3. Trying Out God
Chapter 3
Trying Out God
I don’t know what happened between you and Ben, but it can’t be the end of the world, dear. Why don’t you get together and talk it out? That’s the way to handle the situation.”
Belle took a deep breath. It felt like the hundredth time that week she had heard her mother say the same thing. She knew that her mother meant well, but Belle was too heartbroken to talk to anyone about her breaking up with Ben.
The breakup affected every part of Belle’s life. She couldn’t sleep or eat. She had a slim build to begin with, so losing even five pounds made her begin to look haggard. And she was having a hard time focusing on her university studies.
Alice Miller persisted with her daughter. “Look, Belle, you will be twenty years old next week, and two weeks after that it’s Christmas. You have to figure a way to make up with Ben and get your life and relationship back on track. This should be the happiest time of your life, and look at you. Surely there’s something you can do to make things right.”
Belle hardly needed reminding that it was nearly December 17, her birthday. That was also the day she and Ben had planned to tell the world about their engagement. But now that dream was shattered.
As Belle walked out of the kitchen, she tuned her mother’s conversation out. She saw no use in talking to anyone about what had gone wrong between her and Ben. It was time to move on.
Late that night Belle’s father came into her bedroom. He knelt down quietly beside his daughter’s bed and began to pray for her. Belle was still wide awake, however, even though her eyes were closed. The idea that her father was asking God to intervene and help her infuriated Belle. As soon as he stopped for a breath, Belle propped herself up on her elbows and said to him, “Thanks, Dad. I know you mean well, but praying doesn’t go beyond the ceiling. So don’t bother.”
Samuel Miller got slowly up off his knees, groaned, and left the room. Belle tried to will herself to go to sleep after he left, but it was no use. The same haunting thoughts played over and over in her mind. Life is pointless. What does it matter whether I marry Ben or not? What does it matter whether I celebrate my birthday? And what would it matter if I hadn’t been born at all? Life is just a big joke that God plays at our expense.
As the days rolled by, no matter how hard she tried, Belle could not seem to sleep at night. She became more and more exhausted and distraught. Her twentieth birthday came and went, but she barely remembered it. Then one night, a few days before Christmas, things came to a head. Unable to get to sleep, as Belle tossed and turned, she heard the faint whisper of a voice in her head: “You’re never going to be loved the way you want to be loved. Your standards are too high. You’re not going to be happy, so why go on living? There’s no purpose to it all. Why not slip out of bed and go to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, pick up the bottle marked ‘Poison,’ and drink it. All your troubles will then be over. You will fall into a sleep you will never have to wake from.”
Before she knew it, Belle was out of bed and heading down the hallway to the bathroom. As far as she was concerned, the voice she had heard in her head was right. It was time to end the frustration and misery that her life seemed to have evolved into. It was time to drink the poison and be done with life once and for all.
Belle had her hand on the doorknob to the bathroom door when she heard her father groan in his sleep. Something in his groan cut right through her confused thinking. How can I do this to my father? she thought. If I kill myself, he will spend the rest of his life wondering whether I went to hell, even though I don’t believe such a place exists. Can I do that to him? And how would he handle the headlines that would be sure to follow in the newspaper: “Honors student at University of British Columbia voted most popular kills herself”? What sort of Christmas present would that be?
With that, Belle let go of the doorknob, turned around and tiptoed back to her bedroom. She would not drink the poison.
Back in her bedroom Belle sat on the edge of her bed. As she pondered what had just happened, a line of poetry from a recent poetry test came to mind. The line, which was from Dante Alighieri, was in Latin. In la sua volontade e nostra pace. Belle translated the line into English in her head. In His will is our peace. She pondered how odd it was that this passage should come back to her. Dante believed in God, but even more than that, he seemed to think that peace could be found in God’s will. The idea seemed dry and unappealing, but Belle had nothing better to replace it with, so she struck a bargain with God. In the dark, she lifted her hands in the air and said, “God, if there be a God, if You will prove to me that You are, and if You will give me peace, I will give You my whole life. I’ll do anything You ask me to do, go anywhere You send me, for the rest of my life.”
No stars fell from the sky, and bright lights did not flash around Belle when she finished making her bargain. She climbed into bed and shut her eyes. The following morning she awakened having enjoyed the longest stretch of peaceful sleep since breaking up with Ben.
When Belle awoke, the events of the night before were vivid in her memory. Belle pondered what to do about them. One thing was for certain: she was not going to tell another person about her prayer. That was out of the question. It was a private arrangement between her and God—if He existed—and no one else. Besides, she couldn’t imagine what her parents would do if they knew that she had prayed as she had. Her father would be kneeling at her bedside every night, and her mother would be nagging her into attending every missionary prayer meeting between their house and the Rocky Mountains! No, Belle promised herself, now was not the time to tell anyone about her experiment with God, and maybe the right time would never come.
