Waves of Mercy by Lynn Austin

Author:Lynn Austin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-realization in women—Fiction;Life change events—Fiction;Christian fiction;Love stories;FIC042030;FIC014000;FIC026000
ISBN: 9781441230546
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2016-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Geesje

Holland, Michigan

1897

It’s late in the afternoon and I’m weary as I walk home from the ramshackle jumble of houses in Holland’s poorest district. Yet there’s satisfaction along with my weariness, knowing I have offered a “cup of cold water,” so to speak, in the Savior’s name. It’s been nearly two years since my friends from church and I began helping Holland’s neediest families. Heaven knows I understand what it’s like to be poor and cold and hungry. Our town has four furniture factories now, not to mention the basket factory and several other new industries that have sprung up, so the number of laborers and their families who have moved into town has also multiplied. My friends and I do what we can to help—collecting clothes and warm bedding and household items, delivering food, comforting the sick, sitting with those who ask us to pray with them.

I arrive home too tired to cook a big meal for myself. Besides, it’s too hot. I’m mixing flour and eggs to make pannenkoeken for my supper when Derk comes through my door, shoulders slumped, head hanging. He looks so pitiful that I pull him into my arms as I did when he was a child and hug him tightly. “Oh, my dear boy! What happened? Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Do I really look that bad?” he asks, trying to smile.

“Yes. That invisible load on your shoulders looks awfully heavy. I’d love to help you with it if I can.”

He flops onto a kitchen chair, his long legs sprawled across the tiny room. “Well, I’ve had Caroline on my mind all day . . . and then right after work I met with my friend Anna—I mean, Miss Nicholson—to ask her what she thinks I should do.” He pauses and heaves an enormous sigh. “I don’t think she’ll be coming into town to talk with you, Tante Geesje. And she probably won’t be able to talk with me ever again, either. Her mother found us sitting on a bench together this afternoon and completely misunderstood. She said it wasn’t proper for us to be talking without a chaperone or for a lady of Anna’s stature to speak with a lowly hotel employee like me. She threatened to report me to my boss. I may not have a job to return to tomorrow.”

“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry. No wonder you look so forlorn.”

“Anna did her best to stand up for me—and for herself. But her mother is . . . I mean, her whole way of life is . . .” He shakes his head. “It’s so different from ours.”

“And intriguing, I’m sure.”

“Anna is such a complex woman. She has everything a person could ever want, but her life isn’t her own—you know what I mean? I get to decide if I want to marry Caroline or not, or be a minister or a teacher or a chaplain, but Anna’s choices are so few. She feels as though she has to marry this rich man for her family’s sake, even though she doesn’t love him.

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