An Uncommon Grace (2 page)
Authors: Serena B. Miller
Tags: #Fiction, #Christian, #General, #Romance
A Conversation with Serena B. Miller
My sincere gratitude to:
The incomparable Dr. Tsuyoshi Inoshita, oncologist and friend who, along with his competent and caring staff, helped save my husband’s life this year. My Old Order Amish friends who corrected my Pennsylvania Deutsch, provided me with the hospitality of their peaceful farm, and sent me home with elderberry plants and enduring memories. Eli and Vesta Hochstetler, owners of Gospel Book Store in Berlin, Ohio—for introducing me to valuable Amish research resources. Editor Holly Halverson, for making this a better book. Agent Sandra Bishop—for flying all over the United States using her God-given gifts to promote Christian fiction. Kristi Cordle, RN—for medical information. Eli, Adam, and Ethan Cordle—for allowing their nurse-mommy the time to review this manuscript. Kim McCray and Kendra Cram—for information about Children’s Hospital. Dewey Cordle, former dairyman—for calving information. Don Coriell—for insights into the challenges of running a family farm. Gabe Coriell, horseman—for explaining about various equine breeds and stamina. Brenda Kallner, grant writer—for in-depth proofreading. Velva and Pete Hunter—for years of faithful encouragement. Phyllis Stevens, Vivian Woodworth, Sharon
Hardin, and Ruth Miller, my sisters and mother-in-law—for understanding and support during difficult deadlines. Caleb Miller, son—for making me laugh when there was little to laugh about. Jacob Miller, son—for tech support and unwavering patience. Derek Miller, son—for on-site technical advice about Bagram medevac teams. Meaghan Mattiuz Miller and Julie Gardner Miller, daughters-in-law—for holding our family together these past difficult months. And to the women of our church—who astonish and teach me daily with their spiritual wisdom, dedication to their families, and love for one another.
During a recent trip to Holmes County, Ohio, I met an Old Order Amish man who was offering buggy rides for a small fee. While we rode around town, I peppered him with questions about his people—which he good-humoredly answered.
At the end of our trip, I asked if there was anything he would like me to include in this book. Something about his people. Something he would like my readers to know.
Like most Amish, he didn’t answer quickly but paused to give my question consideration. His answer, when it came, surprised me.
“Tell your readers that we appreciate them coming here to see us. They bring much-needed revenue into our county. Without them and my buggy-ride business, I would have nothing.”
I promised that I would indeed put that in my book.
A few moments later, I entered a small bulk-food shop in the same village. The elderly Amish clerk and I spoke of the terrible rains they had been having. She told me that the creek behind her house had risen so high that it had washed out a large portion of her fence. She said she had “lost her man” ten years earlier from a heart attack, and now she and her sister were trying to keep the farm going. I judged her age as past
eighty, and as she totaled my purchases, it occurred to me that this was probably the only income she had besides what she could manage to wrest from their farm.
The next day, I purchased a basket from an Amish teenager with cerebral palsy who was sitting beside his father alongside the road. The boy proudly showed me his basket, with his name painfully scribbled on the bottom. My nephew also has cerebral palsy, and I know the struggle it must have been for this boy to weave that basket. I bought it, of course. It now sits on my writing desk. I smile when I look at it, because it reminds me of the boy’s pride in the work of his hands.
There are tiny “stores” in the basements and sheds and spare bedrooms of Amish homes down every road you travel in Holmes County. The handmade signs at the end of their driveways say:
Eggs for Sale
Rag Rugs
Bluebird Houses
Hickory Rockers
Maple Syrup
Honey
Quilts
Wall Hangings
Homemade Baskets
Baked Goods
More often than not, when you enter one of these Amish homes, you will be met with friendly women in prayer
Kapps
who are as curious about your world as you are about theirs. They will want to know where you are from, and if you’ve had much rain, and how your garden is doing, and if there are any of their people where you come from.
