Holy Echad Marriage (HEM) - Bouquet of Roses - A Romantic Plural Marriage Trilogy - Volume 3, Chapter 20 Gathering up the Petals

RESOURCE
CENTRAL

For all new visitors to this website. Please begin here if you have surfed onto this page for the first time

Guided Tour

Index of
Directories

Chapter 20

Gathering up the Petals

Emma and Shelly were about Stan like bees around a pot of honey. There were 36 hours left before they had to return to the States and they were exceedingly reluctant to do so. Indeed, nobody want them to go, Stan and I perhaps more than the others. It reminded me so much of the day I had to leave Raj for Missouri but praise God these two didn't leave with the dark cloud over them as was my lot. So powerful was the testimony of the rightness of their being a part of us, in large part because of all that had happened the day before, that the Dedication ceremony was skipped altogether. It just wasn't necessary as all the parties concerned - Stan, Emma, myself and Shelly - had already fulfilled that ordinance's purpose. We didn't need more time to get to know. We already knew. The hell that I went through was spared both of these lovely sisters who, because of the amazing grace showerd on them - and us - by the Saviour, just accepted the family wholesale. With Christ so evidently at the very centre of everything that had transpired, and was still transpiring, there wasn't room for any doubt. It just was. We knew it, we loved it, and we wanted it with every fiber of our being.

There aren't many who have been so blessed to get such a powerful witness as Emma and Shelly did. I guess in some ways it's easier accepting a bigger family than a small one as I had to do, though I can't think for the life of me why that should be true. I'm sure others would disagree. But then logic really doesn't apply too much in plural marriage, does it? The fleshy nature has no logic to it other than ensure the unwelcome fruits of chaos and destruction because of its contrary nature. The only ultimate "logic" there is, is Messiah's sacrificial love, and if you've got that in abundance, you've pretty much got everything you need on which to build a firm foundation. And then Emma and Shelly, like Elisa and Salme, came into the family together, so there was no room for any of the petty jealosy that had squashed me flat when I came alone, as I thought. They had no "Molly" to shadow-box. There were clearly benefits to the "Rea/Rua Way", if you were strong and mature enough for it.

The following evening Emma and Shelly were betrothed to Stan. How beautiful they looked! Between us we managed to find a couple of wedding dresses that fit. Holding hands as sister-wives, they covenanted themselves to Stan. And since Stan was in no position to collect them in the traditional biblical way, as had also been the case with most of us because of the huge distances that separated our homes; and as there was no need for Stan to build them a home as traditionally happened while the bride awaited the coming of the bridgroom to escort her back to his father'ä house, so no fixed time was assigned for the full marriages. It was understood that as soon as they had wound up their affairs in San Diego - for Emma that would mean giving three months' notice to her employers - that they would be called back for full marriage with our blessed husband as soon as they were practically ready. As Shelly had few commitments and needed no such delay to quit her job, it was agreed she would move in with Emma and help her get her apartment sold.

As I looked at these two lovely women, and at Stan, and at the rest of us, and our children in that beautiful room where heaven and earth briefly meet in a sudden cascade of fountains of white, that well-known inner glow lit up my whole body like an enormous furnace again. Is this the state of the blessed in that Paradise which we so much yearn for? Is this an insight into the bliss that awaits us when we are reunited with our Yah'shua - our Jesus?

Emma and Shelly both wore a ring of intense carmine flowers in their hair reminding me of the tongues of fire at Pentecost. Yes, that was what had happened - Kadesh-Naphtali was suddenly filled with colour again as though the summer had never gone. The effervescence of Shelly and the unpretentious, intense and fiery longing of Emma seemed to fuse into a shower of happiness that made everyone just want to leap for joy. What was it that these two extraordinary ladies had brought to us? What was it that was so special about them and so utterly different from the rest of us, even from me, an American like them? And yet Emma and I weren't that different.

There was, of course, no answer, because we had all brought something unique and infinitely precious into the family. Not one new wife had left the family unchanged and not in some way blessed.

