An Amish Family Christmas

by Murray Pura

  “I pray it won’t be a long season.”

  “What makes you say that? You’re stubborn, they’re stubborn...it could last a thousand years.”

  “It won’t. You know it won’t. God will do something. He’s the only one who can be a just arbitrator in this business.”

  She almost gasped. “God will do something? For him one day is as a thousand years! Why don’t you do something instead?”

  “What would I do?”

  “I don’t know. Repent. Change the rules. Fix the bishop with your tools and your glue.”

  Micah smiled. “There is something I can do. Steal a kiss.”

  Her face reddened as if she were a schoolgirl. “Steal a kiss? We’re not to have any relations.”

  “I asked the bishop if I could be permitted a welcome home kiss.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Bishop Fischer waved his hand in the air as if it were not a big thing. ‘Ja, ja,’ he told me, ‘kiss, kiss.’ So that gives me at least two kisses under the Ordnung. Though I’m pretty sure I get more because I think his ‘kiss, kiss’ is plural...you know, that it means as many kisses as I like.”

  The smile crept over Naomi’s mouth again. “That’s what you think.”

  He shrugged and reached out to brush his thumb over the full redness of her mouth. His touch sent an electric shock through her from head to foot.

  “Ja, that’s what I think,” he replied. “Come, let Maria take us around to the back of the house where the Zooks and the Harshbergers don’t have eyes.”

  She kissed his thumb. “You make me feel like I’m sixteen.”

  “Ja? Well, I intend to do something that will fortify you until this whole enlistment and shunning controversy is put to bed and settled.”

  “Fortify me? What do you have in mind?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He steered the buggy along their lane and behind the house. Now all that could be seen were acres of dry brown hayfields. Gently he removed her dark bonnet and drew the pins out of her hair one by one.

  “A woman’s crowning glory is her hair,” whispered Micah. “Paul knew what he was talking about.”

  “You’re going to quote the Bible to me now?”

  “Of course, why not?”

  “I think Paul meant if a woman had abundant hair it was a glory to her for it covered her head.”

  “I could start with the Song of Solomon if you wish.”

  “Oh, stop. You make me blush.”

  “Your hair is just like a shining night. There’s scarcely any difference. You have no idea how many times I wrote that in my letters. You have no idea how many times I looked up at the desert stars far away from the bright lights of Kandahar and thought of how your hair moves through my fingers and how it flows over your shoulders and down your back at bedtime. Thinking of you was like fire eating me up. You consumed me, Naomi, you took everything.”

  “Hush. Don’t exaggerate so.”

  “I’m not exaggerating.” Her dark hair was loose over her neck and dress as he took her face in his hands. “How I love you. How I thank God for you, my bride.”

  Tears cut down her cheeks. “I feel the same way...oh, I feel the same way. Forgive me for holding back, forgive me for not welcoming you home with a hug and a kiss.”

  “Welcome me now, Naomi Bachman.”

  His mouth came down over hers. She responded by returning the kiss with a surge of passion. He rejoiced in the farm-girl strength of her arms and hands as she held him tight. He poured all the long nights into his kiss, all the desert heat, all the danger, all the fear that he would never see her again, the death, the dying, the wounded he saved and the wounded he couldn’t save, the tears, the pain...everything from a war ten thousand miles away that had cut him in two. When they finally gently released each other, he touched his lips to her long hair, to her throat, to the curve where neck and shoulder met, back to her eyes, her cheeks. He pried her hands away from him and covered them with kisses, he drank in her scent and her warmth, and it was never enough, it had been too long.

  “Micah.” She pulled back with a gasp. “If you keep this up there will be nothing left of me.”

  “I want you fortified for the weeks ahead.”

  “Fortified? I have no reserves left. You haven’t fortified me. You’ve besieged me.”

  “So you surrender?”

  “I surrender.”

  “I was saving all of it up for an entire year.”

  “Ja, it feels like that.”