These valiant, flawed, hardworking people—the Amish—take no government handouts, no food stamps, no Social Security, and they even hire teachers and educate their children at their own expense, all while supporting our own public schools and welfare programs with their tax dollars.
So for those reading this who, like me, once thought that the Amish must bitterly resent the tourists who descend upon their countryside every summer—I’ll repeat the words of the Holmes County buggy-ride man. “Tell your readers that we appreciate them coming here to see us.”
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
—
MATTHEW 11:30 NIV
I
t was ninety degrees in the shade, but Grace Connor was not sweating.
This was not good.
Dehydration came swiftly in the Afghanistan desert. She needed to find something to drink—and fast.
She rolled out of her cot, pushed open the door of her plywood B-hut, and stared out at the heat waves shimmering off the packed earth of Bagram Air Base. It was going to be a long walk to the dining hall.
A jet roared in for a landing as another blasted off—the rumble of engines reverberating through her skull. The noise of jets and the thup-thup-thup of military helicopters were a constant in her life, along with the fumes of the medevac choppers each time she flew a rescue mission.
Sometimes rocket fire punctuated the sounds. Sometimes she heard gunshots in the distance—never knowing if it was the firing range or terrorists trying to make another pointless point. Sometimes she heard the rattle of bomb-proof bulldozers nosing around the perimeter, deliberately setting off homemade Taliban mines.
Bagram Air Base was decidedly not a restful place. In addition to the noise, there always seemed to be some ragtag
band of terrorists determined to penetrate security. The Taliban had not had a lot of luck yet, but every day the gates opened to the civilian Afghans who risked their lives, by NATO agreement, to work alongside the soldiers and civilian support staff who constituted the biggest military base in Afghanistan. The possibility of an attack inside the gates was a threat of which every soldier was constantly aware.
It was not the safest environment in the world, but safety wasn’t what she had signed up for when she volunteered to become part of the elite Dustoff medical team.
As she trudged through the heat in search of something cool to drink, her parched throat choked on the dust kicked up by all the MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) and other vehicles. The weird-looking desert ants, long-legged to keep their bellies off the hot sand, scurried out of her way.
In the direct sunlight it was a brain-baking 100 degrees. Come July, the temperature would climb higher than 130 degrees in some areas of Afghanistan. How the soldiers on patrol endured it, she did not know.
She scanned her CAC (Common Access Card) at the entrance and practically fell into the coolness of the dining hall. Bins of Gatorade were iced and ready. The military had learned to take the need for electrolytes seriously. She dug out a bottle of the orange, life-giving nectar, utterly annoyed with herself. She had served in Afghanistan for four years, and she knew better than to allow herself to become dehydrated. She guzzled the whole bottle of Gatorade before catching her breath.
The problem was, she had been so exhausted after last night’s struggle to rescue three wounded soldiers pinned down by enemy fire that, once they were safe, she had fallen fully clothed into a sleep so deep it had felt a like a coma.
Grabbing a second bottle, she sat down at a table and pulled a paper out of her pants pocket. She took another mouthful of Gatorade—lemon-flavored—and read the paper for the umpteenth time.
One signature, and she would be committed. That’s all it would take. One signature and she would reenlist for another two years.
Her decision should be a no-brainer. She hated it here. She hated the heat, the danger, the sand, the dirt, and the cobra that she had found tangled up in the glue strips she had placed beneath her cot to catch mice. With her nurse practitioner’s license, she could make a heck of a lot more money back in the States at a top-notch hospital—and relax in a Jacuzzi in some air-conditioned apartment complex at the end of each day.
It
should
be a no-brainer. Except that she was an excellent nurse. She was fast and smart, and had a hair-trigger ability to make solid medical decisions while under fire. Her training had helped save many soldiers’ lives.
There were only a few other people in the mess hall, all of them busy with their own conversations or watching a dayold baseball game on the Armed Forces Network. The noise of voices and jets and the clatter of kitchen staff preparing supper faded into the background as she closed her eyes and prayed for wisdom, for guidance, for a clear-cut answer.