Whatever fears Stan may have had about bringing these two women into the family at the beginning of their visit had long since evapourated. He was a transformed man too. I hadn't seen him so happy in a long time and rejoiced both for him and because I knew that that happiness would cascade back onto us too like a giant wave breaking on Yahweh's delighted children standing on the seashore. Indeed, it already had. I learned long ago that far from being a threat, each new wife was a glorious blessing, for she would release a power in our husband that none of us had been able to tap which would in turn flow back into us. That was the miracle of plural marriage when done, properly submitted to God. It was the kind of plural marriage that Yahweh had revealed to our husband which, we believed, existed nowhere else on the face of the earth.

As I looked at one of the Azaleas in Shelly's hair, I seemed to disappear within myself and saw, as it were, a face of a sister-wife in each petal, looking inwards to the centre where I saw Stan. And then, like pollen flying into the air, I saw all our children like a cloud, heaven-bound and heading off in different directions towards the goals which Yahweh had set in their lives and in their turn becoming Azaleas until they all joined together into a garland on the head of the Saviour, the crown of His pleasure in marriages brought to heavenly fruition.

There seemed to be no end of dedications, betrothals and marriages, not only in our family but in the others' too. Like J.B.Priestly's vision of the seagulls being born, flying, and dying, generation after generation, and then merging into one continuous collage, so it seemed that the polygamous dream that Stan had nurtured for so long was finally coming to pass.

Emma and Shelly returned to California and for a few months disappeared from our lives as they made the necessary arrangements for their relocation to Sweden. Upon arriving home, the two kept in daily contact and forged an ever deepening friendship, visiting Christian polygamous friends of Stan in Ensenada, Mexico at weekends, whenever possible, for fellowship.

------------

That autumn a new family joined our community, this time from England - William, Philippa, and Carmen Beckinsale - who wished to begin a similar community in Britain and wanted to learn from us. Only recently married and still childless, they were fresh to Christian polygamy and keen to get involved in communal life. With only six months between the marriages, it was a young and vigorous relationship and very much in the formative stages. With no possibility of fellowship and tutoring in England, they had provisionally agreed to spend four years in Kadesh-Naphtali.

In common with the other residents, they signed contracts deeding their property to the community and took possession of the old farm house, beginning the extensive renovation that was needed. These contracts stipulate that upon leaving the community they would receive the equivalent in value of whatever they had put in, any increase being regarded as the property of the whole community. This meant that we had to maintain a fund equivalent to what any newcomers had put in so that they could claim that fund upon leaving - a fund which we used to generate interest and so finance various projects.

Also written into the contract with all the families was that they could leave whenever they wanted and would likewise be entitled to take with them the equivalent of what they had invested when they had arrived. But it was understood that all physical items, apart from certain memorabilia and essential things (photo albums, family heirlooms, personal computer equipment, etc.) would remain on the property after they had left, though we were flexible about such matters. The property and land deeded to the residents always belonged to the community and could never be sold by anyone wanting to leave prematurely.

The Beckinsales were to be the first of several temporary residents. Another floor would eventually be added to the Conference Centre and apartments made for such people. Part of their duty would be to manage the Conference Centre and take care of the guest rooms for the many short-stay visitors, though some of these were housed in the herrgård³ as well as in the homes of other families in the community.

------------

It was the first really autumnal day of the season and Isabel felt the chill as she pushed off her bed clothes. She looked outside the window and saw the leaves turning yellow on the sycamore maple tree. The ferns had already turned brown and the first cool winds from the Sudeten Mountains were beginning to make themselves felt.

This was the day she had been planning for several weeks. Her parents were away in Częstochowa, making a pilgrimage to the Black Madonna in the hope that her father's prostate cancer might be healed. They wouldn't be back for two days.

Stanisław, Jr. knew nothing of what was going on though he had noticed his mother was much more concentrated than usual, and wondered why she kept on taking a suitcase out from under her bed. She was packed and ready to leave for Sweden.

Many factors had contributed to her decision. Everything about her situation just shouted God's disapproval. No friends, a fast disintegrating relationship with little Benoni, a thoroughly miserable Stanisław, Jr. who loathed the forced Catholic Church services on Sunday - and who was, as a result, beginning even to wonder who God was - her deterioriating health, unfulfilling job, poverty, ever increasing dependence on her parents, and sense of utter desperation, all drove her to want to return back to her husband and family more than anything else in the world. And although not that many months had passed, it had seemed like years.

