Margaret clearly shares Walter’s concern for life and that in which he places his trust. In the opening to her first letter, she well conveys her sense of the importance of openly and honestly disclosing the source of her understandings and comfort in life. She then shares her interests and involvements in the next few letters. Her tone and concerns significantly change following Walter’s Christmas visit.
(9/14 16) “Peace be unto you that are in Christ.” I Peter 5:14. “Casting all your anxieties upon him, because he careth for you.” I Peter 5:7. These two Bible passages I wish to give to you. They have given me much strength. It’s so easy for me to carry my worries with me that I need this second verse daily. I wish to thank you for wishing me grace and peace, and especially to thank you for remembering me in prayer. It gives me added strength in weakness, when I recall that there are those who remember me in prayer. God takes the prayers and blesses me in turn. I am also remembering you in prayer to the One who is so wonderful in caring for his own.
(9/22 19) I thank you for the verses that you sent to me. I am sending one that helps me to meet many trials, especially when I begin to feel my burdens and feel that God is giving me more than my share. “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it to you.” John 15:16. When I feel that I have chosen God, so that I might experience his peace and salvation; it is good for me to remember this verse. I feel that by these little trials and obstacles I am being guided and kept in the way by Him.
(10/3 21) This evening I had the chance to sing a solo at the Methodist church. Perhaps you know the selection, “A Divine Redeemer” by Gounod. That was the number. I have never been able to sing it as easily before. God answered my prayer.
(10/30 41) Walter, I am so happy because I met with one teacher, who seemed so discouraged, whom I had the chance to have devotions with. She teaches in a rural school near Esmond. She said that she had met with a terrible accident some years previous. . . . She is a Lutheran girl who rooms and boards in a Catholic home and teaches in a Catholic community. She said she hadn’t read much in her Bible and she thought maybe that was the reason she was having so much trouble. We are planning to write letters to one another.
(11/6) This is Saturday so I have been up to school just to play and sing. We have a small piano in the music room. I rolled it into my recitation room as it was much warmer there. It surely was fun to sing and play to my heart’s content. Tomorrow evening I have a chance to sing at the Luther League meeting. I wish that I would be able to sing the song from memory. Perhaps I can memorize the words this afternoon.
(1/11 118) “If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; then I will give you rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees in the field shall yield their fruit.” Leviticus 26:3,4 Isn’t this a wonderful promise to farmers? The people around here seem to be happy because we are having more moisture. It is warm out even though snowflakes fall. It is fine that so much snow has fallen in Colorado. Thanks for the letter which you sent. I have been wishing you were around but then I know that you sometimes think of me and I am sure that you are praying for me and so I get happy and go to work. Walter, I am so happy to think that someday I am going to live with you. May I be the kind of person that God wants you to have thru life.…It’s strange Walter, but people are beginning to say that I have started to use cosmetics such as rouge etc. I guess God realized that I needed some color to my cheeks so He has given me some extra since Christmas.
(1/13 122) I have been reading quite a bit in the book, that you gave me. I have learned quite a bit about prayer from it, although I do not agree with all of it. Perhaps; that is because my experience is not great enough or old enough yet.…I still have some recollections of the skiing trip … They are diminishing but not entirely forgotten. [Dad would often attribute his later back problems to a severe fall he took that Christmas when another skier slid over the toes of his skis.]
(1/22 144) Dear Walter: “And Jehovah, he it is that doth go before thee; He will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.” Deuteronomy 31: 8. This was one of the verses that I read for devotions today. It was given by Moses to Joshua and now I wish to give it to you. It has been extended to me by mother and father many a time but it stands just as forcibly and powerfully now as when Moses gave it for the first time. Walter, I wouldn’t enjoy writing letters if I couldn’t write anything spiritual because that is the only thing that is lasting through time and eternity.…At supper this evening Tick just teased me so much about religion. I finally told him that I knew he just talked in such a manner to see how I would take it because I knew that underneath it all he thought differently than he was speaking. After that he stopped. I guess they think I am too serious but time, words and deeds are all important to me because I feel that God wants those for Him.
