The Calling

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Mim was so touched that Ella thought of her as a granddaughter that she nearly confided in her about her great devotion for Danny Riehl. In her diary, she had filled the margins with versions of her name connected to Danny Riehl: Mrs. Daniel Riehl, Miriam Riehl, and her very favorite, Danny’s Mim.

  Mim had never told a soul how she felt about Danny. Although she shared almost everything with her sister Bethany, she had never mentioned Danny to her, because sometimes, oftentimes, her sister could be a little insensitive. If Danny found out, even accidentally, about Mim’s deep feelings for him, it would be the most humiliating thing she could ever imagine.

  Today, as Mim ran to get the mail, she was glad she had turned down her York County cousin’s invitation and for an entirely different reason than Danny or Ella. Nearly every day, there was a letter in the Inn at Eagle Hill mailbox addressed to Mrs. Miracle from someone who direly needed an answer to a problem.

  A few months ago, when Mim’s mother, Rose, had first opened the Inn at Eagle Hill, she had asked Mim to paint a sign for the inn. Mim was known far and wide for her excellent penmanship. Excellent. She worked long and hard on the large wooden sign, penciling the letters, painting them in black with a fine-tipped paintbrush. At the bottom of the sign, Mim had added a little Latin phrase she had found in a book and liked the way it rolled off her tongue: Miracula fieri hic. At the time, she didn’t realize what it meant: Miracles occur here.

  A newspaper reporter, who happened to have taken five years of high school Latin, he said, translated the phrase and said this was the story he’d been looking for. There was a human-interest angle to spin from the Latin phrase—it spoke to a longing in everyone for a place that fed their soul and spirit. He wrote up an article, weaving in truth and mistruths, about the miracles that occurred at the Inn at Eagle Hill. The article was picked up by the Pennsylvania newspapers, then the internet, and so on and so forth. Soon, the inn was considered to be a place where people could practically order up a custom-made miracle like a hamburger. And then people started to write letters to Mrs. Miracle. Buckets and buckets of letters. They kept pouring in. Mim’s mother, overwhelmed by the quantity, was relieved when Mim offered to answer the letters. But she told Mim what to say: “The Inn at Eagle Hill couldn’t solve their problems. Only God could provide miracles.”

  Mim believed that part about God and miracles, but after reading a few letters, she thought she could help the people solve their problems. Most of the problems were pretty simple: injured feelings, sibling rivalry, how to cook and clean. All of that she had plenty of experience with, especially with the sibling rivalry. Her two little brothers couldn’t be in the same room without some kind of fuss and tussle. So she decided to answer a few letters, offering advice, posing as Mrs. Miracle. Then a few more and a few more, until she finished the big pile. She knew she hadn’t done what her mom had expected her to do, but it was just a small disobedience, a slight adjustment to the truth, and for the best of reasons. She was helping people, and hadn’t she been taught to help others? Plus, Mim was sure the letters from people seeking advice would dwindle down as the Inn at Eagle Hill miracle story blew over. After all, with this heat wave they’d been having, the inn had been getting cancellations for reservations as soon as people discovered there was no air-conditioning. If they really thought the inn could dish out miracles, they wouldn’t let a little hot weather stop them, would they?

  Maybe, maybe not. But letters addressed to Mrs. Miracle kept coming. Mim made a point of meeting the mailman each day so her mom wasn’t made aware of this interesting development. Each afternoon, she listened for the squeaky mail truck to come down their road and bolted to the mailbox when she heard it. So far, so good. The letters continued to arrive, stealthily, and the problems in the letters were still pretty simple to solve. She hadn’t been stumped yet.

  In today’s mail was a letter from the local newspaper, asking Mrs. Miracle if she would like to have a regular column in the Stoney Ridge Times. Mrs. Miracle would be paid five dollars each time the column ran. Five whole dollars! Mim would be rich!

