An Amish Family Christmas (7 page)
Read An Amish Family Christmas Online
Authors: Murray Pura
“Oh, Mama.” Naomi laughed as tears moved down from her eyes. “This is five years ago. Is that truly how you thought of me when I was so young?”
So now the Bachman’s boy Micah brings her home in his buggy. I don’t know what to think. Something about him strikes me wrong. My muffin is taken with his looks, but only you know the look of his heart. Direct her steps. Give her father and me wisdom in this matter.
“What?” Naomi held the book tightly in her hands, and the tears stopped. “What was wrong with Micah? Oh...you always liked the Fischer boys. Please, Mama.”
I have no argument against their marriage. But I know why I’ve felt some concern. Micah has a mind of his own. His spirit is very free, much freer than my muffin’s. I don’t know what will come of this. I don’t sense any objection from you in my heart. And I don’t read any objection from you in your Word. So we go ahead and put every day of Micah’s and Naomi’s in your good hands.
“Mama, you were very happy on our wedding day. You loved the clock he gave me for a wedding present. The little man announcing the hour by bringing the workhorse out of the barn,
ja
? So but now it is broken.”
I knew this. I knew this in my soul. What Amish man up and joins the army and says he must bind the wounds of the soldiers who fall in battle? Who has ever heard of such a thing among the Amish? He knows he will be shunned. He knows it will break my Naomi’s heart. I knew he had this spirit in him. What will you do now, my Lord? Where are you taking us?
There were no more prayers for Naomi. She turned to the back of the book. A dozen blank pages. She ran her fingers over their smooth whiteness. Then she forced herself to look at the last writing her mother had done.
Naomi,
I will share this with you in the evening. Let me think on it a while during the trip to town. But I think it is good. I think it is from God.
Micah will come back to you. I’m certain of it. He won’t die. He will not forget his vows to you. So you must not forget your vows to him. Ja, of course, he has forgotten his vows to his people,
to his church, but not, I think, to his God or to his bride. So even if others don’t welcome his return, you must.
The bishop may not let you embrace him with your arms. But you must embrace him with your prayers. That’s how you will show him your love.
There is more to Micah than I thought. The more I pray, the more I’m convinced of it. I don’t say he hasn’t made mistakes or been rash. But even while he’s shunned, it will be up to you, up to all of us in this family he has married into, to surround him with the love of God. Without words, without touch. All around him we are to place the love of God.
I will give this to you to read tonight if it still sits well with me. Then we shall talk about it. Then we shall pray.
My love, Mama
The tears were sparks on her face, burning against her skin.
She got up from the bed, put the rose back inside the pages of the book, tucked the book back under the pillow, and left the room, closing the door softly. Standing in the hall, she heard the sound of an axe from outside the house. She went to a small window and looked out and saw Micah in a toque and parka chopping firewood, snow whirling around him.
How cold you must be. Cold and alone.
Naomi made up her mind, wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, and marched to a nearby closet. Broom and dustpan in hand, she opened Micah’s bedroom door. She was surprised to find his bed neatly made, all the items to be repaired arranged from small to large against the far wall, and everything exactly as it
should be in every part of the room. It even looked as if the hardwood floor had been swept.
“Well, twice can’t hurt, soldier,” she muttered and set about sweeping the room and under the bed and wiping a cloth over everything. She left the door open so she could hear the sound of the axe. As she listened, she prayed for Micah as her mother had wanted her to.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm.
“What is that?”
For a moment she thought it was a motorcycle. Then she thought it was a chainsaw and groaned.
Oh, Micah, don’t make matters worse by using power tools.
She went out into the hall and glanced out the window, half expecting to see her husband using a gas generator to run a saw. Micah had laid aside his axe, but not in order to wield a power tool. He was listening to a boy who was straddling a red motorbike. She couldn’t see who the boy was because he had his back to her.
Doesn’t he know it is forbidden to speak with Micah?
Micah folded his arms over his chest, nodded his head once or twice, and smiled, but he didn’t respond in any other way.
Thank goodness you have kept your head. The boy cannot go home and tell his parents that Micah Bachman talked to him.
Naomi closed the door to Micah’s room, returned the broom and dustpan to the hall closet, opened the door to Luke’s bedroom a crack and found he was still napping, and then came quickly down the stairs to where Rebecca was sewing.
“There’s a boy on a motorbike talking to Micah,” she said. “Can you believe that?”
“Oh, it’s Minister Yoder’s son, Timothy.” Rebecca glanced up, her face sharp. “Micah isn’t holding a conversation with him, I hope.”
“No, no, just listening.”
“Well, that boy likes to hear his own voice, so it doesn’t matter if Micah responds or not.”
“But since when can Minister Yoder’s son do this? A motorbike? Talking to a person who’s banned from the church? It’s not his
rumspringa
, not so soon.”
“It
is
his
rumspringa.
For more than a week now. Your mind has been elsewhere.”
“So the minister buys his son a motorbike?”
Rebecca lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “If he promises to drive it around here, he gets the bike. That’s the minister’s way of having his son where he can keep his eyes on him.”
