Balm of Gilead

by Adina Senft

  He couldn’t say that taking his own way had been much of a success. Maybe God had had a hand in that, too. Maybe the best years of all were the ones that lay ahead—ahead, where Jesus stood, waiting not for him to give up, but for him to give in.

  To give. Uffgeva.

  To lay his life safely in the hand of the One who would care for it and cherish it—who would heal it and make it whole again.

  At the thought of doing that very thing, a wave of relief swept him. Uffgeva. The offering up of a life that had only ever belonged to God in the first place.

  The tears dripped through Henry’s fingers. But this time, they weren’t the salty tears of bitterness. They held instead the sweetness of surrender.

  And of joy.

  Chapter 27

  Dear Silas,

  Thank you for your prompt reply to my letter, which I was happy to receive. I am glad you are going to be in the neighborhood for a visit. Oakfield is not so far away, and maybe there will be a bathroom there for you to renovate ☺ Miriam is very happy with the work you did on hers and loses no opportunity to bless your name.

  I will be happy to see

  It will be nice to see you here in church. I wonder how you feel about courting

  About simply being friends

  The feelings in my heart have not changed. There is someone else

  “I can’t do this,” Sarah whispered into the sunny silence of her compiling room, and laid down her pen.

  She sat at the little white-painted table where so often patients sat across from her. Where Henry had sat across from her, and where he might as well be sitting right now, watching her trying to write a reply to Silas Lapp.

  Crumpling up the sad excuse for a letter, she gazed at the empty wooden chair opposite. “This is your fault,” she told it.

  Thank goodness the boys had left early to go to the singing at the Kanagys’ home—early enough, she suspected, for some fun and conversation first. Granted, Caleb was not yet sixteen, but if the younger ones didn’t get into trouble and attract too much notice, the older ones often let them join in.

  So she had the house to herself, to knit or read or write letters or simply sit here and talk to chairs.

  In a while she could start dinner. Or perhaps a better use of her time would be to give it to another. She could walk over to her in-laws’ and see how Amanda was doing, give Corinne a hand with dinner, and stay there for the rest of the evening and hope that the warmth and fellowship would raise her spirits.

  True to her vow, she hadn’t seen Henry since the Tuesday when the film crew had landed in his yard and left just as suddenly. She had stayed just long enough to hear Jesse Riehl volunteer to be the next subject of their film, and had turned on her heel and practically run for home.

  That poor boy was going to go the same way as Henry himself had at nineteen, running headlong down a path that would lead him away from his family and church, maybe for good. She could only pray that somewhere down that road he would come to his senses, or that God would step in much as He had with Henry, and lead Jesse back to the green pastures and still waters where he belonged.

  Henry might live in the middle of actual green pastures and beside a creek whose waters could only be said to be still when they were really low in the summer, but in a spiritual sense, as far as she knew, he was in a desert and far from the place where he could find nourishment for his soul.

  Maybe that was the hardest thing for her to understand about his steadfast refusal to allow God back into his heart. She tried to imagine living right here in this house, so close to her family, and not being Amish. Not going to church every other Sunday, not having the deep fellowship, love, and acceptance that came with each one submitting him- or herself to God’s will. Her imagination shuddered away from the picture.

  This was what Henry had chosen, and still, in the darkness of the night, her treacherous heart yearned over him, wishing fruitlessly that another woman’s man could be hers.

  There was a perfectly good man in Lititz who might be yearning for her in the same way, and what was she doing? Trying to write a letter in which she couldn’t tell the truth, and couldn’t bring herself to tell a kind lie. As she’d found out early in childhood, a lie always came back around to bite you, no matter how good your motives were or how clever you thought yourself in spinning it. And besides, Silas didn’t deserve such a thing. If she couldn’t be completely honest with him, then at least she ought to make up her mind one way or the other. Be single…or allow his courtship knowing that it might mean marriage.

