Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction
Our dear Helen has been given us for this emergency. Is it not
strange that seeing our domestic life should have awakened in her
some yearnings for a home and a heart and children of her own. She
has said that there was a weary point in her life when she made up
her mind that she was never to know these joys. But she accepted her
lot gracefully. I do not know any other word that describes so well
the beautiful offering she made of her life to God and then to us. He
accepted it, and as given her all the cares and responsibilities of
domestic life without the transcendent joys that sustain the wife and
the mother. She has been all in all to our children and God has been
all in all to her. And she is happy in His service and in our love.
JUNE 20-It took me nearly two weeks to write the above at intervals
as my strength allowed. Ernest has consented to my finishing this
volume, of which so few pages yet remain. And he let me see a dear
old friend who came all the way from my native town to see me-Dr.
Eaton, our family physician as long as I could remember. He is of an
advanced age but full of vigor, his eye bright, and with a healthful
glow on his cheek. But he says he is waiting and longing for his
summons home. About that home we had a delightful talk together that
did my very heart good. Then he made me tell him about this long
sickness and the years of frail health and some of the sorrows
through which I had toiled.
"Ah, these lovely children are explained now," he said.
"Do you really think," I asked, "that it has been good for my
children to have a feeble, afflicted mother?"
"Yes, I really think so. A disciplined mother--disciplined children."
This comforting thought is one of the last drops in a cup of felicity
already full.
JUNE 2-Another Sunday, and all at church except my darling Una who
keeps watch over her mother. These Sundays when I have had them each
alone in turn have been blessed days to them and to me. Surely this
is some compensation for what they lose in me of health and vigor. I
know the state of each soul as far as it can be known, and have every
reason to believe that my children all love my Saviour and are trying
to live for Him. I have learned at last not to despise the day of
small things, to cherish the tenderest blossom, and to expect my dear
ones to be imperfect before they become perfect Christians.
Una is a sweet composed young girl now eighteen years old and what
can I say more of the love her brothers bear her than this: they
never tease her. She has long ceased asking why she must have
delicate health when so many others of her age are full of animal
life and vigor but stands in her lot and place doing what she can,
suffering what she must, with a meekness that makes her lovely in my
eyes, and that I am sure unites her closely to Christ.
JUNE 27.-It was Raymond's turn to stay with me to-day. He opened his
heart to me more freely than he had ever done before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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