His Hand Was In It
This story is from my book Rise, With Healing In Our Wings. The book is available on various internet sites, including Barnes & Noble and Amazon. It can also be ordered from some bookstores and checked out at some public libraries. * * * For some time I have wondered why no comments followed my stories. Then, last night, I stumbled on this site's section labeled '"Comments Inboxes." There I found the most loving, sweetest, and touching comments from many of you about not just the stories, but my poems as well. Please know of my heartfelt gratitude. I will forever be grateful.
I can write this story, but I cannot speak it. My voice would wobble and my words would wither. I know you will understand.
The hotel is probably gone, but what happened there, in a town in France over a century ago, is yet another testimony to the omnipotent power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to not only lift lives but to save them.
It was 1906, and the baby of 21-year-old Elizabeth Huth was dying of malnutrition. Elizabeth had been abandoned by the father. To sustain herself and her child, she worked as a maid at the hotel.
Some months earlier in Brussels, Belgium, missionaries had converted Louise Kuhlmann to the Mormon Church. Louise had recently been widowed and was in deep despair. But fortified with her new-found faith that she and her husband could be together again, she vowed to immigrate to America with her children where she would facilitate his temple work and be sealed to him. Louise was unable to sell her house, but she knew what to do: she gave it to the missionaries.
Before leaving Europe, Louise and her children visited friends in France. They stayed at the hotel where Elizabeth worked. While there, one of Louise's daughters saw Elizabeth in a hallway. She was sobbing. Asked what was wrong, Elizabeth said she had a baby girl and the woman charged with her care was neglecting her--starving her, in fact.
When Louise learned of Elizabeth's plight, she got the woman's address and immediately went there. Indeed, the baby, named Madeline, was starving to death, rail thin, protruding belly, hollow-eyed. With no hesitation and a few "inspired" words for the woman, Louise took the baby, postponed the family's trip to America, and with a doctor's help restored Madeline to health.
When my faith flags, when the world closes in, when I wonder how carefully He is watching, I think of the two missionaries who found and converted the Kuhlmann family. I think of how the family chose to stay at the very hotel where Elizabeth worked. I think of how Louise's daughter happened to be in the hallway at the exact moment Elizabeth was there, sobbing. I think of of how the gospel prepared Louise to do what she did, enlightening her about the worth of souls and the eternal nature of families. When I think of all that, my doubts dissipate and I am repentant.
Louise and her children preceeded Elizabeth and Madeline to America, but the young mother and her baby soon followed, under the sponsorship of the Kuhlmann family. Elizabeth became a renowned florist, and Madeline became . . . became my Mother.
Skeptics will say the saving of my Mother's life was simply a matter of convenient coincidences. Not so. A feeling unspeakably grand and glorious--a feeling that suffuses my very beng--tells me with unassailable, surpassing presence that His hand was in it.
I know it.
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