When she broke the news to Stanisław, Jr., the little boy's face glowed.

"Are we going back to Pappa?" he asked eagerly. "And Władysław?"

"Yes, we're going home now."

He rushed into his room and started gathering his things together. In an instant all the heaviness evaporated and he felt like a little bird in spring ready to sing.

"We can't take everything with us, Stanisław," she said. "We have to travel light."

For a moment his heart sank. Gifts had been deliberately pressed upon him by his grandparents in such abundance since they had come to Poland, things he knew he would probably never get in Sweden. They had spared no expense, hoping to win his heart away from his father and the rest of the family. And whilst he was certainly fond of all that he now owned, what he really longed for was home. Though only ten years old he was wise enough to know where his priorities lay.

"I understand, mother," he said, looking up with an assuring look in his eyes, and returned to put the toys away for the last time.

"You can bring just a few things," said Isabel, "but only what you can carry in your knapsack ⁵ . So think carefully. You've only got 10 minutes because we've got a bus to catch in 15."

He shot out of the room like a dart, making the impossible decision of rejecting things he knew he really wanted. The encyclopedias were out, and the large model ship. Stanisław, Jr. was a collector like his father and even in so short a time had already gathered quite a museum-full of artefacts. He looked sadly at his collection of Word War 2 memorabilia which he had found on the beach at Kolobrzeg (Kolberg) in Pomerania neatly arranged in a glass case on the wall above his bed. He took one bullet case to remember it by. His mother called again - it was time to leave - he grabbed his white-and-red Polish flag and stuffed it into the last remaining square inches of his bag.

Isabel bundled Benoni into the pram and strapped the suitcase behind it so that it began to topple. She realised that she had too much herself but it was too late to start repacking.

"Three minutes," she cried, and after a brief scurrying, Stanisław, Jr. eventually appeared out of his room with a bag full of toys.

"What about my clothes?" he asked plaintively, remembering the national dress his grandfather had bought him.

"I've packed all you need. Come on, we've got to go."

The door closed behind them. There was no time to look back for a last glance, except Stanisław, who remembered a few of the good things he was leaving behind. But now his heart was on Kadesh-Naphtali.

"Come on," said Isabel, breaking out into a run. "There's the bus! Hurry!"

A panting Isabel fell into the seat, with a smile on her face to the bemusement of the onlookers.

"We made it, didn't we?" she said, still puffing, with the first smile she had managed all morning.

And Stanisław smiled back at her.

"Where are we going now, mother?" he asked.

"Wrocław (Breslau)."

Wrocław. A stop on the route of Stan's escape from the Polish Maffia, or fascist Catholics like the Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny (ONR), or who ever it was who had tried to kill him after they had left Raj. History was repeating itself, in a way. Not knowing the best route to go, since she felt little of the leading of the Spirit, Isabel had decided simply to follow Stan's earlier route and trust that somehow it was still inspired for her there and then. No one had seen her leave the house but some neighbours had recognised her on the bus and had asked her where she was going.

"A long earned rest," she had managed to get out, though she hadn't really wanted to say anything at all. She figured that her parents would quickly put two-and-two together when they got back, though whether they would try to mount a search for her she didn't know, though she considered it unlikely. But her father was a determined man and would not do nothing. She had mailed them a letter making everything clear that would arrive the next day. This was, after all, the fourth time she had left home for Stan, and her father loathed Stan as only a deeply committed Catholic could. He belonged to a secret organisation called Pater Noster committed to exposing heretics in the Catholic Church and had long before reported Stan to the Bishop of Wrocław. Stan had done much damage in post-communist Catholic Poland.

They had to change busses at Świdnica (Schweidnitz) and Isabel began to wish she had taken the train. It had gone suddenly overcast and as the rain began to pelt down they rushed to the right shelter at the bus station. She began to wonder. An hour before the bus to Wrocław, and Benoni would soon get restless. It eventually came and they piled onboard again. At length the Gothic Tower of Wrocław Cathedral loomed and she began to long for the freedom of the train carriage. That would give Benoni more space to move around in. Wrocław Glówny - the central railway station - at last!

