The Braxtons of Miracle Springs (2 page)

I quit being just Corrie Belle Hollister and became Corrie Belle Hollister
Braxton
a week and a half after my thirtieth birthday. Our wedding took place in Miracle Springs on April 3, 1867.

We left that same afternoon for a week's honeymoon in Sacramento.

I don't know what most young women think about right after they're married. I suppose there's lots of things about it that are just too private and personal to talk about to anyone—things you want to keep to yourself and treasure inside.

I had lots of those thoughts. The special feeling of knowing a man loved me, loved every bit of me, and would care for me for the rest of my life. That's a quiet kind of good feeling that makes you warm inside. It made me feel safe all over, inside and out. It was like a whole lot of questions were answered all at once—well, not answered so much as the questions just faded away. I felt protected, too, in a way I never had before. It was a little like when we found Pa. But finding Pa and Uncle Nick after all those years had brought out more questions than answers.

I guess it was also kind of like when Pa married Almeda and Uncle Nick married Aunt Katie, and we had a family again with all the parts in place. But by then I was older and had so many questions about my own future and what God might want me to do in my life and with my writing.

We stayed at a boardinghouse in Sacramento, but even there I felt at home because I was with Christopher. The sense I had had leading up to our marriage—that my heart had found its true home—only got stronger afterward. It felt so right to be together. We had been through so much and had learned really to trust each other. Christopher had become the best friend I'd ever had since Almeda.

I think what was most glorious of all about those first days alone with Christopher was not any of those personal things, but the chance to be with him all the time, twenty-four hours a day. It was so wonderful to be able to talk and share
all the time
, without interruptions—even all night long.

Oh, how we talked!

As much as we'd talked about things before, you'd think we'd have run out of things to say. But that first night we spent together after the wedding, it was as if we hadn't seen each other in five years!

We just talked all night long. I don't think we got more than an hour or two of sleep. It was nothing short of wonderful communicating so deeply and so continuously with someone you loved more than anyone in the world and that you knew loved you just as much.

There's no possible way to describe what a good feeling that was. In fact, since I
can't
describe it, I'm going to let Christopher tell you what
he
thinks!

I don't know why Corrie imagines I can explain our communication any better than she can. This is
her
book, not mine, although she is very kind to include my name on it along with hers. She insists, now that we are married, that we will do everything together. She is Corrie
Braxton
now, she keeps reminding me, no longer Corrie Hollister, and I must confess to a surge of joy and thankfulness at the thought.

Nevertheless, as you well know, it is my Corrie who is the experienced writer, not I. Yes, I have written sermons in years past, when I was in the ministry. (Sometimes I fear the sermonic voice creeps too readily into my daily discourse!) Over the years, moreover, I have been a faithful companion to my journal, as Corrie has been to hers. And yet a writer I am not—far from it. If Corrie asks what I think I shall tell her as honestly as I can. But in the main I shall leave the writing to my very able bride.

Even if I do not espouse writing as a calling, however (and at this point I confess to some confusion over what is my true calling, other than to walk ever onward as a follower of Christ), I do value communication. I have always tried to be honest and forthright in my words and my deeds. I attempted to bring those qualities to my pulpit, and I have tried to bring them to bear in my relationships as well. Therefore my heart resonates with Corrie's when she describes the wonderful feeling of communicating continuously with someone deeply loved.

I thought Corrie and I knew one another quite well before our wedding, and perhaps we did. But during our week together in Sacramento, we seemed to become newly acquainted with one another once more. Each of us discovered so many new things about the other. We talked about everything we had ever experienced, everything we had ever thought, everything we had dreamed of doing in life. We marveled at the way God had prepared us each for the other, even using our individual experiences to enable us to share our hearts and understand one another.

We prayed together as well, ah, what a joy it was to send up to heaven our prayers of thankfulness for the past and anticipation for what lies ahead. Our constant communication was with our heavenly Father as well as with one another.