  She wished der Herr would send her a sign so that she would know which path He wanted her to take. Because if there was one thing that was completely obvious, she needed His help.

  With a groan, she pushed away from the little table, pulled a sweater off the hook in the kitchen, and went outside. Hadn’t she found that when she really needed to be close to God, she could do it best in her garden? Simon had turned it over, and her hens were scattered over it like fluffy flowers, pulling worms and eating the seeds that had fallen, especially in the corner where the sunflowers had been planted. The big round heads were drying in the barn now, waiting for Caleb to nail them to the fence post outside the kitchen window, where they could watch the birds eating during the winter.

  It was calming, walking between the beds that had held her crazy quilt pattern. And look, here came the silage radishes, responding to the clear weather they’d been having. There was nothing quite so astonishing and hopeful as the sight of the field greening over in October as the radishes came up, and tilling them under in the spring to provide nutrients for the soil. The radishes were hardy, and willing to sacrifice themselves so that other plants could live.

  Sacrifice. Is that the lesson You wish me to learn, Lord? If it is, then I pray You will hold me and help me. It is a hard road, and only You can give me the strength to walk it.

  Someone called her name, and it took a moment to realize it was not the voice of God, but a very human voice. One she knew as well as those of her sons.

  “Henry!” Goodness, he looked terrible. “Are you all right? No, don’t come in the dirt. I was just enjoying the chickens enjoying the garden. Can I get you something from the house?” Maybe some of the trauma tincture?

  He waited for her to join him on the lawn, where she looked up into his face anxiously. “Got anything for terminal idiocy and a broken engagement?”

  Oh my. Oh my. Don’t react. Be normal. Be a friend, for surely that’s what he needs most right now.

  “In fact, I do,” she said as steadily as she could. “My Sunshine Tea is good for blows to the spirit. Do you want me to put the kettle on and you can tell me about it?”

  “No—no. It’s one of those days where sitting is the last thing I want to do—and it smells good out here. Your radishes are coming up, I see. Where are the boys?”

  “They’re at the singing, over at Kanagys’. I suspect there might be something more interesting to Simon over there than singing and snacks, since they’ve gone so early.”

  “Ah. Isn’t there a dark-haired girl Priscilla is friends with? Well, at least they won’t have far to come home.”

  “I had hoped Jesse Riehl might have been with them, but I suppose all hope of that is gone?”

  “I think Jesse is committed to his path now. Did you hear the crew had been filming at the Rose Arbor Inn?”

  “Ja, I did.” Sarah strolled beside him. “Everyone did. But I don’t understand it. How can they film Ginny if you haven’t agreed to do the show?”

  “The crew were staying at the Inn, and somehow they involved her in Jesse’s story. Priscilla told me that they were spinning it as though he was living in her boathouse while his car was being repaired, but that’s a little far-fetched. More likely he was bunking on the sitting room sofa. At least, I hope so. I haven’t heard.” He gazed up into the maple trees, as though looking at the last of the red leaves. “I can’t blame her. If both of them got something out of it
, then all the more power to them.”

  “But I still don’t understand,” Sarah said after a moment of trying to work this through in her head. “If you were adamantly against the filming, and she is to be your wife, then how could she have gone ahead with something you didn’t approve of and had already refused to do?”

  “Trust you to hit the nail on the head.” He met her gaze. “Remember what I said a minute ago about the broken engagement?”

  She hadn’t believed it. Thought it might be some kind of dark joke. Could it be possible? “Oh, Henry…no…”

  “Not because of the show. Ginny’s a businesswoman and she has every right to choose to be on it if she wants to. She also has every right to choose a guy who knows what he wants out of life—which used to be me—or even no guy at all.”

  “Used to be?” She wished for a moment she had a cup of Sunshine Tea herself, to calm the bumping of her heart against her ribs.

  “Last church Sunday, I couldn’t work, so I took a little walk. Went the opposite way along the creek and wound up below Paul’s place.”