  There was just one glitch. The letter from the newspaper stated she needed to be over eighteen and they wanted her signature and birth date on the W-2 form. Mim was only fourteen. She didn’t mind bending the rules for a good cause, and this was definitely a worthy cause. But she would need help. First, she thought about asking Naomi King, her friend and neighbor, who had turned eighteen recently. But then she dismissed that notion. Naomi followed rules the way she quilted: even, straight, tiny, perfect stitches. No mistakes. Keeping a secret like Mrs. Miracle’s true identity might cause Naomi to unravel.

  Then she thought of her sister Bethany, who had just turned twenty and didn’t mind bending rules at all. But the tricky part was catching Bethany in just the right mood to ask for a favor. It all depended if Bethany was feeling friendly or not. Anticipating Bethany’s moods lately took skill—often, she seemed pensive and just wanted to be left alone. It was all because of Jake Hertzler. He was Bethany’s ex-boyfriend, a charming fellow who had worked for her father at his investment company. When Schrock Investments went belly up, Jake Hertzler, along with Mim’s oldest brother Tobe (again, to be precise, Tobe was her half brother), went missing.

  On a cheerier note, this newspaper column was a wonderful opportunity for Mrs. Miracle. It was disappointing that Mim needed to keep this opportunity top secret—her mother, and especially her grandmother, must never find out! The way Mim rationalized it, it was only a tiny breaking of all the rules her church was so fond of and she was helping all kinds of people and that was worth keeping a secret or two. But if her grandmother found out—oh my! Then Mim would be full of the devil.

  As soon as Geena Spencer arrived at her church office this morning, the elder board of the New Life Church of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, had called her into a meeting and told her, gently and firmly, that they were very sorry but things weren’t working out the way they had hoped and they had to let her go. They had already found another interim youth pastor, an enthusiastic young man fresh out of seminary, to fill in for her. Starting today. They thanked her for her service, said they’d provide a glowing letter of recommendation, and asked if she needed any help cleaning out her office.

  Stung and ashamed, Geena bent her head, and went to her office.

  Objectively, she could see that they were right. The elder board had wanted a youth pastor who could preach the paint off the wall and act like a magnet for the youth of Ardmore. They had a plan to triple the size of the youth group, thereby drawing parents into the main sanctuary. Geena had a way with people, especially teens, as long as it was one-on-one, but as hard as she tried, she was a terrible public speaker. That was why she’d been passed over for so many positions. She only received the church in Ardmore because her favorite seminary professor, who happened to be her uncle and a good friend of the head elder, had called in a few favors and promised Geena would improve with time and practice.

  Also, no other candidate accepted the call.

  It had been an opportunity for Geena to prove herself, but after only six weeks, the elders started to pay her Monday morning visits with what they considered to be helpful suggestions: “Don’t read your notes. Make eye contact. Speak up. Slow down. Speed up.” Their feedback only made her all the more nervous. During youth group each Wednesday night, a handful of elders would come and sit in the back of the room. She would glance out at the sea of young faces, then at the back row of old faces, and feel a startled jolt, a deer in headlights, as if she were preaching to a room full of dour seminary professors.

  Geena knew she wasn’t a gifted orator, but she thought by now the church might have developed an appreciation for all she did do well: She’d been told she was a “2 a.m. pastor”—the kind families wouldn’t hesitate to call in a crisis. During spring break, she organized a youth group trip to help on a Habitat for Humanity building project in Kentucky. She started weekly Bible studies—one for the boys and one for
the girls. While the youth group wasn’t exactly tripling—not by a long shot—she was discipling a core of committed teens. She tried to equip them so they could influence their peers in any situation—at school, in sports, or just hanging out. She never forgot anyone’s name. And she loved them, every single one of them.

  But obviously, all that wasn’t enough.

  It was humiliating to suddenly be let go, released. Fired. As she took books off the shelves and placed them in boxes, she kept telling herself to pull it together, to find a way to get over this, to stop being a big baby. But it wasn’t working.