  “It is like that.” He glanced at the back door of the house and the sheet of plywood that covered it. “If I were free to do so I would tear the board off that door and carry you inside.”

  “Oh, it would be cold inside, Micah.”

  “Not for long.”

  “Make peace with the leadership, and I will let you do that.”

  “I would start a fire in the stove first, believe me.”

  “Why bother?”

  He smiled. “So now my mischievous Amish Annie is back. How long will she stay?”

  Naomi traced her finger over his lips. “Forever. I still don’t understand why you did what you did, but you’re my man, my husband, and I love you.”

  “What did you say?”

  She laughed. “I said I loved you.”

  “If we have come that far that fast, it calls for another kiss.”

  Naomi pushed him back with both hands. “Oh no you don’t. We need to get back and see how your sister is getting along with Luke. And I need to pin my hair up.”

  “I can help with that.”

  “Oh, sure, you can help! I put one pin in and you pull out two!” She took a hand off his chest and lifted a finger in warning. “Keep your eyes out for gossips and give me three minutes.”

  Micah leaned back with a smile on his face. “And what exactly do you want me to do if I see gossips?”

  “Push my head down so they don’t see me and then wave to them.”

  “Ah, wave to them. Do you think they will wave back to a soldier?”

  Naomi had her hands up in her hair, gathering it at the back of her head, pins in her mouth. “They don’t know you’re a soldier,” she mumbled with difficulty.

  “But if they recognize my face they’ll know. I don’t think there’s a welcome for soldiers here.”

  Her eyes were a strong dark brown as she looked at him, putting the finishing touches to her hair. “Your sister and your mother and father have welcomed you. Your wife has welcomed you. It took her a while, ja, but she finally did the right thing. The Lord alone knows—the day may arrive when the whole Amish community will welcome you home with open arms.”

  “You don’t really think that, do you, Naomi?”

  She fastened her prayer kapp back on her head. “A day ago I would have said no. Two hours ago I would have said no. Now something in me says ja.”

  “Something in you says ja but you have no idea how this change of heart is supposed to suddenly sweep down on hundreds of people?”

  Her eyes and lips smiled. “The Christmas spirit maybe?” She kissed him on the cheek. “It’s not my problem. Or yours. It’s God’s.” She linked her arm through one of his. “You should drive us home now, my husband.”

  Rebecca was standing at the door with her hands on her hips as the buggy pulled into the yard.

  “You two have been gone a long time,” she said. “I was worried.”

  Naomi climbed down from the buggy. “Worried about what?”

  Rebecca studied her friend’s face. A smile slipped over her mouth. “Oh, worried you might have been fighting. But now that I see you, I realize that’s not the case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone has been kissing,” Rebecca whispered.

  Red sprang onto Naomi’s cheeks, and Rebecca’s smile grew. “This is a good thing, ja? After all, he is your husband and he’s been gone a long time. When you left the house you were ice. You come back and you have thawed. So I pr
aise the Lord. That’s one prayer answered, and answered very quickly for such a difficult matter. Now I have high hopes all the other prayers I’m praying will be answered just as swiftly.”

  Four

  A fresh snowfall came in the door with Bishop Fischer and the ministers Sunday afternoon. Naomi and Rebecca helped them hang their coats and hats on pegs and then served them coffee as they sat by the woodstove in the parlor. Micah joined them. The two women went into the kitchen, leaving the men to their talk.

  “Not so hot as the desert, eh?” asked the bishop, holding his hands toward the stove and rubbing them.

  Micah smiled. “Summer days and summer nights are both warm in Kandahar, it’s true. But nights in Kabul are cooler.”

  “I suppose it didn’t make any difference to you with the work you did.”

  “No, sir. You go to the sick and wounded no matter what the weather conditions are or how hot the temperature is. The same way you would go to someone in the church if they were hurt or ill, Bishop Fischer.”

  “Well. It’s not the same thing, Micah.”

  “Why not, sir?”

  “I would go because it is a bishop’s duty, a calling from God.”

