New Beginnings at Promise Lodge

by Charlotte Hubbard

  As Marlin departed, Alma stopped spooning coffee into the percolator basket to focus on Frances. “That man looks like he could use a wife,” she hinted.

  “Maybe someday he’ll find one,” Frances shot back. And that was all she intended to say on the subject.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Saturday evening was the bleakest Barbara could recall enduring in her life. Shortly after the hearse returned baby Caleb’s body, she dressed him in the plain white gown Annabelle had sewn—because Bernice couldn’t bear to look at her deceased child, much less touch him. Dat and Mattie had brought the little casket, which resembled a small, flat breadbox made of pine and painted white. Barbara lined it with a white baby blanket one of the lodge ladies had crocheted.

  The moment Simon laid his tiny son inside the casket, the air stopped moving. Even with the windows open, the house grew oppressively still and even hotter than it had been during the day. It seemed appropriate for the six of them to bow in prayer, but the moment of remembrance was cut short when Bernice bolted from the front room, wailing uncontrollably as she ran upstairs.

  “I’m really worried about her,” Barbara murmured. Her sister’s crying had wakened the little twins, who’d been sleeping fitfully in their baskets, so she and Mattie scooped them up. “Bernice hasn’t been talking to us or eating or even drinking water—and in this hot weather, that’s dangerous.”

  After a long look at his tiny, silent son, Simon sighed loudly. “I’ll take a pitcher of water upstairs and sit with her. Gut night, all. Our day started around three this morning, and I’ve endured all of it I can bear.”

  When he’d left, Dat glanced at the clock. “Only seven thirty. It’ll be too light and too hot to get to sleep for a while yet—”

  “But we should go home and let these poor kids get some rest,” Mattie put in firmly. “We’ve done all we can for Caleb. Bless his little heart, he’s the only peaceful one amongst us.”

  Dat cleared his throat as though he had something he wanted to say, but a loud knock on the front door interrupted their subdued conversation. Sam went to answer it, and a few moments later he came back with Irene.

  “Look who’s brought us an air conditioner, along with a generator to run it!” he said. “Where shall we put it?”

  Barbara felt a surge of gratitude and relief as she reached for Irene’s hand. “Oh, but that’s a generous offer. You didn’t have to do that!”

  Irene squeezed her hand. “Phoebe and I had decided to get a window unit for the bakery, but I thought you folks could use it while you wait for your family to arrive—and if it’s hot on Wednesday, keep it for when you’ve got a crowd in here. With all respect for your Amish restrictions, tough times go a lot easier on folks if they’re not also miserable from the heat.”

  “You’re a godsend, Irene. We’ll be forever grateful,” Dat said as he studied the arrangement of windows in the front room. “For now, shall we put the unit in the dawdi rooms you built for when your parents visit, Sam? It’s a much smaller space, so it’ll be easier to cool.”

  “Jah, and let’s put Caleb in there,” Barbara suggested. “Maybe I can convince Bernice and Simon to sleep in that room tonight so they’ll rest better.”

  “Maybe you four and the twins should all sleep in there tonight,” Mattie suggested as she blotted her forehead with her sleeve. “And maybe you wish I’d stop giving you so much advice,” she added with a tired smile.

  About fifteen minutes later, the air conditioner was filling the dawdi room with its quiet hum and the blessed relief of cooler air. Sam gently placed the casket on top of the dresser. “I’ll ask Simon to bring some bedding,” he said wearily. “You girls can have the bed and we’ll bunk on the floor. I’ll bring your rocking chair, too.”

  Barbara nodded gratefully. After her dat and Mattie left, she glanced around the large, simple room with its double bed, dresser, a small sofa, and a recliner. A bathroom was built off to the side, and the doorways were wide enough to accommodate her mother-in-law’s wheelchair. Although she’d missed seeing Sam and Simon’s parents every day, she dreaded their arrival and the fresh welling up of grief it would mean.

  When Bernice opened the dawdi room door, Barbara immediately noticed her twin’s reluctance to come into the cooler room. She also sensed that Bernice and Simon had had some cross words before he’d convinced her to come downstairs for the night. “We’ll all get better rest in here,” Barbara murmured as she wrapped her arms around her sister’s trembling shoulders.