  She felt sorry for herself. It was hard not to. She thought this was “it”—the job she’d been waiting for all her life. At long last she could set down roots. She’d been Head of Children’s Ministry for five different churches since she graduated from seminary—hoping one or the other might turn into a youth pastor position. Each opportunity seemed promising, until the Sunday morning came when Geena was given a chance to fill in for the senior pastor. It was customary for the ordained staffers to preach on low attendance Sundays—after Christmas, after Easter. When the congregation heard her preach, everything went south.

  No call ever came, not until the one from this church in Ardmore.

  The call to ministry was a strange thing. It was exactly that—a calling, a thing you responded to not because you wanted to but because you had to.

  Stranger still to have the call and not get a call.

  As Geena opened her top desk drawer, her eyes fell on a gift certificate from grateful parishioners, a quirky, big-hearted couple named Lois and Tony. They had given it to her a month ago, after she had come to the hospital when their granddaughter had been involved in a car accident. She stood vigil with them until the doctor brought good news, and they were appreciative of Geena’s calming presence during those troubling hours. The gift certificate was for two nights’ stay at an Amish bed-and-breakfast in Lancaster County.

  Impulsively, Geena called the Inn at Eagle Hill and asked if there was an opening for tonight. A woman answered the phone, her voice as soft as chocolate. “Actually, I happen to have a week’s opening because of a cancellation,” she said. “The heat wave we’re having is discouraging fair-weather visitors. I have to warn you, we don’t have any air-conditioning.”

  Geena jumped at the chance to leave town. “I don’t mind the heat. I just need . . . a place to take a break and do some serious thinking for a few days. I’ll take the whole week.” Boy, did she ever have thinking to do. Like, her entire future.

  “Well, then, it sounds like you’ll be coming to the right place.”

  Two hours and one stop at Sonic for a double cheeseburger and fries later, Geena had exited I-76, driven along the Philadelphia Pike, then followed her GPS to the country road that wound to Stoney Ridge. She noticed a siren in her rearview mirror. She pulled over, hoping the police officer just needed to pass by. Her heart sank as he stopped his patrol car behind hers. He walked to her passenger window, leaned over, and growled, “License and registration.”

  Geena handed him the paperwork and waited while he returned to his car. After a few more long moments, the officer reappeared at her window. “What brings you to Stoney Ridge, Ms. Spencer?”

  “Reverend. Reverend Spencer. I’m a minister.” She was slightly ashamed to play that minister card, but . . . it often worked in the clutch.

  He didn’t bat an eye.

  “What brings me here? Just a whim.” She shrugged. “I needed a little vacation.”

  He nodded slowly. “Well, I’m sorry your vacation is starting off on a sour note,” he said as he scribbled on his pad, “but as fast as you were going, I really don’t have a choice.” He tore the ticket off the pad and handed it to her. “You’d better start slowing down, Reverend Spencer. You’re in another world.”

  2

  It was the silence that woke Geena on the first morning after her arrival at the Inn at Eagle Hill. She had never heard such silence. Now and then, a horse would neigh to another horse, an owl would hoot, or she’d hear the clip-clop of a horse and buggy travel along the road. Mostly, though, all was still. Utter quiet.

  She tried to go back to sleep—after all, how many times in her life could she sleep in?—but finally gave up and decided to take a long walk into the hills that lined the back of the farmhouse. Rose Schrock, the Amish woman who ran the inn, the one with the voice as soft as chocolate, checked her in last night and told her about a trail that would take her to the top of the ridge.

  Rose also mentioned that breakfast would be delivered at her door at seven in the morning and hinted at something about blueberry cornbread. Geena had heard glowing stories about Amish cooks and wasn’t about to miss breakfast. Her father always said she had the appetite of a professional football player—unusually impressive for a five-foot-one, one hundred-and-seven-pound woman.

