Jenny's Choice (Apple Creek Dreams #3) (9 page)

For the first two weeks after her arrival, Jenny just stayed in bed most of the day. She slept fitfully at night, and when she was awake she was irritable and had no appetite. She spent hours crying quietly under her covers. She felt as though every ounce of energy had been drained from her body, and it was all she could do to get dressed in the morning. On many days, she just didn’t. In the mornings, Jerusha brought tea and some of her wonderful biscuits, but Jenny ignored them.

This morning, when Jerusha came into the room, Jenny was sitting in her rocking chair, staring out the window. The wind pushed the branches of the hydrangeas fitfully against the panes. Large drops of rain were running down the glass. The gray clouds obscured the morning light. Jenny sat with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

“Good morning,
dochter
,” Jerusha said as she set a tray down on the dresser. “I brought you some tea and biscuits…if you want them.”

“Mama, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what, Jenny? Sorry that your heart is broken? Sorry that you’re grieving?”

Jenny thought for a moment. She wanted to apologize for being so useless, but she hadn’t even connected what was happening to her with the reality of her grief. She looked up at Jerusha.

“Is that what’s happening? I thought I was reconciled to Jonathan’s death months ago and moving forward, but now it’s like I’m having a relapse. How can that be?”

And then, as if to answer her own question, she continued. “When he…when he left us, it was planting time, and the farm demanded so much from me that I had to work. My nights were terrible, but I could turn the sadness off during the day and plunge into the tasks that had to be done. Since I’ve come to Apple Creek, I feel like my body won’t do anything I ask of it, even if I order it to.”

Jerusha sat down on the bed across from Jenny. “This is why we wanted you to come home. So we could help you bear the burden of your sorrow. Your papa and I want to help you through this, but it will not be an easy time for you, and it may go on for longer than you think. Jonathan was a special man, and you two had a special kind of love. I know because it was the same kind of love that your papa and I share. It’s not possible to forget a man like Jonathan.”

“What can I do then, Mama? I feel so helpless and useless…and even faithless. I don’t know where
Gott
is in all of this. I reach out to Him, but I can’t hear Him speaking to me or feel His presence. Rachel asks me why
Gott
would want us to be so sad. I don’t know…”

“These are the hard questions of life, Jenny. Is it any wonder we call this the vale of tears? All we can do is rejoice in knowing that Jonathan is beyond this wicked world and that he is with Jesus. We can never
understand why
Gott
would allow such a thing, but sometimes understanding Him and trusting Him can be two different things.”

Jenny was silent again. Jerusha reached across and put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder as Jenny stared out the window. The two women sat like that for awhile. Only the rustling of the branches against the pane and the wind whispering against the eaves disturbed the stillness of the room.

As they sat, the wind died down and the rain ceased to beat against the window. The clouds started breaking up, and a ray of sun broke through. A hush fell on the day, and peace crept over the land. Outside the window, one of the last songbirds of the receding fall season picked up a cheery melody. The gray clouds began to disperse, to be slowly replaced by cotton balls drifting through an azure sky. Bright sunlight poured into the room as they sat, and Jenny felt a stirring in her heart.

“I don’t want to go on, but I will,” she said softly.

Jerusha knelt by Jenny’s chair and lifted her hand to Jenny’s face. Gently she stroked her daughter’s cheek and pushed the errant curls back out of her eyes.

As their eyes met, Jenny knew that God hadn’t abandoned her. As she saw the love in Jerusha’s eyes and felt it in her touch, Jenny grasped the totality of His presence in her life. When she was a little girl, lost and dying in a snowstorm, God sent Jerusha. Jenny’s birth mother had died, and
du lieber Gott
had given her another mother—a mother who took Jenny into her heart completely and without reservation. God gave her a home and a new life and then unveiled the secrets of her past. And then He brought her Jonathan—a precious gift indeed. And from Jonathan, Jenny received her beautiful daughter and ten wonderful years.

“I will be thankful for what I have been given,” she said quietly, taking her mother’s hand to her face. Jenny could feel the beat of Jerusha’s
heart in the tips of those fingers. And in that moment Jenny heard a voice within her that she had not heard for a long time.

I will never leave you or forsake you.

In the days following, Jenny found she was able to begin moving again. It wasn’t easy but somehow she found the strength. In those moments when the shock of Jonathan’s accident and the numbness of being without him assailed her senses, she would lift up a small prayer of thanksgiving for all of God’s blessings in her life. If she found herself despairing or starting to spin out of control, she recited the words of her mother’s favorite hymn out loud:

“
Loben wir ihn von ganzem Herzen! Denn er allein ist würdig
. Let us praise Him with all our hearts! For He alone is worthy.”

Step-by-step Jenny experienced the healing she needed. The progression could be brutal at times, but Jenny’s will was strong. At other times in her life, that had been to her detriment, but now at last it began to serve her. And as she made choices to go on with her life, she felt her faith rising slowly but surely. It was as though she had fallen from a high precipice into cold, deep water where all was dark and she could not breathe. But as she began to move toward the dim light above her, she knew that she would eventually come back to the surface and live again.

