God was still with me. I just wasn’t ready to acknowledge it or ask Him what He wanted. It’s only been since I met you that I’ve started thinking about that moment.”
So open! This was far from the Clint Brady she’d known up until now. That opening to his heart was getting bigger. God was working His miracles.
Elizabeth smiled. “Well, I’m glad I was able to do that much.”
He leaned closer and planted a warm, sweet kiss on her lips. “Let’s just let it go at that for now,” he said then, resting his forehead against hers. “In the last four years you are the only person I’ve ever told the whole story to…the only one I’ve let myself break down in front of.”
She moved her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. “It only makes you look stronger in my eyes. It takes a wise, strong man to admit the things you just told me, and not be too proud to cry out for help. Even Jesus Christ wept over the loss of a friend, and again in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He died, begging God to change what He knew had to happen, and the next day He cried out to His father on the cross, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ Yet not a stronger man ever lived.”
He moved his arms around her and hugged her tightly, again breaking into tears. Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief that perhaps she’d said the right thing for once. Only time and reaching Dawson would tell. For now she could only hold him…and love him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
—1 Corinthians 9:7
Elizabeth could see the anger in Clint’s eyes. The fees being charged for boats built at a sawmill at Lake Bennett were outrageous. Two more days of traveling had brought them here, where for another three days they camped with scores of others, all waiting for their boats. What irked Clint was knowing the owners of the sawmill had them over a barrel. If they wanted to continue their journey, they had to buy a boat here, since traveling the swift-running Yukon River was the only way to continue.
Elizabeth could hardly blame Clint for being upset. The special raft he wanted built was costing him three hundred fifty dollars, a fortune as far as she was concerned, even though it was different from the smaller boats being built for others who had no horses with them.
The only other woman amid the campers was here with her husband. The couple stayed to themselves. Elizabeth felt sorry for them, as they appeared to have few belongings left. Their clothes were tattered, and they slept under a blanket made into a tent by tying rope between two trees and draping the blanket over it.
Longing to visit with another female, Elizabeth had tried talking to the woman once; but the woman just hung her head, asking Elizabeth to leave because she didn’t feel well. Elizabeth had prayed for her that night, noticing the woman looked very thin and depressed, and that she and her husband hardly spoke to each other.
This third morning Elizabeth sat by her campfire drinking coffee and watching Clint rearrange some of the supplies in preparation for loading them onto their raft the next morning. Other than “I love you,” and the usual necessary conversations of two people traveling together, he’d said nothing more about his past or his grief.
Elizabeth sensed he still felt unnecessarily ashamed for showing weakness. She thought how it was too bad that men thought it humiliating to cry, for crying could be such a release sometimes. It had helped her get over her father’s death, and then her mother’s. Telling Clint that even Jesus had cried seemed to have helped, but he was back to pretending none of it had happened.
Now she watched him lift ridiculously heavy baggage, probably to show off for her, and she had to smile. Clint Brady was one man who did not have to prove his masculinity. It radiated from every part of him, from his handsome smile to his calloused hands to the way his shirts fit him and the way he walked. Today was amazingly warm compared to the weather they’d experienced getting here, and he’d removed his jacket for the hard work. He’d trimmed his beard this morning