“So
rumspringa
and motorbikes are okay, but healing wounded soldiers in Afghanistan is a sin?”
“The minister’s boy has not taken his vows. He hasn’t broken faith with the Amish people. Micah did take his vows. He did break faith with the Amish people. That’s how they see it.”
“And the people are all right with this noisy bike?”
Rebecca shrugged again. “They were all right a few years ago when Bishop Fischer let his boy drive that old blue pickup for six months. The church considers it better than wild parties and looks the other way.”
“And how do we know there aren’t wild parties too?”
“There’s no gossip about such parties. Not yet. The church is willing to put up with the bike.”
Timothy roared past the house, and they watched him spray snow and dirt on his way to the main road.
A minute later Micah came into the house, stamping his boots, removing them, and hanging up his coat. He was holding a slender package under one arm as he looked toward Naomi. She dropped her eyes, and he went up the stairs to his room.
“Did you read your mother’s book?” asked Rebecca.
“
Ja.
”
“And so?”
“And so she wants me to pray for him and believe the best of him and support him as a wife should support a husband even though there is a
bann.
”
“But she didn’t know Micah would come home.”
“She was certain God would bring him back. And she was certain he would come to me and want our marriage to continue. She was insistent I be close to him once more regardless of what he had done or what punishment the church inflicted on him.”
Rebecca gave a little smile. “Such a good woman, your mother.”
“
Ja.
” Naomi picked up her sewing and put it down again. “But I still don’t see how this will work. It’s too hard to be apart from him. It’s too hard to see him and not be able to hold him. My mother wished me to love him from afar.
Ja
, when he was in Afghanistan and now when he’s only a few feet away and might as well still be in Afghanistan.”
“Something will work out.”
“I don’t see how.”
“It is not up to you to see how. Only to walk by faith and not by sight.” Rebecca took Naomi’s hand. “Let me pray for you.”
Rebecca prayed a long time. They heard Micah come down the staircase and go back outside while their heads were bent. After the prayer they got up and saw a rocking chair in the kitchen.
Naomi’s fingers went to her mouth. “That’s my mother’s. It broke a week before her death. The left rocker had split.”
They got up and examined it.
“It has a new rocker now.” Rebecca bent down. “You would hardly know it’s new. The stain matches the rest of the chair perfectly.”
“He does very good work.”
Rebecca stood up and smiled. “You should sit and rock.”
“No.” Naomi shook her head. “I’m not sitting in that chair.”
“Why not?”
“No.” Naomi went to the icebox. “It’s time to start supper.”
They cooked a pot of cabbage soup and took a bowl of it up to Luke. Working together, they managed to get him into his chair, but half the soup was wasted as they tried to feed it to him. When they came back down, Micah was serving himself from the pot. He barely glanced at the two of them as he walked into the parlor and shut the door. Rebecca and Naomi sat down at the kitchen table, prayed, and began to eat. Neither of them spoke.
“We’re as silent as Luke and Micah,” murmured Rebecca.
“We’ve said everything there is to say for the day.”
“Soon it will be one great big quiet house.”
“That’s not so bad sometimes, is it?” asked Naomi.
“No, not so bad. Sometimes.”
That night Naomi lay in her bed in the dark and thought about Micah lying in his bed in the dark at the end of the hall. She prayed for him. She prayed for Luke. She prayed for Rebecca. Then she came back and prayed for Micah again.
What will you do for him, Lord? What will you do for our marriage? And how long will you take to do it?
God seemed as silent to her as the house. She rolled over on her side and tried to sleep.
T
hree letters arrived the day before Thanksgiving. One was an early Christmas card. All were addressed to her. All three had something to say about her husband, Sergeant Micah Bachman, medic, United States Army. She read each one, startled at the information they contained, and at first she had no thought of sharing any of them.
What is this you’re bringing into my life now, Lord? What prayer do these cards and letters answer?
Micah stayed with Luke during the Thanksgiving worship held at Bishop Fischer’s home. It was followed by a meal, so Naomi and Rebecca were gone for several hours. Once they returned, Micah smiled, put on his coat and hat, and left in silence. Naomi watched him drive a buggy out to the main road and head in the direction of Lancaster. Four hours later he returned with the same sort of smile and silence in which he had left.
“I can’t get used to this,” Naomi told Rebecca. “All this quiet.”
“The whole year he was gone you couldn’t talk to him.”
“So now I’m to be thankful for another such year?”
Rebecca put a hand on Naomi’s shoulder. “Take it to God.”
“Where else should I take it?” She folded her arms over her chest. “I told you. It was easier when he was away. Out of sight, out of mind, as the
Englisch
say. But now I see him every day and I can’t speak a word, I can’t hold him, I can’t lie with him as God ordained a woman should lie with her husband. It’s cruel.”
“In time this will be resolved.”
“Whose time? Mine? God’s? If it were in my time it would have been settled weeks ago. The leadership knew they could not in good faith refute Micah’s arguments for following Christ’s leading to the battlefield. No, not when he went there to save human life. So they ran and crouched behind the
Ordnung.
If it is to be in God’s time, it could be a thousand years from today.”