ATHOTS Chapter Ten

Weeping. Rachel weeping... and would not be comforted.

It is hard to understand... dear God, Abba Father... the agony that can fill the heart of one woman... 

And why, Lord, why must it happen?

If it was not for the baby... then she surely would have died of grief.

Those days were long ones and Rachel passed the time at first by pacing, staring with longing at the windows that were covered with heavy curtains. She was not permitted to look at the outside world. Such a risk was too great. But when the baby began to show on her figure, she remembered that she must prepare, and so she took to sewing. Keeping busy kept her mind from wandering.

Herr Braun was an old bachelor and had nothing in the way of baby clothes... but he offered a few old shirts of soft cotton and one new shirt of white linen. Half of the cotton shirts went to diapers and the other half to tiny baby garments. Booties and hats were knit out of wool socks that Isaac unraveled and carefully rolled into balls. And the linen shirt was made into a beautiful nightie, its only adornment the careful stitches of a loving mother.

In getting ready for the baby, Rachel began slowly to return to something like her former self. She even smiled a little. In her heart, she told herself over and over that her sisters were safe in heaven and in a strange way, that comforted her. She could not bear the thought of them suffering. And in time, she believed it... her sisters were gone and she was the only one left.

Somehow, she must go on. With Isaac, she would make it through.

He read from the forbidden Book often now. It was the only book he read besides the Tanakh. No more adventure stories would Rachel hear. They brought back too painful of memories. So she listened to Isaac read the Gospels. 

It was strange what days of suffering could bring... now she sat to listen to the words of Jesus as often as she listened to the words of Moses. She did not believe, as Isaac truly did now, that Jesus was the Messiah. But... there was something to those words of His...

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest...

Those words comforted her somehow. And there were nights when she lay awake and longed to believe them.