Can there be anything more vital to the establishment of a strong marriage than such communion—simply
talking
about one's thoughts and feelings and dreams? Can anything be so important as a shared spiritual commitment clearly communicated? Most problems between people, especially husbands and wives, it seems to me, arise because one person is in doubt about what another person is thinking. This leads to misunderstandings and injured sensibilities, and then doubts and suspicions creep in. Surely such problems could be avoided if people simply talked to one another and prayed together more freely, more openly, more graciously.

That, then, seems to be my little sermon for this chapter. I hope you did not mind it too much.

Corrie claims to hang on to my every word when I speak of matters that are important to me and about which I feel strongly. She insists that she writes down whatever I say. My Corrie, however, is very kind, as well as beautiful and brave and sensible, and she loves me very much. Moreover, as she is the one gifted with the passion for the pen, I will now return it to her. I hope not to intrude again.

No matter what Christopher says, and no matter who does the writing, from now on these will be the journals of
the Braxtons
. The Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister are completed and finished, because never again will I
be
Corrie Belle Hollister. I feel as if both my life and my journals are continuing on and starting over at the same time.

The journals of
the Braxtons
have only just begun—and that is a story that will last the rest of our lives! I am excited to think of all the Lord will do in our years together.

I cried when Christopher finally was able to tell me the whole story about his growing up. You see, he'd lost a mother too, but his story stayed sad whereas mine turned out happy.

Then we both cried and laughed together in our thankfulness to God for how he had saved us for one another and had brought us together.

To think that Christopher had found a wife just lying by the side of the road unconscious, two and a half thousand miles away from her home! If that wasn't God's provision, I don't know what it could be called!

If I had to single out the most meaningful thing about being married, now that I am privileged to call myself a “married lady”—though that sounds so old—I would say it's being able to talk back and forth like that with someone who understands you as completely as anyone is likely to.

Christopher and I promised one another that we would keep talking like we did on our honeymoon—sharing everything and anything we were thinking and feeling and never holding even the tiniest thing back from each other—all the rest of our lives. If two people are communicating, we figured, even if things sometimes come between them, they should also be able to work them out.

In a run-down Sacramento hotel, an evil-looking man set
down the newspaper he had been reading and smiled an even more evil-looking grin.

His face was dark and weathered, and a long scar ran from the lower side
of his left cheek down over his jawbone onto his neck. The smile was a menacing one, and it made
the man look older than he really was because several teeth were missing from his mouth. Those that remained were
an ugly yellowish color. The gleam that shone from his
eyes could only have been caused by one thing—hate
.

How could I be so lucky?
the man thought.

This was exactly what he had come to California for, and now he had located them without even having to
bribe, threaten, or kill anyone. This was going to be
easier than he imagined!

He opened the day's edition of the Sacramento Bee once again to the second page
where a headline had drawn his attention: H
OLLISTER
B
RAXTON
W
ED
IN
M
IRACLE
S
PRINGS
.

Slowly he read through the article again.

In a ceremony yesterday in the small former mining community of Miracle Springs, former
Alta
reporter Miss Cornelia Belle Hollister was married to Mr. Christopher Braxton of Richmond, Virginia. The
bride was given away by her father, Drummond Hollister, former California state assemblyman. Present with Mr. Hollister was his wife,
the bride's stepmother, Almeda Parrish Hollister, the bride's three sisters, Emily Hollister McGee, Rebecca Hollister, and Ruth Hollister,
and her two brothers, Zachary Hollister and Thaddeus Hollister. The
Reverend Avery Rutledge of Miracle Springs performed the ceremony. The
bride wore a blue-lace gown with an embroidered satin
belt and carried a white Testament that had belonged to her mother, the late Agatha Belle Hollister. The couple plans
to reside in Miracle Springs, which is located in the foothills north of Sacramento.

The man threw the paper down on the floor with a laugh, then rose and left
his room for the saloon. This fortuitous news called for
a celebration!

On our first morning in Sacramento, we came downstairs to breakfast in exuberant spirits, hardly even feeling tired despite how little we had slept.