That night and the night after, Belle slept soundly. She started to feel better about the breakup with Ben, better about her future, and better about the possibilities that lay ahead. In the privacy of her bedroom she started to study the Bible, just the words of Jesus at first, underlining anything that He said to do and promising herself that she would try her best to do them. After her daily Bible reading, she prayed to God for strength and understanding to get through another day.
While nothing dramatic changed on the outside, inside Belle could feel herself thawing. She became more relaxed about her experience with Ben. The bitterness faded, and her life turned from black-and-white back to color once again.
Belle did not realize just how much she had changed inside until her friend Jill invited her to attend her birthday party. Jill’s family had just built a spacious new home in Vancouver, complete with a dance floor in the parlor, and Jill seemed eager to show it off to her friends.
On the night of the party, Belle was dancing with a friend from college when the doorbell rang. With a swish of cold air, a new group of partygoers entered the house. Belle’s heart raced as she recognized two of the new guests—Ben and Reba. How dare they, Belle thought when she saw them. They know Jill is my friend and that I would be here.
Unable to control her trembling, Belle quickly excused herself from her partner and ran upstairs. She slammed the door in the dressing room where she and the other girls had left their purses and shawls. Waves of rage swept over her. It was as if she were living the humiliation all over again of Ben telling her that he wanted to be with other women. Belle shook violently, and her teeth chattered at the vividness of the memory.
And then Belle recalled the line of poetry from Dante Alighieri, In His will is our peace. She also recalled her promise to try to live up to Jesus’ teaching to pray about everything. Belle lifted her hands and said out loud, “O God, if You are real, please give me…” Suddenly she felt as though an electric shock had jolted her body, and she was left feeling as if liquid peace were oozing through her pores. She looked at her hands; they were steady and not trembling. She imagined herself going downstairs and continuing to dance—even dancing with Ben—and then she realized that she was smiling.
How odd, she thought. I’m calm and smiling and ready to continue celebrating Jill’s birthday. I don’t feel bitter or humiliated or like I want Ben and Reba to suffer at all!
Belle skipped down the stairs to the party and resumed dancing. Ben asked her to dance, and she accepted. It was magical to be back in his arms. Ben was an extraordinary dancer, and the two of them made a handsome couple on the dance floor.
“You look so beautiful tonight, Belle,” Ben whispered into her ear as they danced.
Belle accepted the compliment, but it did not feel the same to her as it once would have. God—or something from outside of herself—had answered her prayers and given her peace.
Still, Belle was not yet ready to tell anyone else what she was experiencing. It was still too much for her to take in, and she didn’t want to be bothered with other people’s expectations for her.
The one thing she did allow her mother to do was to talk her into attending a Sunday afternoon Bible class with Professor Ellis. The first time Belle attended the Bible class it was as a favor to her mother, but the professor, an educated and gentle Christian man, soon captivated her interest. He talked about many of the liberal ideas Belle had been taught at college, and one by one he intelligently refuted them.
Soon Belle found herself eagerly awaiting Sundays and her afternoon Bible class. She knew that her action was probably confusing her parents, especially since she gave them no other outward clue that she was “trying God out” for herself.
Life continued, and big changes lay ahead in the Miller family. Since his return from fighting in the Great War in Europe, Belle’s brother Murray had been too restless to find a job. Eventually Samuel and Alice Miller decided it was time for them to intervene in their son’s life. They sold their home in Vancouver and bought a chicken farm not far from Victoria on Vancouver Island. Belle’s father, a pioneer in the field of using X-ray technology in medicine, commuted regularly between Victoria and Vancouver, where he worked for a doctor. He would continue with his medical work while Murray ran the chicken farm.
This left everyone with a place to live except Belle, who had finally graduated from the University of British Columbia in May 1922 and accepted a job teaching third-grade students at Cecil Rhodes School in Vancouver. She really wanted to become a college professor, but this would require more study, and she decided to wait until she was a little older before embarking on it. No one was going to take a twenty-year-old graduate seriously.
With the family home sold, Belle looked around for somewhere else to live. With few alternatives, she settled on boarding with a woman named Mrs. McMillian and her brood of children. In all, nine people were living in the McMillian house, including a baby, and Belle found herself impacted by the bustle of their lives. Everyone, it seemed, was into playing cards and gambling. Night after night someone would produce a pack of cards, and the table in the parlor would be cleared. “Do you want to play, Belle?” someone would ask. At first Belle agreed to play sometimes, but she soon became frustrated with wasting time. She would much rather spend an hour each evening in prayer and Bible study. However, the beer-induced laughter that emanated from the card game in the parlor rang throughout the house, making it impossible for Belle to concentrate on her chosen activities.
