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Show Kathleen Norris Says: jloting nto Paradise Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. Tte atmosphere oj the household changed; Hallie was a smiling, beloved tvtfe again." By KATHLEEN NORRIS IF YOU knew of a country without care, would you move there? If beyond the ocean borders, bor-ders, or far south toward the Pole there was an ideal land of eternal spring, a land whose people were simple and good, a land without money worries, without the nagging fears and disappointments that make up our daily lives here, without hate and war, how busily, and with what energy and determination, thousands of war-weary and worry-weary families would plan to move there! Any sacrifice would be worth while, any effort made easy, by such a hope for ourselves and our children. For life on today's terms .has grown too hard and too complicated, com-plicated, and in a sense, too hopeless, hope-less, for many of us to face with courage. Mankind has been busy for years creating all the evils from which civilization ought to rescue us; ruin, hate, despair, fear, hunger, hun-ger, disease, debt, flow when optimistic op-timistic voices tell us glibly how we shall overcome these evils we feel a deep discouragement. Overcome them? Why, they never should have existed at alii Well, there is that ideal country, and it is close to us all. But very few women find it. When they do, when they live in that placid sunshiny sun-shiny climate, loving life as beloved and happy children do, liking to wake in the morning, welcoming the restfulness of sleep at night, we look at them with envy. They Live In Peace. These women are rare. Some of them are homely and poor and grizzled griz-zled with years. Most of them have faces that show signs of past crises, agonies, sacrifices, despairs. But these things only show eYiough to make brighter the peace and beauty of their present lives. Hallie Foster is one such woman, I know. I've never seen her; perhaps never will. But she writes me a letter that tells the old story, the story of a soul harassed with fears, of a body troubled with aches and pains, of a situation so complicated by mistakes and faults that there seemed to be no way out of it. Hallie wrote me from Omaha, Neb., some four years ago. She had then been divorced for some years, and was living with a second husband hus-band and two step-children, all of whom made life extremely difficult for her. She had been so anxious to divorce Van and marry Bruce that she ceded to Van the custody of her own child, a boy. Her baby by Bruce died at birth she said because be-cause of the nervous condition into which the unmanageable step-children and disappointing husband had thrown her. She had backaches, headaches, sleepless nights. She wrote me that she had "long lost every vestige of charm, every scrap of attraction for Bruce, who is wasting wast-ing his money on other women already." al-ready." Prayer Was Answered. Meanwhile her own boy went into a long and dangerous illness. The scourge of infantile paralysis seized him and he needed actual years of tenderest care. Sick, over- worked, jealous, nervous, what had Hallie to spare for him? She saw him only at long intervals, and his baby loyalty and devotion went to his grandmother and aunts. What Hallie did, you can do. It is the cure. It is the open sesame to the land of peace and plenty. She, in her own words, "cast her burden upon the Lord." "I went on my knees," says her second letter, which came to me only a few days ago, "and said, 'Oh, Lord, I am wrong. I've made all the mistakes a woman can make. I've done all I could to wreck my life and the lives about me. Set me right. Show me the way!" The prayer was answered, of course. That prayer always is. Not by any sudden miracle, but by the slow shifting and changing of life's colors from dark to light. Hallie got up from her knees confident and refreshed, and began to do the thing nearest her with all her might. Washing, cooking, managing the children, she did it all humbly, waiting for guidance. Guidance came. Her aching head cleared; she began to sleep deep. "I felt like wings were under everything, all of a sudden," she writes. "If Bruce's children were cranky, I'd say in my heart, 'Lord, you help them.' I was praying all day long, In my heart." Well, to make a long story short, the sick small boy in a wheel chair was presently transferred to his mother, and financial aid was given for his care. The small cheerful sufferer had an immense influence upon the other children. The atmosphere at-mosphere of the household changed; Hallie was a smiling, beloved wife again. She went on praying no, not praying exactly, but lifting her heart continually into that clearer purer air that is the realization of God and good. She lives in that atmosphere always'. That is the one great miracle of life. Greater than the atomic bomb is the discovery that shatters the hardness of human hearts and wins them this peace that can face change, poverty, hard work, with a confident smile. The discovery that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. I Two step children. |