  But Bernice was having none of her comfort. “Why did God take my son but let your twins live?” she wailed as she pushed Barbara away. She burst into tears again. “What did Simon and I do to offend Him? It—it’s not fair!”

  Barbara’s soul shriveled as she struggled to find an appropriate response. Her sister’s shove had stung even more than her heartrending question. “We’ll never know the answer to that,” she replied as she, too, began to cry again. “Caleb seemed every bit as healthy as our girls—Minerva said so, too. And you fed him and handled him the same way I did Carol and Corene—”

  “It’s like your dat said,” Simon put in wearily, as though he’d covered this ground with Bernice several times already. “God has His reasons for taking the wee ones back—often because they’ve got some health problems we won’t be able to deal with. He doesn’t want Caleb—or us—to suffer a greater burden than we can bear.”

  “We’ll all feel better if we get some rest,” Sam suggested with a sigh. “Even if we can’t sleep, some time in quiet prayer will be gut for our souls.”

  “I can’t pray!” Bernice blurted out. “I have nothing to say to a God who robbed me of all I had to live for.”

  A fresh wave of alarm surged through Barbara as her sister stalked out, slamming the door. As the startled twins began to cry, Simon followed his wife from the room.

  Barbara lifted Corene from her basket and went to the rocking chair to feed her. “What’re we going to do about Bernice?” she whispered to Sam as he soothed little Carol. “It’s not like her to speak so bitterly about anyone, much less about God.”

  “Maybe she needs time to release her anger. She lost her son only this morning,” Sam pointed out. He gazed tenderly at the tiny girl he held. “In Bernice’s shoes, if I’d lost my precious child, I’d be out of my mind, too—probably not aware of what I was saying or how desperate my behavior appeared to the folks around me.”

  Or how dangerous, Barbara thought. As the milk surged from her breast to nurture Corene, she realized Sam was right—just as she knew she was the person most likely to penetrate her twin’s deep depression. A few minutes later she savored the satisfaction of feeding Carol as she watched her husband lovingly burp Corene against his shoulder. If only she could share her joy with Bernice—the deep peace she’d found while gazing into the two tiny faces God had entrusted to her care . . .

  When both twins were dozing in their baskets and Sam was nodding off over a magazine, Barbara slipped out of the dawdi room. In the oppressive heat of the front room, her sister stood staring out the window at the darkness, fanning herself with a folded newspaper. Simon lolled in the recliner with his shirt open and his mouth hanging slack. Barbara approached her sister slowly, praying for the right words to go along with her best intentions.

  “Bernice,” she whispered, placing a cautious hand on her twin’s shoulder. “I might not feel your loss as keenly as you do, but I’m just as puzzled about why my babies have lived while your Caleb has not.”

  Bernice sniffled as she stared bleakly out the window.

  Barbara inhaled slowly, hoping her twin would understand what she was about to do. “You and I have shared everything since before we were born, so what if—well, I want you to have one of my babies, Bernice,” she pleaded. “Please choose one of the girls and raise her as your own—”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Bernice demanded. “It wouldn’t be the same, and we both know it.”

  Barbara closed
her eyes against a fresh welling up of pain, of despair over her sister’s bitterness. “I had to offer. And if you change your mind—”

  “I won’t. Just forget it, all right?”

  Barbara winced. “If you come to realize that either Carol or Corene might be a comfort to you, let me know,” she whispered. “Meanwhile, you’ll feel a lot better if you and Simon spend the night with us in the dawdi room where it’s cooler. Please don’t let your grief become a wedge that separates us, Bernice. To me, that would be a tragedy even more devastating than losing baby Caleb.”

  Her sister fanned herself more forcefully, shutting Barbara out with her silence.

  Lord, I don’t know what else to do, Barbara fretted as she returned to the dawdi room. Keep Bernice in Your care until we can find a way to help her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  As Frances sat in the Helmuths’ large front room on Wednesday morning, surrounded by mourners at Caleb’s funeral, she saw Marlin in a new light. She’d known him to be a fine man and a patient, loving father, but as he preached the second, longer funeral sermon, he expressed his thoughts with such tender eloquence that everyone in the room listened raptly to his words of encouragement.

