An Amish Family Christmas (13 page)

“No, no, stay where you are. This will only take a few minutes. I am allowed to speak with you, you are allowed to listen, all right?”

Micah nodded and sat back down.

“I’m known for being forthright. Over the years I have counted it a blessing. I don’t mince words, but speak plainly. And so it is good to speak so. As long as what you say is grounded in truth.” He nodded as he looked at Micah. “Of course I had trouble with you enlisting and going to war. We all did. I still have trouble with it. But that is not why I have come.”

Naomi had left the sink with its warm water and dishes and saw and heard Minister Yoder from just outside the kitchen. Rebecca stood beside Minister Yoder with a dishtowel in her hand.

“I freely admit I can be stubborn and headstrong,” Minister Yoder continued. “Two of my many faults the Lord is working on by day and by night. I am here to apologize for my actions on the road. I yelled. I accused. I pushed you with my hands as hard as I could. My behavior was unbecoming, especially for an Amish minister.” His eyes glimmered. “God forgive me. But I ask your forgiveness as well.”

Naomi saw the movement in her husband’s eyes and on his face.

“Yet there is more I must say,” Minister Yoder rumbled. “Our bishop is fond of saying that God’s ways are not our ways and that often enough he doesn’t do things in the manner in which we should like to see them done. I find the truth of that in what God has done with your life, Micah Bachman. I said
nein
, and I still say
nein
to your military training,
ja
, even your training as a medic.

“But what happens? My son is fooling around on his motorbike. He has an accident. He could die. What can I do? What can any of us in our Amish community do? So but you are there with your military training. You understand immediately what must be done, for you have dealt with wounded men on the battlefield. I and the others say no to your army training and no to medical work in Afghanistan. But if you had not had your training in the army, if you did not have the experience of treating wounded men in Afghanistan, my son would be dead now. I and his mother would not be traveling to Philadelphia to see him in the hospital. We would be laying his body out on a table in our house and washing it and clothing it for the funeral.”

Naomi couldn’t remain where she was any longer. She made her way to the doorway of the parlor. Minister Yoder’s big hands were trembling on the hat he held in his hands. Both Micah’s and Luke’s faces gleamed in the light from the woodstove.

“Who can understand these things? We say what you did was against the
Ordnung.
Yet God uses what is against the
Ordnung
to save a life—my son’s life. I, who have been against you from the start, I am the one who is blessed by your disobedience to our rules. You are the one under the
bann
who stops on the road and treats the wounds of the boy whose father agreed with the bishop and ordered the
bann
. How is this possible? Who but God Almighty can bring such a thing to pass? And what am I to do about this? What am I to understand? How am I to change?”

He shook his head.

“I must go. I once again ask your forgiveness, Micah Bachman. You are part of God’s work in this world in a way that baffles me, for it challenges so much of what I believe. I must ponder this. I must pray. But somehow, and not only on the road, I have been wrong.”

Minister Yoder turned to leave and hesitated. He looked back at Micah. Then he thrust out his hand. Micah got up and took it. Minister Yoder nodded, not taking his eyes off Micah. After several moments he walked from the room, put his hat on his head, opened the door, and went out into the snow and the headlight beams and the dark. In less than a minute everyone inside the house heard the car drive away.

Twelve

T
hat night Naomi fell fast asleep despite all the thoughts whirling through her mind.

Suddenly, in the middle of a dream, she blinked her eyes.

The room was dark. Something had awakened her.

Click. Click. Click.

She sat up.

Whirrrrr.

Music began to play—tinny and metallic, but she knew the tune well, a German folk melody that was also used for a hymn.

Chime. Chime. Chime. Chime.

“It’s four o’clock,” she said.

She lit a match.

On the top of her bookcase, a large wooden clock had opened its doors, and a man leading a big gray Percheron out of its stable was moving slowly toward her. He wore a broad-brimmed Amish
hat and black pants with suspenders that ran up and over his white shirt. He stopped when he was halfway, as if to encourage her to rise, and then he carried on, the turntable moving him and the horse in a circle back inside the stable and the clock. The doors shut.

So you fixed it. My wedding present from you. Good for Micah Bachman. I wish you could fix our marriage and the shunning of our church as easily as you fixed this clock.

She could hear Micah and Luke downstairs getting the woodstove in the parlor going as well as the one in the kitchen. Then the door opened, and she knew they were going out to the barn. Except for the sound of their boots on the floor and the clang of wood being placed in the stoves, they worked in silence.

Silence. For the year you were gone, there was nothing but silence. And now you’re home, and the silence continues.

She would get up at 4:30. Until then she liked to lie in her bed and pray and bring Bible verses to mind. First she prayed for the silence to end for both Micah and Luke. After that she prayed for Minister Yoder’s son Timothy—he had been in Philadelphia for more than a week and had pulled through. He was doing well, but like Luke, he hadn’t spoken, only glanced at his family and those who visited and then looked at the wall or out the window.

