Fox?”

“No, I’m just wondering why you chose to share it with me.”

“That tale was told to me by my grandmother, who heard it from her grandmother, who heard it from her grandmother. It is a story that comes from our ancestors from as far back as there have been boys and stones and rivers. Don’t you see? If our people will take such pleasure in handing down the story of a little boy and a stone, don’t you think we would have preserved the story of this great Jesus coming to our land?”

Somehow, everything I’d been taught about this new religion came to the surface, and I found myself leaping to its defense. “But they teach about the wars—”

“You think our people have not known war? that we do not fight and kill one another, generation after generation? Yet we carry our past with us. What you know in your heart cannot be destroyed by war, Mrs. Fox. And tonight, you look like your heart has been broken.”

“It has.”

“But not destroyed. It cannot be destroyed while it beats inside of you. And I think, for you, it will heal.”

“It will.”

“And it will get stronger.”

God help me.
“Yes.”

“And you will teach my heart to be as strong as yours?”

“We’ll grow strong together.” I reached for her hand. “Will you pray with me?”

“My prayer is different from yours,” she said. “I pray to the God who created all—the sky, the earth, and everything that lives.”

“That’s all right. So do I.”

“And I do not know exactly who Jesus is.”

“He’s one and the same,” I said. “Let’s start there.”

What sweet summer evenings we had, the four of us. Without a man’s schedule to consider, Kimana and I moved our evening meal up earlier and earlier, until we might have the dishes cleared and washed and put away before the hint of sunset. Kimana soaked up every word. I must say I envied her easy understanding, and one evening as we sat with the cabin door wide open to let in the cool breeze, I told her so.

She spoke, softly measuring her words. “Sometimes I think I hear these words with the very ears of God. I prayed to him and asked his Spirit to take the place of my own, so I could know who he truly is.”

For the first time I noticed a spark of interest coming from Melissa. All summer she’d been enduring our Bible study with an air of unimpressed indulgence, but this caught her attention.

“I already know who God is,” she said. “I learned in church.”

“But you see, little one,” Kimana said, “I have never been told. I know only what God himself says to me. You need to close your ears and let your heart open.”

And, oh, how our hearts opened. It wasn’t long before my journal served to open the door to the Bible, and though I intended to read only a chapter a night as I had in my youth, often we would lose ourselves in the verses. I would read until Kimana stopped me to ask a question, and we would talk together until we felt we had an answer. Through our readings, we—Kimana and I—came to truly know and love the person Jesus was. He became for us what God intended him to be—divine, yes, but a man, flesh and blood, living the harshness of life that we all know. As we read about his death, the cruelty of crucifixion, the suffering under the bloody whip, we both cried. Kimana’s sweet, peaceful spirit could not abide details of such violence. My tears carried with them an almost unbearable mixture of guilt and gratitude.

“That’s why Papa doesn’t like to talk about it,” Melissa said, her voice oddly void of emotion. “It’s sad to think that Jesus went through all that and people still didn’t believe. That’s why he had to come again.”