Today I’m Katherina von Bora, picking over herrings for my family. When I do this I remember our escape from the monastery in the barrels of fish. The smell was awful. It was hard not to retch. I kept thinking we were not going to be fishers of men but very fishy women.
But of course after our escape the joke was on me. The other women were able to find homes, marriages, families. I was the one left over. I often wondered if the smell had clung to me. There were a few who sniffed around for a while. I rejected them, like the builder rejects the less favoured stones.
After I married Sir Doctor Luther I ran the household efficiently and even the clinic, so he had no worries. Cattle were tended to, beer was brewed, the Bible was read to the children.
They grew up and our lives together became both a pattern for other families and food for gossips. I got up early, read my Bible and kept my opinions to myself, unless he asked me directly which wasn’t that often. There was plenty to do: more children to raise meant building work on the house to make room for us all. There were morning prayers and evening prayers to supervise for the household when he was away or at the university.
After his death I went to pieces. I missed him more than I can express. Mourning is exhausting and much about the household organisation just slipped from my grasp. I didn’t know who to turn to and I made some decisions that didn’t turn out too well. But I never neglected my Bible. Although much about me has been forgotten, I remained true to Christ. I stuck to him like a burr to cloth, or like the smell of herrings sticks to a woman in a barrel of fish.