  Yesterday, as Geena got out of her car at Eagle Hill, the sour manure smell from the cornfields, mingled with the humidity of a prolonged heat wave, pinched her lungs hard enough that she coughed like an old lady to get air. Today, her nose felt a little more accustomed to the unique aroma of an Amish farm. She walked to the middle of the front lawn and turned in a slow circle, taking in a full panorama: the red barn, the mare and her colt in a fenced pasture, a goat sticking his head through to another pasture to find better grass, the soft green canopy of shade trees, the four little sheep down by the creek. Her heart missed a beat when she caught sight of an eagle pair soaring over the ridge. Eagle Hill, she decided, looked exactly as an Amish farm should. Pristine, cared for, safe for all creatures, peaceful.

  It was good that she had come.

  It was bad that she had been fired.

  What hurt her most about being let go was that she had tried so hard to meet the needs of the congregation. Once she even returned from a vacation when she learned that a fire swept through the home of a teen in her youth group. She dropped everything and helped organize a donation drive to provide for this family. How could the church turn its back on her?

  She shook her head. No wallowing, Geena.

  She had come to Eagle Hill to stop, take a breather, absorb the blow, and think about what to do next.

  The first fingers of sunlight tipped over the eastern edge of the ridge that framed the farm. The light was a delicate pale butter, washing the hills with a soft brush, hazing the edges of the trees. The very top leaves of the trees were illuminated, almost glowing. Birds whirred and whistled. A pair of squirrels chased each other around a tree trunk.

  When had she last stopped and noticed the delights of God’s handiwork in nature? Really, truly noticed?

  There was something about this farmland. It was so drastically different from the city. Not a freeway or high-rise in sight—only wide open rolling hills that whispered history and serenity. Rose had told her that by mid-August, the land would look entirely different. The farmers’ corn, now ankle high, would tower above any man. “You won’t be able to see the hills like you can now,” she told Geena. “You’ll have to just come back and see for yourself how this area changes through the months.” Geena wondered where she would be, come mid-August, when that corn grew taller than her.

  For the first time since she was a teenager, she questioned herself. What if she wasn’t meant to be a youth pastor after all? Maybe she’d misunderstood the call. What was that old joke her father used to tell? “If you get the call, you have to answer. But then again . . . you might just let it ring.”

  Geena’s father was a well-known, beloved pastor, a leader of one of the largest congregations on the East Coast, and particularly revered for the delivery and punch of his sermons. Her uncle, too, was the dean of a highly regarded seminary. They were so proud of Geena for finally getting a call to a position. How could she tell them she’d been fired?

  No wallowing, Geena. And maybe, for just a little while, no thinking about your future.

  She forked off on a trail that ran behind the hill,
pondering how she wanted to spend the rest of her day. Yesterday, as she drove through the small downtown section of Stoney Ridge, she was glad to see there wasn’t a tourist shop in sight. Not an inch of neon on Stoney Ridge’s main street. Not a single billboard. This was a place where you could walk to town, where you could buy a quart of milk or a packet of shoelaces in the village. It was easy to completely forget she was only two hours away from Philadelphia, to forget that society even existed, let alone a society brimming with traffic, hustle and bustle, and stress. She felt her soul start to settle, relax, let go.

  She had always loved to hike—had loved the feeling of being alive under the sky, feet touching the earth, being wholly herself. Thinking. Walking. Praying. On the trail, she had always been able to leave her troubles behind. Here there was only room for wind and sky and sun and communing with God.

  The early morning silence, broken only by the faintest of crickets somewhere out in the fields and the crow of a rooster, fell on her like a quilt. It had texture and depth, a velvety weight to ease her jangled nerves, her weary brain. Everything will be all right, was what she heard.

  She knew that nearly audible voice. Knew it well. It came to her when she least expected but when she most prayed for it. The words were always short and to the point; clear, concise directives. Nothing confusing, nothing vague. And the message was always accompanied with peace. Bone-deep peace that couldn’t be explained and wasn’t dependent on circumstances.

  She turned around and headed down the trail back to the farm. As she neared the farmhouse, the smoky scent of frying bacon reached her nose and she picked up her pace. She made a shortcut through the yard, along the side of the henhouse, then stopped abruptly. A man emerged through the privet bushes that ran between Eagle Hill and the neighboring farm.