  “I did it for the same reason.”

  The bishop breathed out noisily. “Micah—”

  Micah looked at the bishop over the rim of his coffee cup. “If one of your draught horses was injured on Sunday, would you bring in the vet?”

  “No, no, not if it wasn’t serious. It could wait for Monday.”

  “What if it was life threatening?”

  The bishop tugged at his untrimmed gray beard with his thick fingers. “I see where you’re going with this, young man. Still, it’s not the same. We are in a Christian environment here. A war zone is not a holy place.”

  “Just suppose, God forbid, two drug gangs had a fight along one of our roads here, in front of several of our farms.”

  “Nonsense.” Minister Yoder, bald, spectacled, with a long black beard and huge arms folded across his chest, glared at Micah.

  “Suppose one car was chasing another, shots were fired, a car crashed, more gunfire—a gang war right in the middle of our Amish community. Then one car speeds away and leaves behind a burning wreck and bodies in the ditch.”

  “We call the police,” growled Minister Yoder. “And the ambulance.”

  “Of course. But it will take them some time to get here. What will you do until then?”

  “Pray.”

  “Yes, Minister, pray, but meanwhile men are bleeding to death. These are not holy men, not churchmen, not Amish men, but they are men made in the image of God. What will you do?”

  “You and your trick questions,” Minister Yoder rumbled. “Suppose, suppose. We do not live in the world of suppose, suppose. Such a thing would never happen here.”

  Micah sipped at his coffee. “Jesus lived in the world of suppose, suppose.”

  “What?”

  “All his stories. All his parables. The events never happened. But he told the stories so he could get people to think about what they believed, about what they would do. He told them to get people to think about what they should do. Just as I’m doing now.”

  “He was the Lord Jesus Christ and you are not!”

  Micah set down his coffee cup. “Who is your neighbor, Minister Yoder?”

  The door to the parlor was closed, but Naomi and Rebecca could hear the men’s voices as the two women sat at the kitchen table and sewed up the tears in Luke’s clothing.

  Rebecca shook her head and smiled. “They will never out argue Micah.”

  Naomi had stopped using her needle, listening for a response. But the parlor was silent until the bishop spoke again.

  “I see where you’re going with this. Yes, we would care for them just as you cared for men on the battlefield. The difference is, you went looking for trouble but we deal with what the Lord brings across our path, no more than that.”

  Naomi heard Micah’s reply. “Jesus went looking for trouble.”

  “Nonsense.” Minister Yoder again.

  “He could have stayed in Nazareth. Made people come to him. But he didn’t. He went to them. Even to the war zone.”

  “What war zone is this?” the bishop asked.

  “Jerusalem. Where he knew they wanted to kill him. But he went anyway. Healed the sick. Cured the lame. Made the blind see. Closed up wounds. Stopped the bleeding. Dealt with head injuries and eye injuries and back injuries. He was a divine medic. A holy army surgeon.”

  “He was no medic or surgeon, young man. He did not heal men so they could fight again and take other men’s lives.”

  “But he did. Don’t you think the Roman centurion fought? Don’t you think his servant helped him prepare for battle? Yet Jesus healed the servant.”

  Silence.

  Micah’s voice again. “Jesus didn’t ask many questions. If a person had faith, that was enough. Do we know what every man or woman was like before they came to Jesus for help? Were they all pure? Were they all good? And what happened after they were healed? Did they make mistakes and errors in judgment, did they curse or lie or steal or hurt others? Or were they perfect for the rest of their lives?”

  More silence.

  “The war with the Romans came thirty or forty years after Jesus was crucified. Some of the men he healed, especially the young, would have taken up arms against the Roman occupation. They would have fought and killed and been killed. Yet Jesus healed them anyway. He healed everyone, knowing that some of them might do harm with their new lives, might rob, murder, or blaspheme. He healed men who worked for soldiers and men who would become soldiers.