  “Church was there that morning.”

  “I heard it. The singing. So I climbed up the bank and leaned on the back of the shed to listen.”

  “We had the baptism.”

  “So I realized, when you began singing number 108. That was always the one my dad chose.”

  “He was a minister?”

  “Yes. And you know the verse about man being able to see the Physician ready for him? Why is that even in there?”

  “Our ancestors had good reasons for everything they included in the old hymns. But I often think of the parallel—you know, how we bathe a wound before we dress it. It’s like the cleansing of the baptism, washing everything away so we can start new.”

  In silence, he paced beside her. At this rate, they would have to open the gate and go into the fields.

  “Is that what God is doing to me? Washing away my whole life so I can start new?” He huffed out a laugh. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

  “Ja, He does,” Sarah said quietly. And like the breeze in the trees, the words came in a rush. “He gives his Son in sacrifice so He can take away all our sin. So we can stand in front of Him not because we’re worthy, but because His Son has stood in our place before.” His gaze didn’t falter, nor did he make a joke or turn away or change the subject. So she plunged on. “Maybe it looks as though everything is being taken away. Your prospects. Your contract. Ginny. My heart hurts for you, truly, because I think the love between you was real.”

  “There you’re wrong, Sarah, much as it surprises me to say it.”

  “I’m wrong all the time. Just ask Linda Peachey. Or my mother-in-law. She just loves me enough to overlook it.”

  “Well, Ginny might overlook a lot, but when it came to marrying a man who wasn’t a hundred percent committed to her, she drew the line.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We had a long talk. An honest one—probably the first really honest one we’d ever had. She cut through all my self-delusions and held the truth up to me so I had to face it. She knew it wasn’t going to work but she was the only one with the guts to say it. And she was right. Love has to be whole. When it’s divided, half isn’t enough to live on.”

  Even Ginny could see that God wanted Henry for His own. What would it take for this stubborn man to see that for himself? “Come with me. I have to put the chickens in, and I don’t want to wait to hear the rest.”

  “I don’t know if there’s any more to tell.”

  “Maybe not with words.” They crossed the lawn to the henhouse, where Sarah gently encouraged the last few stragglers to stop hunting in the grass and take refuge in its safety and warmth. When she closed the door and heard the sounds of settling for the night, she smiled up at him. “Come out to the orchard with me.”

  “Picking apples on a Sunday?”

  “No. But you said you liked the way it smells out here. It’s even better out there—and as you say, walking helps a person think.”

  “Who’s thinking?” He fell in beside her. “You or me?” With a deep breath of the scented, cold air, he said, “You’re right. There’s something about the way an orchard smells in the autumn, isn’t there?”

  “Every tree contributes.”

  He chuckled. “To the sweet-smelling savor, you mean? I suppose it does. Is that what you’re saying I can do?”

  “Even if I was, I’m not the one to listen to. Listen to the still, small voice, Henry. What is it telling you?”

  He was silent, the branches rustling as they passed. “It’s saying, You’re home. Your family is here. Your church is here. Love is here. All you have to do is let yourself be healed, and reach out and become a part of it.”

  Sarah’s throat closed and she could not have spoken if she’d tried.

  And then their hands bumped accidentally as they passed under the last of the apple trees and reached the wagon track. The poplars that Michael’s great-grandfather had planted as a windbreak lined this track on the north side of his fields. She would have jerked away, lest Henry think she was being forward and trying to attract his attention at a serious moment like this, but before she could, he entwined his fingers with hers.

  It had been a very long time since a man had held her hand. She could feel the strength in those potter’s fingers as they walked slowly along the windbreak. In the silence—as she teetered between the warmth that her heart craved and the knowledge that this was forbidden—the poplars rustled, the golden leaves whispering even as the last of them fluttered down on the track in front of them.