Often she would wrestle with many emotions at once: shock, denial, bargaining, anger…and at those times she would feel as though she would never escape the traps they set for her. But Reuben and Jerusha would be there for her, lifting her arms in the battle just as Aaron and Hur lifted Moses’ arms, and the enemy of her soul would be pushed back.

Jenny’s greatest joy in those days came from Rachel. Rachel was a resilient soul, and she had accepted things being the way they were long
before Jenny could. In her
grossdaadi’
s arms Rachel had found the male presence she needed, and so she became reconciled to the idea that Jonathan had gone ahead to be with Jesus. For Jenny, Rachel became like a light before her feet on a dark and toilsome journey. When she wanted to stop, Rachel was there with a smile or a hug. When she needed a touch from the Lord, it came through a snuggle or a kind word from her little girl. And as the darkness was pushed back, Jenny began to find herself.

Jerusha and Reuben encouraged her to begin taking part in the daily life of the farm, and the old ways of her childhood helped her to build a structured schedule into her days. As she did, she could see herself developing an identity that no longer included Jonathan. At times this was the hardest part of the process, but eventually she recognized that this was the only way she could recover.

Ever vigilant, Reuben stepped in during the hard times and encouraged Jenny to take part in the church or the Amish school, where she soon served as a helper and eventually as a teacher. And so the days passed, and as the deep winter gave up its icy grip on Apple Creek and the first touch of spring began to melt the morning frost from the etched glass of the window in her room, Jenny slowly began to come back to life.

Then came a day when Jenny awoke to a soft dawn that crept into her room like a mischievous child, softly kissing her awake with the delicate touch of a rose-colored morning. Jenny opened her eyes and saw the pale colors blushing in the fresh sky. She rose, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, and slipped outside. The day was fresh and clean and warm, and the grass felt cool and damp against her bare feet. Above her head the plum trees were just sprouting the tiny pink buds that would soon burst into brilliant color and paint the world with God’s palette. A single wren twittered its call, and stillness lay on the land.

Jenny’s heart stirred within her at the unexpected beauty of the morning. An old barn cat came around the side of the house, meowed loudly, and bunted her head against Jenny’s leg. Jenny smiled and reached down to scratch the cat behind the ears.

“Hello, Perticket.”

The old cat stayed for a moment, enjoying the attention, and then wandered off. Jenny took a deep breath, and the fresh air tasted sweet. The sun began to peek up over the hills to the east, and bright rays of sun shining through the trees cast easy shadows across the fields. A little breeze sprang up, and the air stirred around her, gently lifting the curls from her face. Above her a formation of Canadian geese flew north, honking as they went. Jenny was touched by the wonder of the day, and a thought rose in her heart like a small trout rising for a fly in a still mountain lake.

I’m still alive. This didn’t kill me, and I can still find joy and wonder in a day.

The screen door creaked behind her, and she looked around to see her papa coming out on the porch. He was dressed for work, and his handsome face broke into a smile. Reuben stepped down from the porch and came over to Jenny.

“You have a glow about you this morning,
dochter
. It’s good for my heart to see life creeping back into you.”

Jenny stepped into the circle of Reuben’s arms.

Yes, I do feel life coming back into me. It’s as though I have been raised from the dead!

“Papa, thank you!”

“For what, Jenny?”

“For not giving up on me, for walking beside me, and for being my rock when the storm raged most fiercely about me.”

Reuben’s arms tightened around her. Then he spoke, and she could tell the words were difficult by the way they seemed to be pulled from him, syllable by syllable.

“When our Jenna died, I wanted to die too. I felt so helpless, and I believed that but for my wrongheadedness, Jenna would have lived. If
das Vollkennen des Gottes
hadn’t sent someone to help me, I would have died by my own hand. And then
Gott
, in His infinite mercy and grace, sent you to us. I can’t explain how it happened, but when I saw you for the first time, I knew you belonged to me and to your mama forever. I knew I had been given a second chance, and I loved you with every bit of the love I had for Jenna. And so when I see you suffer, I suffer too.”

Jenny looked into her papa’s eyes, the deep sea-blue eyes with the smile behind them, and saw home and safety in them.

“And so I would do anything to see you happy again. You make
sonnenschein in meinem Herzen.
And now you have given us Rachel, and the joy she brings with her is beyond our understanding. I can’t give Jonathan back to you. If I could, I would give my own life to do so. But that’s beyond me, so I give you my love and this place and whatever you need to be happy again. That’s my prayer.”

And as the bright spring sun warmed the earth, the winter of Jenny’s great sorrow began to melt away. The icy stronghold that had imprisoned her dreams and hopes crumbled under the warmth of her father’s love, and the river of life began to flow once more in her heart.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Healing Words