By Any Other Name

Chapter 17

During the following months, I took Abigail's example, praying and reading my Bible any time I felt angry. Because even if I didn't believe anything else she said, I knew she was right about the fact that holding on to my anger didn't harm Charles in any way. It only allowed him to continue to affect me. I'd never be at peace if I continued to hold on to it.

And it really did help. Not noticeably at first, but after a few weeks, I started seeing some changes. I didn't think of Charles as often, I wasn't losing as much sleep over him, and it wasn't affecting my behavior with the children or anyone else as much.

Once I noticed a small change, I kept it up simply for the purpose of achieving the goal of being able to forget about him. Maybe I wouldn't forget him entirely, but knowing that one day I might be able to go for days or weeks at a time without having him barge in on my thoughts, was an amazing and alluring prospect.

I doubt that I'd ever get to the point where I'd have any desire to forgive him, but I wouldn't allow him to control anything about me any longer.

It was also thanks to Abigail that I was able to appreciate the meetings on Sundays the way I should. Now that I understood why they did it and that they didn't expect the same from me, I could enjoy my time with those amazing women. I could rejoice with them when something wonderful happened in their lives and I could support them when something was hard.

The fulfillment I got simply from being there, silently supporting them, gave me some understanding of Abigail's and Minnie's motivation. How much more wonderful would it feel to have an active role in truly helping these women?

Levi and I settled into a comfortable friendship. We didn't allow ourselves to become too comfortable the way we had on that one occasion, but we were friends. We could talk and laugh without feeling the sting of our limited relationship quite so much.

The children progressed marvelously with their schooling. Everyone had improved with arithmetic and spelling. I improved right along with them in science and history, and we had even attempted beginning French. There was much to cover, and without having anyone around who actually spoke the language, there was quite a bit of guessing involved concerning the pronunciations, but it was a start at least.

Oliver was reading whole books with no assistance, for fun. He hardly ever asked for help or confirmation anymore, and Cassie was so motivated that she had surpassed me in just about everything. Keeping her teaching goal in mind, she started assisting me with that aspect of it.

I decided that I was going to have to figure out a way to get a hold of some more advanced books. It wasn't fair for Cassie, and eventually all the others, to have to cease learning because we didn't have any other books.

But I would worry about that a little later. At the moment, we were taking a long break from schooling to enjoy the lovely weather of early summer.

The children had begged all winter long to return to the lake for more picnics, but the weather had just been too cold. Apparently in Texas the temperature didn't tend to drop quite as much as it did in other places, but it was still pretty frigid sometimes. We'd even gotten the occasional snowfall.

But now we were finally free to enjoy the outdoors without worrying about pneumonia. As a way of making up for keeping the children cooped up all season long, Minnie and I decided to treat them to a massive picnic at the house. We invited all the neighbors as well as anyone else who cared to join. The children were incredibly excited about it.

The planning was much more involved than I'd originally realized, but thankfully it was mostly finished now. As soon as I made the final decisions about the apples that I was currently browsing for the pies, all that would be left would be the cooking and the actual set up for the event.