  “Although I’ve preached the Old Order faith for nearly twenty years, as I combed the Scriptures for inspiration earlier today, I perceived a paradox,” Marlin said as he gazed out over the crowd. “We’re familiar with the verse in Matthew’s nineteenth chapter where Jesus says ‘Suffer the little children’—which means allow them—‘and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And when one of our wee ones dies, we immediately say it’s the will of God that we suffer such a horrendous loss. Such an idea is part and parcel of our Amish faith.”

  Marlin clasped his hands in front of him. As he looked at Caleb’s tiny body, swaddled in a crocheted blanket in the open white casket that was in the center of the room, he considered his next words. “The verse we are not so well acquainted with comes before that, in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, and it tells us that ‘it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish,’” he continued earnestly. “So as I envision Caleb in heaven with the angels, lifted up and cared for in the presence of God Himself, I can’t believe that God wanted Caleb to die any more than we did. I can’t imagine God snatching a baby away as part of a mysterious, painful plan He expects His people to endure. Instead, I now prefer to believe that God is suffering right along with us today.”

  Frances straightened on the pew bench, her brow furrowed in thought. Indeed, whenever a child died, folks automatically said it was God’s will—perhaps because they didn’t know any other acceptable explanation, and because they’d been taught this belief all their lives. The people seated around Frances seemed as startled by Marlin’s assertion as she was, yet they were hanging on his words, yearning for an explanation that would soothe their troubled spirits.

  “After all, the Bible also tells us that God is love,” Marlin continued gently. “So I choose not to blame God—not to see our Heavenly Father as an active, willing participant in Caleb’s death or in anyone else’s. I believe He grieves right alongside Simon and Bernice and their families—and all of us here at Promise Lodge.”

  Frances glanced at the two men who sat on the preacher’s bench, and at Preacher Amos, who sat on the men’s side of the room, as well. Bishop Monroe’s brown eyes were wide with the possibility that Marlin had hit upon a worthwhile interpretation of the Scriptures, while Preachers Eli and Amos contemplated Marlin’s suggestion with expressions of staunch disbelief and disapproval at first . . . until a ray of hope lit Amos’s sorrow-lined face.

  “I have no answer to our questions about why Caleb didn’t live longer than four days,” Marlin continued in a voice that thrummed with faith, “but I choose to envision him in the arms of Jesus our Savior with God holding them both in His everlasting embrace. This way, I can believe that Caleb has gone on to his reward, free from the trials and tribulations of this earthly existence. That thought brings me peace and helps me move past my previous doubts about God’s intentions for his littlest angels.”

  Frances dabbed at her eyes, moved to tears by Marlin’s beautiful imagery of Caleb being cradled in Jesus’s arms as God surrounded both of them with His powerful love. Some of the men across the Helmuths’ front room appeared to struggle with a suggestion that countered what they’d been taught all their lives, yet the women were glancing at one another with wide, expectant eyes. Could it be true, what Marlin was preaching? Had the hard and fast Amish doctrines about God’s will, passed down through generations, given them the wrong idea about Him?

  “I’m not saying that everything we’ve always been taught about God’s will is incorrect, because the preachers and bishops we’ve listened to have been inspired by God, just as I am,” Marlin insisted as he read the faces in the congregation. “I’m just suggesting a shift in our vision. Today God has asked me to comfort His people.”

  Marlin smiled gently at the congregation, and when his gaze lingered on Frances for a moment, she felt as though she might float away despite the heaviness in her heart.

  “If we can believe that Caleb will forever bask in the glorious sunshine of the Lord,” Marlin concluded, “maybe we can claim some of that heavenly sunshine for ourselves as we anticipate the day that we, too, shall behold God’s glory.”

  Frances’s mouth dropped open. As a bishop’s wife, she’d listened to many sermons on the futility of speculating about which way a soul went when it departed its earthly body. Floyd had insisted that by the end of a person’s life, God had already decided if that man or woman was destined for heaven or hell, so Amish folks didn’t talk much about where their departed friends and family members would spend eternity.