Wrocław (Breslau) Cathedral

Another hour-and-a half wait for the train to Szczecin (Stettin). This not a slow commuter train, with regular stops along the way. It seemed like a local train and yet it was an Intercity one. It poured with rain outside, the sky menacingly black, and Isabel began to wonder where the journey would end. She had only just the right amount of money for the planned route. If anything went wrong, they would be in trouble.

In one of those moments of panic she fretted at what Stan would say to her when he saw her again. Why was she always so afraid of him? And why only her? Why didn't the others feel the same way?

She thought back to her own childhood and remembered the stern look of her father when as a 12 year-old she broke the Bohemian vase in the lounge. Her father had seemed like an ogre, his face red with rage. She relived the blow across her face and saw the terrified look of her mother out of the corner of her eye. Everything had gone silent then. Though she knew her mother was screaming she could hear nothing.

The clatter of the train on the railtrack brought her back to the present. Benoni had scooted down the corridor and she momentarily panicked.

"Legnica! Legnica! (Liegnitz)" came the voice of the conductor on the speaker as the train came to a halt at a town that was an important part of Stan's own family history which Jenny had dreamed about. The rain seemed to have stopped as the train drew under the platform roof. Passengers piled in, doors slammed. A sharp whistle and the train lurched forwards again.

A couple of Germans sat opposite her. She didn't think about it much until she noticed that half the passengers in the waggon were speaking German now. "Odd," she thought to herself, and then remembered that increasing numbers of Germans were visiting the old German cities of Silesia.

"Żagań! Żagań! (Sagan)" came the conductor's voice again. Once more stop, people came and went, and Isabel, seeing that Benoni was asleep and Stanisław absorbed in a book, dozed off.

Żagań (Sagan)

"Pass, bitte!" came the firm but friendly voice of the official shaking her shoulder. Isabel stirred, looked vacantly at the man, and asked in Polish if they had arrived at Szczcecin. But this was no Polish conductor but a German policeman! Her heart began to pound.

"Where are we?" she asked a woman opposite her in Polish, still confused, but she shook her head and shruggled her shoulders. She was German too.

"Passport, please," said the German customs official, realising that she didn't understand German. "German Customs Control."

Isabel's mouth dropped and panicked seized her.

"German?" she stuttered in shock. "Isn't this Szczecin??"

"Guben", said the German. "This is Guben. Where are you going?" he asked.

Guben

"Szczecin!" she said again. "I am going to Szczecin!"

"This is the Breslau to Berlin train," said the man, by now becoming a little irritated. "This is the border post of Guben. Next stop Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, then Berlin."

Isabel froze. "It can't be!" she insisted. "I am on my way to Szczecin!"

The officer asked for her tickets and called over the conductor as the train rolled out of Guben station and headed for Frankfurt.

"You are on the wrong train."

"I must go back!" cried Isabel, shaking. "Please let us off!"

"It is too late, madam," said the man. "You will have to disembark at Frankfurt and return to Poland from there."

Her mind was in a swirl, with tickets bought all the way to Sweden, but with no money left for anything else, she was in a jam.

Now the German ticket conductor wanted the Guben-Frankfurt fare paid for.

"I have no German money," she said, beginning to cry a little.

A furious discussion took place between the customs official and the conductor while all eyes in the carriage looked at poor Isabel, for whom such situations were the worst possible kind of nightmare. She loathed the attention of lots of strangers and had it not been for the boys she would probably have made for the toilet and hidden. She felt trapped, exposed and wanted to run.

They looked at the tickets again.

"You are going to Sassnitz?" they asked. "And then taking the ferrey to Trelleborg in Sweden at 23:35?"

She nodded as the conductor thumbed through a large train timetable, presumably checking to see if some other connection could be made.

"It makes no sense to cross back into Poland again and then return to Germany," said the ticket official, trying to reassure her.

"You can take a train from Berlin to Eberswalde and Prenzlau which will take you straight to to Sassnitz. It will give you time to catch your ferry to Sweden. You can have the Anklam to Sassnitz part of the ticket refunded but you would have to pay from Guben to Anklam."

"I told, you, I have no German money - I already have tickets to Sassnitz!" protested Isabel, as anger took over from blind panic.

"But this is on Polish railways to Stettin - that ticket is not valid on the Bundesbahn!" said the ticket collector, apparently not wanting to know anything more about her predicament. "You can probably reclaim your money on the Polish side."

