Esta

137:7.1For four long months—March, April, May, and June—this tar­ry­ing time con­tin­ued; Je­sus held over one hun­dred long and earnest, though cheer­ful and joy­ous, ses­sions with these six as­so­ciates and his own brother James. Ow­ing to sick­ness in his fam­ily, Jude sel­dom was able to at­tend these classes. James, Je­sus’ brother, did not lose faith in him, but dur­ing these months of de­lay and in­ac­tion Mary nearly de­spaired of her son. Her faith, raised to such heights at Cana, now sank to new low lev­els. She could only fall back on her so oft-re­peated ex­cla­ma­tion: “I can­not un­der­stand him. I can­not fig­ure out what it all means.” But James’s wife did much to bol­ster Mary’s cour­age.

128:5.7But hu­man af­fairs on the worlds of time and space do not run smoothly for long. In De­cem­ber James had a pri­vate talk with Je­sus, ex­plain­ing that he was much in love with Esta, a young woman of Naz­a­reth, and that they would some­time like to be mar­ried if it could be ar­ranged. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that Joseph would soon be eigh­teen years old, and that it would be a good ex­pe­ri­ence for him to have a chance to serve as the act­ing head of the fam­ily. Je­sus gave con­sent for James’s mar­riage two years later, pro­vided he had, dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing time, prop­erly trained Joseph to as­sume di­rec­tion of the home.

128:7.10In Novem­ber a dou­ble wed­ding oc­curred. James and Esta, and Miriam and Ja­cob were mar­ried. It was truly a joy­ous oc­ca­sion. Even Mary was once more happy ex­cept ev­ery now and then when she re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing to go away. She suf­fered un­der the bur­den of a great un­cer­tainty: If Je­sus would only sit down and talk it all over freely with her as he had done when he was a boy, but he was con­sis­tently un­com­mu­nica­tive; he was pro­foundly silent about the fu­ture.

128:7.11James and his bride, Esta, moved into a neat lit­tle home on the west side of town, the gift of her fa­ther. While James con­tin­ued his sup­port of his mother’s home, his quota was cut in half be­cause of his mar­riage, and Joseph was for­mally in­stalled by Je­sus as head of the fam­ily. Jude was now very faith­fully send­ing his share of funds home each month. The wed­dings of James and Miriam had a very ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence on Jude, and when he left for the fish­ing grounds, the day af­ter the dou­ble wed­ding, he as­sured Joseph that he could de­pend on him “to do my full duty, and more if it is needed.” And he kept his prom­ise.