  But surely a blameless baby goes straight to the arms of Jesus, just the way Marlin described it, Frances thought as he took his seat on the preachers’ bench.

  “A shift in our vision,” Bishop Monroe reiterated as he stood to bring the service to a close. His handsome face glowed with an inner radiance as he gazed at little Caleb’s body and then at all the folks who listened to him. “It seems exceedingly appropriate here at Promise Lodge to open ourselves to a shift in our vision when our Lord opens our hearts to such a possibility, doesn’t it?”

  The bishop stood tall, raising his right hand to pronounce the benediction. “May God hold Caleb in His love forever, and may we feel our Lord’s comfort and a peace that passes all understanding as we move beyond our loss. Amen.”

  A soft collective sigh filled the room as everyone absorbed what the bishop had said, and how he’d reaffirmed the rightness of Marlin’s ideas. As Frances filed past Caleb’s casket for the final time, it seemed her vision was already shifting. The last funeral she’d attended had been Floyd’s. In her darker moments, she’d wondered if her husband’s crying out to angels to catch Amos as he fell from the shed roof—or his refusal to follow doctor’s orders—had doomed him, in God’s eyes.

  But what if he’s now standing tall and healthy in heaven, healed by the touch of the Master’s hand? Can’t you just see him beaming at Jesus as God wraps His all-encompassing arms around the two of them?

  Frances sucked in her breath. It was a dazzling idea, and it made her pulse beat faster. The hint of doubt about Floyd’s eternal status vanished as she continued to consider her new vision of him, while she followed the flow of mourners out into the yard. In the heat of late morning, folks clustered in the shade beneath the big trees, awaiting the appearance of the Helmuths and Caleb’s closed casket.

  When someone grasped Frances’s hand, she blinked. Annabelle was standing beside her in the crowd, unabashedly wiping tears from her face.

  “God has surely led me to Promise Lodge,” Annabelle said in a quavering voice. “What a powerful message—what a vision of hope Preacher Marlin gave us! Where I come from, the preachers dish up the usual phrases about ashes to ashes and how the L
ord giveth and taketh away, and—well,” she added as she smiled through her tears, “I feel revived. Revitalized.”

  “Preacher Marlin’s following our bishop’s lead, focusing on all things bright and beautiful rather than dwelling in the valley of the shadow,” Frances confirmed. “My late husband, Floyd, was our previous bishop—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry if I called up your grief,” Annabelle interrupted ruefully.

  Frances looked into Annabelle’s deep green eyes, sensing her new neighbor was going to become a good friend as time went by. “No, it’s not that way,” she murmured. “Floyd was a conservative bishop who didn’t venture away from traditional teachings. Although I have no trouble imagining the outraged expression on his face if he’d been here listening to Marlin’s sermon today, I . . . I think he would’ve seen the value of shifting his vision, after he’d thought about it awhile.

  “Then again,” Frances added lightly, “I’ve been mistaken a time or two about what Floyd might’ve said or done.”

  Annabelle’s face creased with a smile. “Jah, any woman who assumes she knows everything about her husband is setting herself up for a rude awakening—or at least some surprises.”

  Frances wondered again what had compelled Annabelle’s husband to leave her and the Old Order, but it wasn’t the proper time to discuss such a topic. The crowd around them became respectfully quiet as Simon and Sam emerged from the house carrying the little casket between them. Barbara and Bernice followed behind them, their wet faces pale beneath their black kapps. Preacher Amos and Mattie stepped into the procession behind Enos Helmuth, who pushed his wife, Dorcas, in her wheelchair. All told, Frances had counted nearly thirty Helmuth relatives from Ohio. They’d hired a driver and a bus to make the trip, and they were staying either in the cabins behind the lodge or in the homes of Promise Lodge folks.

  Everyone walked silently across the lawn and the road, entering the neatly mowed cemetery that was surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence that Mattie’s son, Noah, and Preacher Eli had constructed. After Bishop Monroe said a few words, the casket was lowered into the small grave Roman had dug. As men in the family took turns shoveling dirt back into the grave, Marlin read the words of a familiar hymn—because singing wasn’t considered proper at a funeral.