Undeterred, Belle prayed that God would wake her at two o’clock every morning. By then the last of the card players had gone to bed and the house was still. Belle’s prayer was answered. Night after night Belle awoke around two to pray and read her Bible, and then returned to a sound sleep until morning.
Belle also began attending evening lectures at the Vancouver Bible College, but she found it hard to make new friends there. The students at the Bible school were nothing like the sparkling, fun-filled students she had attended the University of British Columbia with. Her university friends were now scattered across Canada and the United States, and as much as she hated to admit it to herself, for the first time in her life, Belle was feeling lonely.
Being a schoolteacher was not working out as Belle had imagined it would. She dreaded the long, rainy days when she would be stuck inside all day with a class of thirty eight-year-olds. Day after day she labored, teaching the same simple math and reading concepts. Some of her students, knowing that she was young and inexperienced, tried all kinds of tricks on her.
Belle had been a high-spirited child herself, and a part of her wanted to laugh at the children’s antics. But another part of her was annoyed that these little people took up so much of her time and energy. She began to ask herself whether she really wanted to be a teacher for the next five years.
The answer, she decided, was no. But what alternative was there? It was the 1920s, and girls basically had one of three career choices available to them after high school and college: nursing, secretarial work, or teaching. It was too late for her to change tracks and become a nurse, and Belle could not imagine herself stuck in an office all day. No, she had chosen teaching, and she would have to make the most of it.
With that in mind, Belle decided to attend a teachers’ convention being held in Seattle, Washington, over the Easter holiday break. She hoped the companionship of other teachers and learning some new teaching techniques would refresh her vision for teaching third graders.
When Belle told her father what she was planning to do, he arranged for her to stay with his friends Otis and Julia Whipple. This made Belle angry. Surely her father realized that she was too old to have arrangements made for her. However, since Belle received news of her father’s arrangements only just before she boarded the ferry for the trip to Seattle, she had no time to telegraph him to let him know that she would prefer to stay with younger people.
It was a frustrated Belle that got off the ferry in downtown Seattle. Deep down she did not think that the teachers’ convention would rekindle any kind of love for elementary school teaching, and the thought of staying with an older religious couple made her roll her eyes.
That night Belle met Otis and Julia Whipple, who were not at all as she had imagined them to be. She found herself sitting happily by the fire eating Julia Whipple’s delicious chocolate cookies and listening to stories about a place called The Firs. Julia told Belle that she and her husband, who was an architect, had spent their life savings to buy a lot of land and had turned it into a Christian campground. Excitement glowed in her eyes as she talked of the missionary convention they were planning at The Firs for the summer and how her recently widowed sister-in-law was going to be one of the speakers.
Julia’s enthusiasm was not exactly infectious, but as Belle lay in bed that night, she did admit to herself that the middle-aged woman was quite likeable and that there were worse places where she could be staying in Seattle.
The conference turned out to be nowhere near as inspiring as Belle had hoped it would be and left her plenty of time for sightseeing. On Easter Sunday afternoon she met up with Mamie, an old college friend from the University of British Columbia. The two women spent a fun-filled afternoon walking along the waterfront and then climbing Queen Anne Hill for a panoramic view of Seattle.
All was going well until Mamie finally got around to asking Belle how she liked being a teacher. Belle was forced to hold back the tears as she replied, “I’m not happy at all. I never imagined it would be like this. I wish I were teaching high school, but I am still too young for that. It’s so boring teaching spelling and arithmetic day after day…”
Mamie put her hand on Belle’s shoulder and interrupted. “I know just what you need. A friend of ours is coming to dinner tonight, and he’s a phrenologist. He normally charges a lot for his services, but if you came as my dinner guest, I’m sure he would read your head for free and tell you what you should be doing.”
Belle’s heart soared. It was just what she needed: someone to help her see the way ahead, and who better to do that than a phrenologist? After all, phrenologists—trained medical men who could look at the shape of a person’s skull and tell the person what kind of job he or she was suited to—were all the rage.
Then Belle remembered that she was supposed to be back at the Whipples for dinner. “Mamie, that sounds just wonderful, except that I don’t know if I can get away at dinnertime. I am staying with a very religious couple, and I don’t know what they would think about my seeing a phrenologist—and on Easter Sunday too.”
“But you have to come,” Mamie countered. “You don’t want to be a grim old schoolmarm ten years from now. You owe it to yourself to find out what you really should be doing.”
Belle nodded. “I know I do. I think I can work it out. I need to go back to the Whipples and explain the situation, and then I will phone you. I’m sure they won’t mind if I explain the bind I’m in. Besides, they don’t own me. I am just staying in their house.”
Mamie nodded in agreement. “If anyone can explain her way out of dinner, it’s you, Belle. I’ll be waiting for your telephone call.”
Belle and Mamie parted company. Belle’s heart was light as she headed back to the Whipple home. At last she was on the trail of some answers. Surely tonight her future would unfold before her.