Isabel explained that she was not returning to Poland but returning home to Sweden - that she would have no opportunity to reclaim it.

"Then you must get off the train at Frankfurt and cross the border to Słubice (Dammvorstadt, a former suburb of Frankfurt on the Polish side of the River Oder) - there you can resume a later train to Stettin," said the man, by now getting very impatient. "But I must have the fare from Guben to Frankfurt!"

Isabel froze, not knowing what to do. She had no money at all, save for a few Swedish kronor to allow her to get from Leksand by bus or taxi up to Kadesh-Naphtali. She had wanted to make this journey without anyone's help. She would return home under her own power and spare herself the humility of having to be picked up by Stan or one of the others ... and especially not by the others. She had it all planned - she would arrive at night the following day and quietly return to her room without anyone noticing and from there figure out how to face her husband and sister-wives.

"I only have some Swedish kronor," she said, and showed the scowling ticket conductor who wished to move on to check the other passengers before the train arrived at Frankfurt.

"Very well," he said, "I will accept this from Guben to Frankfurt. Then you must disembark and cross the border across the Oder at Słubice."

There was no time to work out an exchange rate. The German was breaking company rules anyway but was wise enough to see that if he called the police to have her arrested in Frankfurt the railway company probably wouldn't see a single Mark.

Parted with her Swedish money, Isabel found herself in Frankfurt railway station. But what of the train she was supposed to be on? How could she ever catch that now? To get to the that train she would have to find her way some 25-30 kilometers to a town called Rzepin (Reppen). How could she possibly walk that distance with a pram, luggage, and a child in tow, especially as she was both exhaused from the stress of the day already as well as not fully recovered from her concussion?

Frankfurt-on-the-Oder

The sky was still overcast and menacing but at least the rain had stopped. The three stood outside the Hauptbahnhof, the Central Railway Station of Germany's second Frankfurt in the east, and she wondered what on earth to do next. Isabel froze in blind panic. She had no money for a bus, tram or taxi. All that she had were her legs and guts.

"I must go home to Sweden, I must go home to Sweden," she kept repeating to herself insistently, and without knowing where she was going, just started walking as fast as she could, dragging Stanisław behind her at a trot.

"Wo ist Polen? (Where is Poland?)" she asked a passerby in her broken German, who pointed her eastwards to the border. All she wanted to do was get out of Germany and back onto familiar territory again.

Isabel remembered little of the trek through Frankfurt-an-der-Oder. Most of it was all a blurr to her. Steely determination, something that was not natural to her temperament, had gripped her and her whole soul was now focussed on one place: Rzepin. If she didn't make it there in time to catch the slower train she had accidentally missed she knew she was finished. She would be stranded for goodness knows how long and have to call her father and wait for him to collect her. It would be captivity for life if that happened.

How she got to the bridge she never knew for a power not her own guided her across that city. She never once looked at a signpost, hardly noticed the traffic at all, in fact.

The border. She was very tired and yet her journey had hardly begun. The traffic queued at Customs. Her eye ran down the line of cars and lorries in the hope she might be able to get a lift.

"Lord, lead me to where I am to go," she pled in desperation in a mumbled prayer. A "PL" sticker caught her eye and she headed for it - a lorry. Normally unable to do such a thing, she boldly went up to the driver and asked if he could give her and the children a lift over the border.

"Where're you going," asked the Pole, looking up from his newspaper, cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"Rzepin," she replied almost inaudibly.

"OK," came the unhesitant reply. "I'm going to Świebodzin (Schwiebus) - I can drop you off there. Hop in!"

The breathed a sigh of relief, hardly able to believe her luck. She quickly thanked the Lord, and got Benoni out of the pram which promptly fell over backwards. The traffic was beginning to move so the driver jumped out and helped her get her things on board and his new passengers secured.

He asked her no questions and Isabel was in no mood to give answers anyway, so the silence was to their mutual liking. He occasionally glanced at Benoni and smiled, but that was all. Isabel began to wonder about the time. The village of Kunowice (Kunersdorf) came and went. They were safe across the border!

"Can you drop us off at the railway station at Rzepin?" she suddenly asked, breaking the silence. "We have a train we need to catch!"