Let him walk again, Lord. Let him speak again. Let him take heart.

Her prayers took her to Minister Yoder. His apology had been astonishing. Yet in the end it had changed little. The
bann
remained in force. Micah had violated the
Ordnung
, and all the good deeds in the world couldn’t alter hundreds of years of tradition.

Yet Minister Yoder is kind to Micah now, and that’s something only you could have brought to pass, Lord. I give you thanks. When he returned from the hospital he came straight to our home to tell us how Timothy was getting along and
to say again how grateful he was for what Micah had done—who but you could have brought such a grace into our lives? Still I wish you would break the silences.

It was a Sunday. She rose and dressed and helped Rebecca make a breakfast of eggs and bacon and oatmeal. As usual, the men ate in the parlor and the women in the kitchen. Luke and Micah returned to the cattle, and Naomi and Rebecca cleaned up and got ready for church. It was being held at the home of Bishop Fischer again.

For a long time the service was only the singing of hymns. At one point Naomi closed her eyes and listened to the men’s voices. She imagined Luke’s and Micah’s among them. Opening her eyes she found that Minister Yoder had stood up and was facing them. He waited for the hymn to end, head down.

“I know we will want to sing to our God much more than this.” He removed his glasses and held them in his hand. “And we will. But I must speak. Our bishop and our other ministers know I must speak.” He looked from face to face. “About Timothy, you know. Praise the Lord, he gets stronger every day. We pray for his voice, yes, how much we wish to hear his voice again, but he eats, he sits up all on his own without any help from the nurses. We are filled with gladness.” He paused, glancing out a window at the sun shining on the snow. “While I was there with my wife I saw other patients in other rooms. Every one of them needed prayer. We spoke with no one but prayed for those we laid eyes on as the Lord directed us.”

He looked back at the congregation, and Naomi thought he looked directly at her. “Nearby there was a military hospital. We walked right past it every morning and every evening. Sometimes, when there was a milder day, the wounded soldiers would be brought out in wheelchairs, even flat on their backs, just to take some fresh air, just to see the blue sky and the sun.” He nodded. “I felt directed to pray for their healing as well,
ja
, for the healing of the soldiers.” His jaw began to quiver. “So the Lord spoke to me one
evening and he said,
One of your own people saved some of these. One of your own men kept soldiers here alive. Now you are praying for their healing. Do you not see, the two of you work together?
”

Minister Yoder put a hand over his face. “Last night we drew lots to see who would be minister in place of our brother, Minister Miller, who was taken to heaven. We used different Bibles and we let them fall again and again. Four, five times we did this. Three times it opened to the same book, three times. We saw it as a sign of God’s will. But how could it be, how could it be? The book was Micah.”

Naomi took in her breath sharply.

Hand still over his face, Minister Yoder continued. “The Lord reminded me of what he had told me on the sidewalk in front of the military hospital. That Micah Bachman and I had striven for the healing of the same men and that both of us had done it in his name. I was under conviction, my brothers. I was under strong conviction, my sisters. So I told our bishop and our ministers what the Lord had said to me, and we fell to our knees and cried out.” He dropped his hand. “Do you know what passages the other Bibles opened to? Hm? Do you know? The Gospel of John. There were many words there. But one person had underlined a verse in dark pencil—
Gröβere Liebe hat kein Mensch als diese, dass ein Mensch sein Leben hingibt für seine Freunde. Greater love has no man than this but that a man lay down his life for his friends
.

The men and women in the room gasped.

“The other Bible had a bookmark,
ja
? We didn’t notice it, but when the Bible fell open, we saw it then and decided we must ignore where it had opened because someone had already made sure it would part at that page. But in the end we looked. What do you think, brothers and sisters? Is there a God in heaven? Does he speak to us through his Word? Does he not command us to draw lots for our leaders as the apostles did on the day of Pentecost?”

“
Ja
,
ja
,” the people murmured all around Naomi and Rebecca. “It is how he works among us.”

Minister Yoder shook his head. “You would not believe me if I told you what was on those pages. What are we to do? What is your leadership to tell you? On one side is the Lord’s Prayer and the Lord’s woes against the Pharisees and experts in the law. On the other side the Lord feeds the five thousand, and he is glorified on the Mount of Transfiguration, yes, and he speaks of following him regardless of the cost—we put our hand to the plow and do not look back, for if we do we are not fit for the kingdom of heaven.”

There was no sound in the room.

“In the middle our Lord sends out the seventy-two and he comes to the home of Mary and Martha and declares to Mary she has chosen the better part and it shall not be taken from her, it shall not. All of that alone is enough, all of that on its own speaks to our hearts. But there is more. What else is on those pages? What else do we see there?”