Not My Will and The Light in My Window Read Free

was ready for college, Ruth was not well. A visit to her doctor sent her home with troubled brow. Eleanor, not being able to extract much information from her, went to see the doctor herself and left with the knowledge that Ruth had an incurable disease. At least the doctor said it was incurable. But they would not believe that it was so. They consulted other doctors. So began a struggle of four long years against death. They visited hospital after hospital, clinic after clinic. As a last hope they took a trip of three thousand miles and returned with heavy hearts and saddened faces, not to the brick bungalow but to the cottage in the woods. There, with faithful Mary and Mike, they awaited the inevitable.
    As the days passed, Eleanor’s spirit rebelled. “Why do I have to give up all I have in the world?” she asked herself. “Other girls have whole housefuls of families. Why should kind, good Aunt Ruth have to suffer? Why must anyone suffer?” Sometimes she lay awake at night pondering these weighty questions, and she thought about them many times during the day. Ruth glimpsed the struggle, and one night as Eleanor sat by her bed she said slowly, “Dear, I hope you are not going to feel too badly about all this.”
    “I
can’t fe
el too badly. It just isn’t
right!”
Eleanor responded heatedly.
    “Well, there was a time when I felt that way too. I’m not an old woman and I still want to live, especially since you are with me. I want to help with your work. But lying here in the long nights, I’ve done lots of thinking and wondering. I’ve been pretty headstrong. All my life I’ve wanted my own way and fought to get it. Having made one big mistake, I let it turn me from the right way.”
    Eleanor patted her arm. “It has been a
good
way, Auntie dear, and I can’t feel it’s right for you to have to go.”
    Ruth shook her head. “I tried to make it a good way, but I wanted it always to be
my
way, and the selfish way is never a good way. I have lived entirely for myself, and the world is no better for my being—yes, I know I’ve cared for you, but that has been pure joy for me. It has cost me nothing, and I have received everything.”
    She was silent for a minute, then continued wistfully, “I wish I could go back and try again. I would try Mother’s way instead of my own. She lived first of all for her Lord, then for others—and last, for herself. She was happier than I have ever been.”
    Eleanor did not speak, and Aunt Ruth went on, “As I have lain here thinking of my life I have realized how futile it has been compared to Mother’s. I had a better education than she had; I’ve had more money to spend in one year than she had in her lifetime. Yet she faced death as if she were confident of God’s leading in both the past and the future and could leave everything to Him. I haven’t let Him lead me in the past, and I have no assurance He will want to take over the case now.”
    Mary, standing by, murmured with a tender voice asshe straightened the tumbled pillows, “Oh yes, He will! I know Him, and it’s glad He’d be to lead any lamb that called Him.”
    But Eleanor did not dare speak, lest the bitterness in her heart overflow. She did not want to grieve this dear aunt so obviously near death. And if Aunt Ruth could get any comfort by returning to her childhood religion, let her do it. Eleanor had nothing against religion. It was a rather good thing for the weak and those in trouble. She was sure there was a God somewhere whose duty it was to help people who weren’t able to manage their lives alone. But if He did govern the affairs of mankind, as Mary often said, Eleanor felt He was being very cruel to her just now. Hurriedly she kissed her aunt good night and went to her own room to cry herself to sleep.
    Waking in the middle of the night she saw a light in the invalid’s room and, donning robe and slippers, hurried in to find her aunt propped up on her pillow, writing.
    “I couldn’t