Description
Between The Shafts
October 14, 1856, about 20 miles west of Fort Laramie, Wyoming on the Pioneer Trail.
John Jacques of the Martin Handcart Company “finally began to break down. He had pulled his sister-in-law in his handcart for 170 miles in Iowa. After his wife (Zilpah) had a baby in August, he had pulled her on the cart for more than 100 miles in Nebraska. He was exhausted from caring for his wife; his sick two-year-old daughter, his baby son; his wife’s family (which was Amy Loader and family) who had been without a man since his father-in-law died three weeks earlier, and the hundred members of the handcart company over whom he was subcaptain.”
Not only is John Jacques bearing the weight of a cart heavy enough already, but it is made all the heavier bearing the burden of love—family members too ill to walk.
“The company traveled a hilly, heavy road that day. John’s legs swelled, he was short of breath, and he could hardly walk. Where would help come from? His wife, Zilpah seemed an unlikely source. Not only had she recently given birth, but her health had always been frail. Moreover, she was nursing her baby while she herself had scarcely enough to eat. ‘It seemed to her that [her baby] was taking her own life,’ wrote her sister, Patience Loader.”
And here it is. Here is the reason I tell you this heart-rending story.
“Yet, that day Zilpah stepped inside the shafts of the handcart and pulled beside her husband. That night John wrote in his journal with appreciation and perhaps some feeling of personal failure, “Zilpah pulled the cart with me nearly all day.” In this precarious condition the Jacques family would face the first winter storm, only five days away.”
The journey toward our salvation has become “a heavy, hilly road” of late, and it will only get worse. It is too much to go alone. Notwithstanding her own weakness, and even though she could have offered a plethora of excuses not to—Zilpah climbed down off the cart and into the shafts and pulled with John. Please consider all that that implies.
I pray daily for my married children whom I love with all my soul, that they will get it together and pull together. I pray for others that I love that they will receive worthy companions willing and able to pull with them. We all have, as it were, a heavy handcart to pull. I pray that you are pulling your weight. And if you are all alone, be assured the Master is between the shafts with you.
Sources:
Olsen, A.L. (2006) The Price We Paid: The Extraordinary Story of the Willie & Martin Handcart Pioneers. Deseret Book Company. p. 315