  “My love wasn’t divided because I was lost between being worldly and being Amish,” Henry said quietly. “At least, that was only part of it. It was divided…because of you.”

  “Me?” Now her heart really would stop—if it didn’t bump right out of her chest first.

  “Yes, you. My gray-eyed friend who never hesitates to tell the truth, even when it’s hard to hear. Who cares more for others than she does for herself. Who would never admit to loving outside the faith…but who does anyway.”

  He was silent while she struggled to find words to say, but they seemed to have left her and were up there in the poplars, whispering to themselves and being no help whatsoever.

  “Am I right? Or have I made a huge mistake and I’m in this by myself?”

  He was still holding her hand. And she would bet he wouldn’t let it go—as long as she held on, too.

  “You’re not,” she whispered at last. “In it by yourself. But Henry, we can’t. It’s wrong. You must give your heart to God before you share it with me—you know it and I know it…and God knows it.”

  He squeezed her fingers in acknowledgment. “Do you think Bishop Dan is home this evening?”

  She gasped—more because she’d been holding her breath than anything. “Why?”

  “Since the baptism was this month, that means classes will start after Christmas for the spring baptism. I suppose if I drove the car over there to ask him to include me, that would send the wrong message, wouldn’t it?”

  She had her breath back now. “Henry, don’t tease me.”

  “I’m not teasing. I’m dead serious. The problem is, I don’t have a buggy and it’s too far to walk.”

  There was just enough light to see his mouth twitching as he tried not to smile. “Oh, Sarah, the look on your face. Come here.”

  He pulled her into the circle of his arms while she tried to read his eyes in the fading light. “Do you mean it?” she whispered. “You’re going to let God finish His work?”

  He tipped his forehead against hers and linked his arms at the small of her back, where her apron was pinned. “He’s gone to a lot of trouble to bring me here, and waited patiently for me to come to the end of myself. And it worked. I’ve got nothing to offer you, Sarah. A rundown farm. Probably a bunch of lawsuits. Only my heart—and I’m not even sure what condition it’s in.”

  “T
he Great Physician will take care of that, once it’s in His care. And don’t forget your hands,” she said softly. “Give your heart to God, and those hands to His service, and He will bless you. You’ll see.”

  “And you? Will you accept them, too?”

  A poplar leaf fell like a coin of gold. Then another, and another as the breeze caught them. A shower of gold, like a blessing, showing her the way she should go.

  “At the baptism in the spring,” she said against his warm cheek, “the old man will be put away, and a new one will be born. While I like the old one very much, and find him talented and smart and even rather good-looking, I know it will be safe to give the new one my love. To accept him no matter what God brings our way. And so will Caleb, and Simon, and my family.”

  “Good-looking, huh?” He grinned, and she had to laugh.

  “A woman looks on the beauty of the inner man,” she said primly.

  “Ah, but can she kiss him?”

  And that was a very good question.

  But she couldn’t answer it, because he proceeded to prove beyond a doubt that she could indeed.

  Epilogue

  On the second Thursday in May, the buggies began rolling into Jacob Yoder’s yard before the sun had a chance to clear the tops of the hills. Though it was to be a small wedding, there was still more room over there than there was at Sarah’s place, so the decision had been made to reserve her yard for the Englisch taxis and for those who were helping with the food. Small, to the Amish, was a relative term.

  The service began at eight o’clock. To Sarah, though she had been married before and had been to dozens of weddings over the years, it still seemed as though she were walking in a dream.

  She had put on a new blue dress that she’d made herself, even though sewing was far from her strong suit. Over it went the traditional white organdy cape and apron, and her Kapp was brand new and crisp with starch. Even her shoes were new, and her underthings, signifying a fresh start to her new life. Beside her for the preaching was Amanda, her Newesitzer, and across from them sat Henry, with Simon as his supporter. She had thought he would choose one of his cousin Paul’s boys, but he had shaken his head and given her the smile he kept for her alone.