Love with Nowhere to Go

“God setteth the solitary in families: He bringeth out the prisoners into prosperity” — Psalm 68:6 (ASV)

Corrie's mother, Cor, had been a teacher. In Corrie's memory she was warm and generous, the kind of woman who made up baskets for poor neighbours and remembered every birthday. But she was not strong. A series of strokes left her, by Corrie's account, able to say only a few words. Corrie watched her mother's world shrink to a single room, and saw her love keep coming through the little she could still do. Cor died on 17 October 1921. Corrie was twenty-nine.

Around then came the other great loss of her young life. In her later book The Hiding Place she tells of a young man named Karel, a friend of her brother Willem. She hoped he would marry her. As she remembered it, he visited, walked with her, and seemed to feel the same. But his family expected him to marry someone with money and position, and in the end he did. He came to the Beje to introduce his fiancée.

This story rests completely on Corrie's own memory. No record identifies Karel, and it would be wrong to guess his surname. But listen to what she said happened next. She climbed to her room in misery. Her father came up after her. He didn't tell her to forget Karel. He talked about what to do with love that has nowhere to go: instead of killing it so it stops hurting, she could give it to God and let him send it somewhere else.

Corrie never married. She believed that conversation shaped her whole life. And you can watch the love being redirected. As she told it later, when illness kept Betsie out of the shop, the sisters swapped jobs: Betsie ran the house, and Corrie discovered she loved the workbench. She trained abroad, in Switzerland, and according to the museum, in 1924 she became the first woman in the Netherlands to qualify as a watchmaker. (Other sources say 1921 or 1922, and nobody seems to have seen the certificate.)

She also started clubs for girls, called the Triangle girls, after an emblem whose three sides stood for body, soul and spirit: sport, music, camps and outings alongside Bible study and prayer. From around 1921 she taught the Christian faith to people with intellectual disabilities, whom most churches of the time ignored. The family took in foster children too. None of it made the newspapers. When the war came she was forty-eight, a single woman known around town as the watchmaker's daughter.

Notice two things. First, Corrie's father didn't pretend the heartbreak wasn't real. He just refused to let it make her small. Second, the patient habits of a watchmaker, the organising skills from the clubs, and the trust of hundreds of young people were exactly what the underground would later need. She didn't know she was being prepared. She was just being faithful with what was in front of her.

Maybe something you hoped for has fallen through: a friendship, a relationship, a team, a plan. The easy move is to harden your heart so it stops hurting. The braver move is the one Casper described. Hand the love to God and ask him where it should go now.

One thing to do this week: if there is a disappointment you are carrying, tell God about it honestly in one sentence. Then ask him to show you one person who could use the care you have nowhere to put, and do one kind thing for that person before the week is out.