Grandma told me this story while we washed dishes together, at my parents' house during some holiday. I think it started off with us playing the "What were you doing in this year" game. She realised that I didn't know the whole story of how she ended up a teacher and then in Bible College, and then getting married. Here was her story (some of the details may be fuzzy, because this is as filtered through two storytellers who love effect more than precision):
When Grandma was a young woman, she went to Bible College. After she had attended for a while, she panicked. Everything in her life seemed to be aimed toward being some missionary in India, never getting married, and probably dying of some exotic illness. What she wanted out of life was a "normal" life: a husband, a house, some kids, and stability. And she wasn't going to find it where she was. (Don't ask me how she decided this, as the joke about "Bridal College" was going around as much then as it is now.) And so she decided for herself that she was going to go and find herself a husband and stability. The best way she knew how to do that was to become a teacher and be posted in some small Saskatchewan town.
And so my Grandma went off to Teacher's College. She had a student loan arranged, which had the provision that it would go into effect after she'd been in college for three months. After it went into effect, she was bound to stay in for the full two years. Shortly after she started, some people from the school board came and talked to her class. As the war was going on, there was a teacher shortage, and they needed volunteers who were willing to start teaching right away and to get a temporary teaching certificate.
And that's how my Grandma ended up not going to Teacher's College, but teaching right away. She was thrilled that she got to skip that whole process and get started immediately on her quest for stability.
She taught for a few years. It was both good and bad. She collected a lifetime worth of stories about teaching in a one-room school, and in that time she also made an impact on one young student who would grow up to be a significant scholar and writer, who would write over and over about his teacher. There were also bad times along with that, and she frequently felt troubled.
But, one day, as she was walking home from school, God spoke audibly to her. His message was simple: "Frances, weren't you happier when you were following me?" And her reply was simple: "Yes, Lord, I was." And so she quit her job and went back to the last point where she knew she was following God: she went back to Bible school.
At this point of the story, she told me, "That was the point where I gave up all my own plans for my life. I gave up hope of living a normal life. I gave up my plan of getting married, of having children. But none of that mattered, if it wasn't what God wanted for my life."
She finished Bible College and became a deaconess with the Pentecostal Church. One day, a friend of hers wrote to her from India; she had been teaching there, and they had an opening for another teacher. Would she like to teach in India? Everything seemed to be falling into place just as she had always sensed it would. Grandma accepted, and was instructed to go up to North Battleford, where there was a camp going on where they would raise funds for her to go.
After Grandma left for that camp, another letter arrived at her home: her friend had lost her job, and the people in India told her not to send her friend there, either. The letter missed Grandma at home, but the people at the camp in North Battleford did get the news. When Grandma got to NB, she found that no one mentioned any fundraising. She went home and found out why.
And so Grandma made a decision. Obviously God wanted her to go to India. And the only people she knew who could send her were those people at that camp in North Battleford. "And so I decided that I would go back to that camp, and I would wait there until they could help but send me to India." And so Grandma returned to North Battleford.
And that's where she met a man named Daniel. He was nice and he was balding, which Grandma took as a sign that he was actually older than her. (She was in her mid-thirties by that time.) She decided that he was the sort that she would like to marry. She only found out later that he was actually a year younger than her, but was just balding. (It wasn't until later that she also found out that the first time he saw her, she was scolding people in the kitchen and he remarked to someone, "I wouldn't want a wife like that!" He apparently changed his mind later.)
She and Daniel got married in North Battleford, bought a house and had two children, and lived there for the next half century. Interestingly, she also always had close contacts with people in India, and blessed many through her letters.
"It turned out that God had the same plan for my life that I had," Grandma told me. "But he wanted me to to give my plans to Him, so that He could give them back to me in His time."
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