Katie's Journey to Love (37 page)

Her life might seem destroyed now, but
Da Hah
wasn't finished with her. Nor was the world He had made.
Da Hah
could
make whole what was broken. Here was the testimony of that truth calling out to her, telling her that
Da Hah
was in control. That He made all things beautiful. The rugged slashes of the valleys below declared the fact. So did the rushing streams of water and the icy cold of the hovering snow cover. The world was
Da Hah
's, they all declared, and He did all things well.

Katie sobbed out loud, which brought Margaret and Sharon to her side too. All four of the girls held hands until the worst of Katie's crying had died down. Then they walked back and forth, staying together, imprinting the glory of the Alps—and
Da Hah
—into their minds.
Nee
, more than that, Katie thought. They were all four taking this deep into their hearts.

Something was happening to her—and to them. Something she hadn't expected to find in years—maybe never. Healing was coming. It came like cool water in the hot summer sun. Like
Mamm
's kiss when she was hurt as a little girl. It even felt like Ben's smile before he'd first really looked at her.
Yah
, inside something was changing. It couldn't be put into words, and yet the others seemed to understand.

When all four girls had been fully satisfied with the feast
Da Hah
had set before their eyes, they rode the cable car to the stop below. There Katie wandered out onto the platform and found a plate with German words posted on the wall. She translated for the others with tears running down her cheeks. She was healing, that she knew. She was being made whole, and she would need to get on with life now. And she could because
Da Hah
might have more miracles for her life. In fact, He might never be done with them. She knew that now, even as she whispered the words on the metal plate: “Everything that has breath praise the Lord.” Beside it was the Scripture reference: Psalm 150:6.

Below that were the words, “Our Land with its splendor, its
mountains, its halls, are the signs of Your might. Your good fatherly ways. So everything in us prays on. Great things You have done for us. K.V. Greyerz.”

“That must be one of their local poets,” Nancy said when Katie finished reciting the words.

It might be, Katie thought. But at the moment it was also the voice of
Da Hah
speaking to her heart. His fingers were indeed putting the broken pieces of her heart back together. Katie leaned over the platform railing to hide her tears and caught sight of a beautiful patch of flowers below her. The clumps were clinging to the steep mountainside. Colors of blue and purple were blooming with cheery brightness. Katie stared openmouthed as Sharon snapped away with her camera.

How awesome the works of
Da Hah
! Katie thought. He was showing her again on this day of miracles—so that there would be no question about the future. Even the flowers sang the glory of
Da Hah
's mighty works up here where so little could grow. Could she not also bloom in impossible situations? Katie covered her face and sobbed again.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Three days later Margaret was craning over the front seat, looking out of the car window as Nancy navigated the rush-hour traffic toward downtown Paris. Many happy hours were behind them. Days filled with joy and laughter. Katie was continuing to heal from the miracle
Da Hah
had performed in the Swiss Alps. Doubtless life would never be quite the same, but at least the sharp sting of the pain from Ben's betrayal was now only a dull ache.

They'd spent yesterday in the King Louis gardens at Versailles, debating whether to make a bold push into Paris itself. After consulting the guidebook and thinking about the high price of the museums, the vote had been unanimous to bypass spending an entire day in Paris. But there was no reason they couldn't try for a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower—since the man speaking from the GPS was taking them unexpectedly within sight of downtown.

“There it is!” Sharon yelled from the front seat as she grabbed her camera. “I caught a glimpse of it!”

“So did I!” Margaret said.

Katie peered between the buildings as Sharon tried for another photo. She thought she saw the faint outline of the spidery tower in the distance. It didn't look like much from here, but then one probably had to get close to see its true beauty. Like most things in life, Katie decided.

Nancy was being kept busy with the traffic, but she didn't seem to mind. Likely they had seen so much in the last few days that Nancy figured missing a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower wasn't such a big deal. Besides, they were headed for Haarlem, the site of Corrie ten Boom's hiding place. That would be the highlight of the whole trip for her, Nancy had told them last night. Seeing again where the brave Christian family had hidden Jewish people and other refugees during Hitler's occupation. In Nancy's eyes, the Eiffel Tower didn't compare to such an act of faith. And likely there was also the day's journey on Nancy's mind, and it wasn't going to be easy. They needed to travel through several major cities in Belgium and the Netherlands. The GPS estimated the travel time at over six hours from the hotel where they'd spent the night in Versailles.

Sharon was trying for one last picture of downtown Paris as Katie laid her head back on the car seat.

“Tired are we?” Margaret asked.

“
Yah
, but I shouldn't be with the
gut
night's sleep I had,” Katie said.

“Yes, but we walked more yesterday than any of us have in years, I'm sure,” Margaret said.

“
Yah
.” Katie closed her eyes, thinking about the day. They'd entered the front of the Royal Chateau, which Sharon said had belonged to the kings of France for more than a hundred years—until they chopped King Louis XV's head off in the Revolution.

Margaret had groaned at that bit of information, but Nancy assured Margaret that the beheading was not something they
would see celebrated or displayed. Rather, the Royal Chateau was all about the glorious past of the French kings.

“Glorious I can do,” Margaret had said.

The self-guided tour of the chateau had begun after they paid for the tickets. An excessive amount, Katie had thought, but Nancy had told them it was normal. They'd been accompanied by hordes of other tourists who seemed intent on also seeing this grandeur for themselves. Katie had stayed close to Nancy, as Sharon tried to take pictures and make sense out of what they were seeing using the guidebook. A long hall stretched all the way around the immense building, lined in one place with statues of famous French personages.