Then I took Christopher out for a day's tour of California's capital. We hired a buggy and horse and went everywhere. We went inside the new capitol building, and I told Christopher as much as I knew about Pa's time there as state assemblyman. As we rode about the city, I showed him where I'd given speeches for the Sanitary Commission and on behalf of Mr. Lincoln's election.

“You really stood up in front of big crowds of people and gave speeches?” asked Christopher, looking around at the mostly empty park. “And this whole place was full of people?”

“Well, mostly full,” I answered.

“There must have been five hundred people listening to you!”

“I didn't say my speeches were any good!” I laughed.

“If people listened, they must have been,” rejoined Christopher. “Imagine—my wife . . . a politician and speechmaker! I wish I could have seen it.”

The city was growing so fast that much of it was even new to me. I was looking around with eyes even more full of wonder than Christopher! The state continued to grow so fast, and new people poured in almost daily. It wouldn't be much longer before train tracks connected California with the East, and then probably even more people would move west!

By the time afternoon came, we were starting to get real tired. We decided to postpone the rest of our visit about the city for the next day and went back to the boardinghouse.

When we got back to our room and plopped down in two chairs, we just sat in silence a minute or two, too tired to do anything else. Then I became aware that Christopher was staring at me.

“What?” I said.

“I was just thinking how beautiful you are,” he said.

“I am not,” I said, laughing.

“I mean it, Corrie—you really are. I know what you've told me, how all your life you thought you weren't. But depth of character has
made
you beautiful, Corrie. It always does. Humility and maturity take over a face and eventually outshine whatever other lacks may once have existed—
if
they existed! You may never see it, Corrie, but you really have become a beautiful woman, as all God's true women do in time.”

I couldn't help starting to cry. How fortunate I was for the man God had given me!

“Thank you, Christopher,” I said. “You're right; I don't see it. I still see the same Corrie as always when I look in the mirror. But I know you would never say a word that hinted at empty flattery. So I will treasure what you say.”

“I mean every word. I love you, Corrie.”

“I love you too, Christopher.”

The rest of the afternoon and evening we spent reading and writing in our journals—and talking with each other, of course.

We stayed in Sacramento four days, then returned to Miracle Springs.

Just as we had talked all the way down to Sacramento after the wedding, we also talked all the way back home after our honeymoon in the capital was over.

Home!

Everywhere was home now—just wherever the two of us were. But we did need a place to settle in together and to start collecting things of our own.

The subject of Almeda's house in town had come up before the wedding. But the Duncans were still living there, and they didn't have another house to move to. Besides, their rent brought in twenty-five dollars a month for Pa and Almeda.

So in the end Pa and Christopher decided that we could live right there at the property at first—in the bunkhouse Christopher and my brothers had built off the barn.

Tad and Zack were disappointed in one way because they'd enjoyed the independent feeling of staying out there with Christopher. They liked Christopher too, and the three of them had such fun together. But Zack would now get my room in the house, and Tad would have the room the two of them used to share all to himself. So they recovered from their disappointment fairly quickly.

I was excited about the prospect. I'd get to be married and yet stay at home with Pa and Almeda and the family, all at the same time! What could be better than to have the best of both worlds rolled up into one? It didn't bother me one bit not to have a kitchen of my own or even a house of my own. I was so used to sharing and having lots of people around that I wasn't much in the habit of thinking of things as my
own
, anyway. After all, I had a husband to call my own, and that was the greatest part of all! What did I need with a kitchen? Besides, this kitchen had been all mine once—I'd had it practically to myself when we first came to California and found Pa.

So my brothers had moved out of the bunkhouse before the wedding. Christopher and I had begun fixing it up. And that's where we went to live as soon as we returned home from Sacramento. We ate with the rest of the family. Christopher continued to work the mine with Pa and the boys and our old friend Alkali Jones and sometimes Uncle Nick. Life went on pretty much the same as before . . . except that now Christopher and I were married and didn't have to say good night to each other every night.

I suppose a lot of people get married and can't wait to get away from their families. But it was great for Christopher to have a family to call his own after so many years of being alone. My own years in the East during the war had given me plenty of time to get my fill of being on my own, so I was just glad to be close to people I loved.

It was such a happy time!