Plain Wisdom (14 page)

One evening I read a book about how the West was settled after the California gold rush in 1849.
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I was amazed at all the effort and hard work it took to do ordinary tasks and the progress that has been made in the years since then. For instance, mail traveled by boat down the East Coast and across the tip of South America to get to the West Coast. It took a month to make the voyage.

In 1857 stagecoaches began transporting mail from St. Louis to San Francisco, some 2,795 miles by the routes of that day. It took the stagecoach up to twenty days to deliver a letter and required lots of horse power as well as man power.

In 1860 the pony express began offering the fastest mail delivery ever attempted. They could deliver in half the time of a stagecoach.

After telegraph lines were strung from one end of the country to the other in 1861, messages crossed the country in only minutes. What progress!

Now here we are in the twenty-first century. I don’t know much about computers, but I understand that with just a few taps of the fingers, an e-mail can travel anywhere in the world almost instantly. That’s amazing! Our means of communication have surely come a long way. Although the Amish discourage the use of cell phones, fax machines, e-mail, and computers, even our means of communication have stepped up a notch or two over the years. We send a lot of letters and cards through the postal service, but the use of phones in a phone shanty and voice-mail messages left on a machine occur more and more. My sister Sarah and her husband were the last ones in our Amish community to build a phone shanty and get a phone. Since then we’ve written across-the-field notes less often.

Even with all this progress, one type of communication is and always has been better than all the others. I call it “knee mail.” We can just
think
a prayer, and God receives it. No cell phone or computer is needed. No calls are ever dropped. You’ll never get one back marked “not deliverable.” God hears every single one of our prayers.

When my seventeen-year-old son asked permission to attend a concert at Atlanta’s Music Midtown Festival, his eyes radiated excitement. More than 120 bands would perform on six stages, all within walking distance. Two of his friends were going, and they had an extra ticket for him. The oldest one would drive to the MARTA (rail/train) station, and they’d ride from there to midtown Atlanta.

I wasn’t the least bit worried about Adam participating in any of the usual nonsense that occurs during these festivals, like drinking or drugs. However, I was a little apprehensive about the crowd. Nearly two hundred thousand people were likely to be there. Still, I couldn’t refuse to let my son do everything that concerned me.

Tommy and I talked with all three boys, made sure the driver had a cell phone, gave clear instructions about staying together at all times, and granted our permission.

When Adam and his friends arrived at the concert, they found it even busier and more confusing than they’d expected. People pushed and shoved, determined to get close to the stages. The boys tried to stick together, but throngs of people kept pushing them farther apart until Adam lost sight of his friends.

Rain poured, making it hard to see and even harder to be heard as he called his friends’ names. A mass of humanity pressed in on every side, and he had no clue how to get back to the MARTA station.

He asked several strangers if he could borrow a phone. He knew if he could reach his dad, Tommy would know how to get him out of that mess. But no one would hand him a cell phone when they could easily get separated.

Around eleven o’clock I received a call from my son’s friends, telling me they’d lost track of Adam. My teenage boy was wandering around Atlanta, among throngs of people, in a downpour.

Tommy called our pastor at home and told him the situation. He prayed with us, then called others to pray. As the clock ticked on, my heart cried out to God for my son’s safety.

While Adam was praying for a phone, he kicked something. Light seemed to come from the object, though it was hard to tell in the dark with wall-to-wall people surrounding him and pouring rain. He reached down to grab whatever it was, but someone unknowingly kicked it farther away. He went to his knees, felt around in the mud, and finally found it. He pulled it out. It was a cell phone!

We got his call around midnight. Screaming to be heard above the rain and the crowd, Tommy told him what landmarks to follow. Within twenty minutes Adam was on the right path toward the MARTA station. Tommy told him what station to get off at and promised he’d meet him there.

When they lost their connection, my husband made a beeline for the closest MARTA station, hoping that Adam had understood his directions. When he arrived, he found Adam there, waiting.

The next morning we called the numbers listed in that cell phone until we found someone who knew to whom the phone belonged. Moments later we heard from the owner, who was thrilled we’d found his phone. His employer had given it to him the day before, and he was worried what would happen when he told his boss he’d lost it.

We returned the young man’s phone, immeasurably grateful for God’s provision.

Miriam and I were talking about this incident one day, and she shared about Daniel and her being in the milking barn one summer afternoon. They had two young sons in the barn with them and a baby in the stroller. The children played quietly in a safe zone while Miriam and Daniel prepared the stalls and filled the troughs with feed. Before each milking time, some of the cows pressed against the gate, bumping the latch with their noses and licking it. They were hungry and full of milk and wanted inside!

After bedding a stall, Miriam looked up to see that a cow had loosened the latch, and all thirty cows were running inside. Her three-year-old son, Mervin, had wandered into the direct line of the oncoming cows, and she was too far away to reach him before the cows did. She didn’t even have time to think a whole prayer, but she managed a cry to God for help.

In a flash their collie bounded into the barn, got between Mervin and the cows, and started barking furiously. The cows stopped cold. They couldn’t back up because there were other cows behind them pushing them forward, but that gave Miriam the bit of time she needed to grab her little one and get out of the way.