None came.
She opened her eyes, wishing she was one of those people to whom God seemed to give a personal directive for every decision they made, but her experience had been quite different. It always felt as though whenever she asked for wisdom, God sat back, folded His arms, and said, “I gave you a good brain and a great instruction manual—use it.”
She had always made the best Bible-based decisions she could and hoped for the best, but this time, she was truly
torn. The soldiers needed her. Perhaps she should give them another two years of her life.
She took a pen out of her pocket and clicked it. Her hand hovered over the paper. She hesitated. Drummed the pen on the table. Clicked it. Put it back in her pocket.
Come on, God, just tell me what to do. This is important. Can’t you send me a letter or an e-mail? I’ll do whatever you say if you’ll give me a definite sign. Just this once, Lord, please?
She smiled at her audacity. Who did she think she was—asking God to send her an e-mail?
Like that would ever happen!
And yet . . .
She left the dining hall and walked over to the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) facility, which had a bank of computers where soldiers could check their e-mails. She wasn’t surprised when she found over a dozen in her in-box, but the one that screamed out to her was a message from her younger sister. The subject heading was a disturbing “Come home!”
Grace clicked on it. Something must be terribly wrong. Becky was only seventeen and had been living with their grandmother for the past eight years—ever since their parents had died in the boating accident. Becky usually filled her e-mails with high school chatter about grades and ball games and clothes, but this e-mail looked different from what she usually sent. The body of it wasn’t punctuated with Becky’s usual smiley face icon after every other sentence.
Grandma was taken by ambulance to the hospital last night. It’s her heart. They’ve done surgery, but the doctor says she’s going to need a lot of care for a while. I can be with her at night, but I have school during the day. If there’s any way you could come home for a
couple of months until I can graduate, it would make things a whole lot easier around here.
Her grandmother was ill? Elizabeth Connor had been the spiritual rock of their family as long as Grace could remember. Her farm in Ohio had been the sanctuary to which Grace and her sister had fled after their parents died. The last time she was home, her grandmother had seemed tireless and ageless—but now it hit her that Elizabeth might not be around as long as she had hoped.
How bad was the heart attack? How much damage had been done? Her medically trained mind wanted answers. She wanted to meet face-to-face with the doctors and hear Elizabeth’s prognosis firsthand. The first few weeks after heart surgery could be critical. There was no way a seventeen-year-old should be handling that alone.
Grace wrote a quick, affirmative answer and logged out, not bothering to open any of the other e-mails. They could wait. For the first time in her life, she had received a very personal answer from God, and it was loud and clear.
There were other competent nurses who could take her place in the Dustoff unit, but no one could take her place at her grandmother’s side. There
was
no one else. For a moment, she closed her eyes, blocking out the noises and heat of Bagram, and remembered the soothing clip-clop sound of Amish horses and buggies and the cool greenness of her grandma’s Holmes County farm.
She grabbed an extra Gatorade and headed back to her B-hut.
It was time to pack.
O
NE
T
he moment Levi Troyer caught sight of his family’s farm he knew something was wrong. The yard, which had been filled with activity less than two hours ago, was now empty, and it looked as though it had been abandoned in a hurry.
Even though it was not his mother’s routine to wash clothes on a Thursday, she had wanted to take advantage of the sunny spring weather. When he left this morning, she had been pouring gasoline into the small engine that powered their wringer washing machine. He was concerned to see that the long wire line was empty, even though it should be heavy with wet laundry by now.
During his entire twenty-five years, he had never known his mother to leave her laundry unfinished. In fact, she prided herself upon having it on the line by eight o’clock in the morning at the very latest. Now it was almost nine.
He clucked his tongue and with his heels nudged his horse into a faster trot, but as he drew closer, he saw that not only was the drying line empty, but dirty clothes still lay in piles on the back porch where Sarah, his four-year-old sister, had been helping their mother sort as he had trotted past them this morning on his way to deliver a special-made basket to a customer.
