Finding Home by Irene Hannon

Author:Irene Hannon [Hannon, Irene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2012-10-28T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Cindy’s vision misted, and she rose to fish a tissue from her purse on the counter. Dabbing at her eyes, she slid back into her seat at the kitchen table and scanned Elijah Adams’s journal entry from April 4, 1898 for the second time.

I read your letter from yesterday again this evening, my dearest Emma. You will never know how your tender sentiments sustain me during our long separations. On this voyage, they are also helping me bear the terrible grief we share. I wish I could speak with you this moment, but I must be content to put my thoughts in writing for you to read when I return, just as you have poured your gentle, loving spirit into these precious letters, which I cherish and eagerly anticipate opening each week whenever the miles and the sea come between us.

Parting has always been difficult to bear, as you know, but never more so than our last goodbye, mere days after we bid our darling Chloe farewell and commended her to God. I know you continue to suffer, as I do, and to question why the Lord would snatch away our firstborn—our only child—the delight of our days—after four short years. I can find no reason for what seems to be such a cruel betrayal to faithful servants.

Yet I trust in His grace and goodness implicitly, as I know you do. So I do as I have always done in times of trial. I ask Him to bless us both with courage and fortitude, and to give us strength to endure. That prayer offers me great solace, but how I wish I could also hold you close and comfort you whilst seeking my own comfort in your loving arms.

We always knew our life together would bring both joys and sorrows. That fate might not always be kind. That our love could be tested. And surely we have known all of these things. For like the shifting sandbars and the narrow, treacherous passage that leads to the sea from our own Humboldt Bay, life holds many hidden perils.

But despite my desolation this night, I know I would have chosen no other path. Just as the seafaring life was my destiny, so, too, are you. Your love is the sextant that gives my life direction. The light on shore that guides me home. The stars above that help me stay the course. You are my everything, dearest Emma, in good times and in bad. For from you I have learned the truth of what St. Paul wrote two centuries ago: Love never fails. And it is worth even the risk of loss.

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