Appropriately, the dog’s name was Lassie.

When Adam was caught in a difficult situation, God provided a cell phone, but when Mervin was in danger, God didn’t need modern technology in order to intervene.

Everything from scraping a knee to a full-blown tragedy will happen on this fallen planet, but I believe that God is constantly at work on our
behalf. The New International Version says in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” In other words, in all circumstances He is on our side.

I stood in the backyard of our one-bedroom home, a toddler on my hip and a baby in my belly. The branches of our pecan trees were bare, and the threat of winter hung in the air.

Our house, like the hundreds around it, had been built before the Depression, and if the walls could’ve talked, they would have told of the many families who’d gone through boom times and hard economic times. My husband and I had lived there less than five years, and we’d experienced both sides of American life—making ends meet and not.

A few years earlier we’d both had good jobs, and we’d managed to put aside a little money. Before we were blessed with the birth of our first child, I left my job at the bank. We’d expected to be able to buy a three-bedroom home before he was born, but two weeks after I gave up my job, my husband was laid off from the steel plant. Three years and endless short-term jobs later, it was evident that this layoff was not temporary. The steel mills in America were struggling, and the United States was in a recession. The union was at an impasse with management. Benefits ran out. Our health insurance was canceled. Steady jobs, even at minimum wage, seemed impossible to find.

We’d slowly succumbed to the economy’s circumstances and were
living below the poverty level. The reality of our situation was never sharper than when I stood in the backyard that crisp November day. Bullying questions kept circling inside my head:
What about next week’s food, the electric bill, the mortgage payment? And what about Christmas? Will the first Christmas our son is old enough to remember and understand be completely barren of gifts?

We’d never had a credit card or a home-equity credit line, and even if we had been willing to take on the responsibility of getting one to help us make ends meet, we no longer qualified.

I’d become a Christian while expecting our first child, and in the midst of this present misery, praying without ceasing came as easily and naturally as breathing. Trusting what God would do and when wasn’t nearly as effortless.

As the weeks crept toward Christmas, I continued to hone my skills of making a dollar stretch. My husband worked whatever odd jobs he could find.

Christmas Eve came, and we had a roof over our heads, wood in the wood stove, and a well-used artificial tree set up. We clung to hope, believing that times would surely get better. Tommy and I voiced to each other what we had to be thankful for. But after we tucked our son into bed on Christmas Eve, we sat in silence. Not in pools of despair, but in an ocean of hurt.

I went to the cabinet above the refrigerator, pulled out a gift, and placed our son’s only present under the tree—a ten-inch plastic horse I’d bought at a yard sale for twenty-five cents. I was relieved that our son was too young to understand that there should be more for him when he woke on Christmas morn.

As we sat in our living room watching the wealthy celebrate Christmas on television, we heard bells jingle. Someone outside yelled, “Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas.” I figured one of the neighbors must be playing Santa Claus, but then there was a loud knock on our front door.

When I opened the door, freezing air whipped into our home. I
stepped onto the front porch and looked around, but no one was there. Then I saw several out-of-place things: a handmade wooden rocking horse; a small box of brightly colored, gently used toys; and a brown bag containing groceries, including a canned ham, vegetables, and store-bought rolls.

My heart soared, and my mind crowded with so many thoughts I couldn’t settle on just one. Had someone left these items on the wrong doorstep? Then I noticed that our names were written on the grocery bag.

In that moment strength poured into me, and I understood that poverty could not conquer love, smother hope, or hold us hostage forever. God was behind the scenes, working through the hearts and lives of those who carried love.

That wasn’t our last penniless year. We had another really tough winter the following year. But then my husband received a job opportunity in another state. In the spring we moved to Georgia—our land of new beginnings.

When my husband received his first paycheck from his new job, our grocery money instantly tripled. We hadn’t stepped into utopia. We still had to sell the house in Alabama and make up for every partially paid utility bill. My husband worked fourteen-hour days, but we were still so far behind that I feared we might not be able to give our children all they’d need in life.

Still, I knew we didn’t get out of the last mess on our own. And we weren’t facing the future on our own either. Contentment demanded that we trust in the God who had provided and would continue to take care of us.

Standing inside the Christian Aid Ministries building with about ten women from my church, I put another pile of clean clothes on the long wooden table. Some of the women had spent days washing and drying the clothes.

The ceiling fan overhead made rhythmic humming sounds as it circulated the air around us and we sorted used clothes. Others sewed on missing buttons and repaired an occasional hem or seam. We separated men’s from women’s clothes, boys’ from girls’, and toddlers’ from infants’. I especially enjoyed matching outfits for the children.

At the end of the room, dozens of additional bags of freshly washed and dried clothing awaited our attention. These clothes were then placed in nylon bags to be shipped to poor countries such as Romania, Ukraine, Nicaragua, and Africa—all under the auspices of Christian Aid Ministries.

As I worked, my mind wandered to what dear child might receive this outfit or that one, and even though I knew it was against the rules, I longed to slip a treat or surprise into the pockets in the hopes of cheering up some little boy or girl far away. It reminded me of a story I once read about a young mother doing missionary work in a very poor foreign country. Food and necessities were scarce among the natives as well as in her own home.