  “I don’t know what all the men and women I bandaged and gave blood transfusions and saved did with their new lives. Ja, some went back into combat. But others went home. What sort of people are they now? Good, kind, gracious, forgiving? Petty, cruel, bitter, harsh? I have no idea. That’s in God’s hands. I only tried to do what Jesus did—go and find the hurt and wounded and heal them, whoever they were and wherever they were. I wanted to be like him in Afghanistan. Just like him.”

  Naomi closed her eyes and bent her head.

  But he is right. Everything he says is right. His words are much stronger than they were a year ago. He has thought about this. He has prayed about this. They must agree with him.

  “You have a lot to say, don’t you?” Minister Yoder’s voice was deep. “A lot to say and you think you are Jesus now. You go to the desert and come back Jesus, hm? But you are only a man, a sinner, and your words are worthless. You took your vows, you were baptized, and you knew when you joined the army—yes, even as a medic—that you were breaking the Ordnung. All this fancy talk of yours is pointless. Either you repent or you don’t. It is as straightforward as that.”

  “It seems to me you have meant well.” The bishop said more softly. “You did nothing in malice or with deceit. But we do not go to war, not even to heal, no, not even for that. Will you lay this down before the Lord? Will you confess your disobedience?”

  The two women couldn’t hear Micah’s response.

  “Very well. So the bann will go into effect once again at the end of the day, at the stroke of twelve. You know all that you must not do while this is in force. To everything else, I add this—you will do none of your medical work among us, all that you learned at the military base here in America, all you learned in Afghanistan, all the army taught you...no, none of it you will practice. Do you understand?”

  “I do understand, ja.”

  “So we pray and leave you with your soul and your conscience in the hands of the Lord.”

  It was quiet for five minutes though both women could hear murmuring as the men prayed. Then the parlor door opened, and the ministers and Bishop Fischer filed out. They nodded to Naomi and Rebecca, put on their coats and hats, and left, snow swirling thicker and faster over their shoulders and backs. The wheels creaked and the horses snorted as their hooves chopped the ice and frozen mud. They
were gone. Rebecca shut the door tightly.

  “It’s almost dark,” she said.

  Naomi was standing and looking at her husband, who had emerged quietly from the parlor.

  “My coffee got cold.” He held up his cup. “I talked too much and didn’t drink enough. The talking part won’t be an issue for a few months or years now that the bann is in force again.”

  “You reasoned well,” said his sister.

  “Not well enough. I thought I had a better approach than a year ago, better ideas, better Scriptures...but apparently not.”

  “It was better, brother.”

  “Was it? It swayed no one.”

  Naomi came and took the cup from his hand. “It swayed me.”

  He looked at her sharply. “What?”

  “What you said was right. I know it. I couldn’t refute your arguments. Neither could they. So they ran and hid behind the Ordnung. You broke their rules, and that’s all that matters to them. Should the Ordnung be changed? Ja. Will they change it? No.” She smiled. “At least, not yet.”

  Half of his mouth curved upward. “You think you can get someone like Minister Yoder to change the Ordnung? You think you can get someone like Minister Yoder to change his mind?”

  “It’s not necessary to change Minister Yoder. It’s only necessary to change the bishop. If he says ja, it is ja. If he says nein, it is nein.”

  “And you think that will be easy?”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy.” She grasped his hand and led him to the table. “Sit. I’ll pour you the coffee you never enjoyed because you were too busy preaching your sermon.”

  “A sermon that fell on deaf ears.”

  She pinched his ear. “Am I deaf?”

  “Hey! That hurt.”

  “So remember who heard you. I should be a big enough convert for you for the moment.”

  “Then you’re saying you understand?”

  Naomi emptied his cold coffee in the sink. “No, I’m not saying I understand. Just that I believe your argument is sound. And scriptural. But do I understand? You could have accomplished the same thing by joining an EMS team here in Pennsylvania.” She poured fresh coffee from a pot on the stove and set his cup down in front of him. “They save lives too. But not in a war zone.”