“Dandies,” Margaret had called them. And everyone had laughed because the description had seemed to fit. French men were apparently quite impressed with their clothing.

Room after room had followed, each done up in the most decorative fashion with vast paintings on the ceilings. Katie blushed after they left the first set of paintings, but several rooms later, with no one paying a partly disrobed woman any attention, she felt better.

Eventually Margaret had burst out, “Bosoms! I've had enough of them now!”

Sharon had giggled, and Katie's blush returned.

They walked into one long room, called the Hall of Mirrors, that stretched on and on for a long way. Katie had paused for a better look. Tall, arched mirrors lined the back wall and matched arched windows on the front side. Katie had strolled up to one of the mirrors, squeezing through the crowd of people. You couldn't see yourself that well, she decided. So the French back in those days must not have known how to make their mirrors, or perhaps the glass had faded through the years.

From there they'd seen the king and the queen's bedrooms.
These were huge affairs with drapes hanging down to the floor on all sides. The king's bedroom looked out toward the east, the tall windows letting in the rays of the rising sun. King Louis XIII considered himself the Sun King, so it was appropriate, he thought, that the sun and he should meet first thing each morning.

The queen's bedroom was quite a distance away, adorned in lesser fashion but still beautiful. All the beds looked short, so Katie figured the French people must have been stunted in growth back in those days. Eventually she had found a sign that explained the matter. It was all an optical illusion caused by the tall drapes on the sides of the beds. Each bed was well over seven feet long.

Below the first floor had been the bedrooms of the young men who waited in line for the throne. Some of them had died while they waited. It seemed awful to Katie to get so close to such awesome power and have it slip away after all. But then she shouldn't be thinking about such things. Christian people weren't supposed to lust after the glory of this world.

The gardens behind the chateau had been the most beautiful of all. There had been acres and acres of plants, taking up much more room than Jesse's farm did at home. Fountains were everywhere, with a huge one right behind the steps when she walked outside.

Standing at the steps, Katie could look back and see how immense the chateau was. It stretched from left to right so far that Sharon claimed she had to take three pictures to fit it all in.

The girls had eaten a sandwich lunch among the planted shrubs, having purchased the food from a vendor tucked in along the long rows of tall greenery. Afterward, they'd found another smaller palace by following the guidebook. The tour there had been nothing like the first one in its grandeur, but there had still been plenty to see.

Nancy said this chateau was for the king to get away from the big chateau when things became too crowded. And from there they found another smaller chateau even further in. Apparently this was the chateau to get away from the second chateau. It all got a little confusing after awhile, both in the layout and in finding their way back. The distances were vast.

By the time they were back at the main chateau, Katie figured one could fit two of Jesse's farms in here. And that night the girls had all slept well.

Now having made her way past the Paris traffic, Nancy was driving through open country.

“Bathroom break, anyone?” Nancy asked.

“Most certainly,” Sharon said.

Nancy soon pulled into a rest area. They all climbed out and stretched before going inside.

Once on the road again, silence settled over the car. Katie's thoughts drifted to Ben. She shouldn't think about him, but it seemed impossible
not
to think about what had happened. And then too perhaps it would be better to mourn than to hold the memory inside. And remembering felt possible now. Still, she felt bad that she wouldn't be telling Ben her experiences on the trip. He would so have enjoyed the news of the time they had spent on the Normandy beaches. Of course, she would tell
Mamm
and maybe Jesse, but neither of them were as interested in such things as Ben was.

She'd known only the barest of details of that morning when the Allied forces invaded Hitler's occupied Europe. It was Sharon, of all people, who was almost as interested in such things as Ben had been. Nancy at first didn't want to stop, but finally agreed after Sharon had begged.

“It's not decent,” Nancy had said. “Stopping in at a place where war was made. Our people don't believe in such things.”

“But it's history,” Sharon had insisted. “And men gave their lives there to stop the evil that Hitler was doing.”

This seemed to persuade Nancy more than anything—the mention of Hitler.

“I guess he was pretty evil,” Nancy allowed. “But I still don't think we should kill as Christians.”

The sky had been clear on the morning they arrived at the first beach, after they toured the artificial harbor the Allies had built at the town of Arromanches. Omaha, Sharon had said the beach was called. There was a lonely stretch of open water that looked much like the beaches did at home in Delaware. The biggest difference was the German pillboxes on the bluffs that were still there overlooking the beach. They were huge affairs with the tracks of the rotating guns still visible. Margaret had climbed inside one of the smaller ones for a picture Sharon took. The larger pillbox had steps going down into it, which they all used to climb down. Inside, the musty smell of grass and mold filled the place. Looking out the front, it wasn't hard to imagine what things must have looked like on that morning when thousands of young men came rushing ashore. The Germans had been shooting at them from here, killing brave people who wished only to free a country from evil.

Omaha had been the American beach—or one of them. Katie couldn't really remember. But there young men came ashore who had left loved ones at home, perhaps even wives and children. They came here to die on this stretch of sand for the freedom of others. Katie wiped away the unbidden tears as she looked out from the German pillbox.

What made men kill one another? she wondered. Did they really believe it was right? The Allies might have had reason to think so, but how could the Germans think they were right in killing the Jews and all those millions of others? They would see
a site soon in Haarlem where a whole family—the ten Booms—had risked their lives to save others. Here men had also given their lives so that others might be free. Katie shivered. It was a great sacrifice, and one she could not begin to understand. Killing was wrong, and yet men did kill…and continued to kill even today. It was as if the evil never stopped, and
Da Hah
was left to pick up the broken pieces.