"Jasne (Sure)," said the driver nonchalantly. They hadn't even introduced themselves so she never did learn his name. Stanisław was enjoying the ride, the first time he had been in a massive truck. The enormous windscreen reminded him of the bridge of a Starship in a science fiction film he had seen with Władysław in Raj.

Rzepin (Reppen)

The railway station loomed ahead ... and in the distance an approaching train. Isabel panicked.

"There's our train!" she cried out, not knowing whether it was or not but not wanting to take the chance. The driver didn't need to be told what she needed and pushed the down on the gas peddal, making the truck lurch forward. She grabbed Benoni to stop him flying into the dashboard - Stanisław grabbed his mother's left arm.

The lorry screached to a halt outside the station whilst Isabel and the boys were hurriedly disgored, almost tripping over themselves to get to the train. There wasn't even time to thank the driver who waved at Stanisław as he looked back at the shining hulk which for a while had been his own spaceship.

It was her train - she hardly dared believe it. Yet another mad scramble, with only just enough time to get her suitcase off the platform before the train moved out and headed finally towards Szczecin. Isabel slumped into her seat and began to laugh - not with joy but with shere relief. Then she cried a little whilst Stanisław looked up sympatheticallly to comfort her.

Now nothing seemed to matter. She never noticed the stations as they passed - Kostrzyn (Küstrin) ... Stan would have told her the history of the place if he had been there with them and she chuckled. She would have listened this time because suddenly he became attractive to her in a way he had never been before. Now she wanted to really know him, even the German history which she, as a Pole, had always despised. She saw him in her mind's eye and heard his voice echoing in the distance ....

"Now this, dearest," she imagined he was saying, "is the fortress of Küstrin where Frederick the Great of Prussia was imprisoned by his father when he was a young man in a rather austere castle. And there's the bridge the Germans tried to blow up in 1945 using Mistletoe aircraft jammed full of TNT to stop the Soviets crossing the River Oder." And so he went on and on in her mind, and she knew he would have done had he been with them, and she smiled and laughed a little, and wished he was there holding her hand and cuddling her. She would listen to anything just to have him back. And yes, she'd have Anna, and Kryztina and all the others back- all of them. She suddenly wanted to be the plurally married woman she had never been before.

The sun broke through the dark clouds and at once she did feel joy. It felt like a sign. Stanisław and Benoni picked up her mood and happiness returned to them too. Stanisław, Jr., with the same curiosity and hunger for knowledge about places as his father, kept asking his mother about every village they passed through, and each time she said, "You'll have to ask father when we get home!"

"Look!" he said, "Chojna!²⁰ "

Isabel looked blankly at him. What was so special about that town?

"Don't you know, mother?" he asked, as though she should know.

"It's Chojna!"

Isabel still stared blankly at her son.

"Father told us that Chojna is the old German town of Königsberg in Neumark, and Königsberg is the German for Królewiec!"

Isabel hadn't remembered - such things had never been of interest to her before, but now, hearing Stanisław's explanation, she made a symbolic connection to her journey ... she was returning home to her name - Królewiec - and here was a town connected to it in some way. She saw it as a prophetic sign, and was thankful for Stanisław's alertness.

Once more they were crossing the Oder and a short while afterwards the train lumbered into Szczecin station. And even though she had to change trains again, Isabel was at peace. Everything was back on schedule, the way she liked things.

Szczecin (Stettin)

A few hours later, tired but happy, they were standing on the pier at Sassnitz on the island of Rügen where Stan and Anna had once stood holding hands. She remembered the time Stan had called her from his hôtel and the household had breathed a sigh of relief that they were both safe. Now she wanted to sleep - desperately - and was the first passenger to board the ferry and to fling herself down onto her bunk bed with the boys in the cabin. She hadn't noticed the cabin number - 333 - until some months later when Stanisław, with his eagle-like eye, spotted it on the ticket. But even if she had, she would have been too tired to note its import.

Sassnitz

For 3½ hours Isabel slept soundly until woken by the intercom announcing the ship's arrival at Trelleborg. Sweden at last! But there was still a long journey up to Kopparberg, and home.

This page was first created in 2002 Last updated on 15 June 2026

No part of this work may be reproduced or stored on any
medium without the express permission of the publisher.
Violators of this copyright will be prosecuted