Jenny's Choice (Apple Creek Dreams #3) (18 page)

“A better understanding?”

“Yes, Jenny. For some reason the world thinks the Amish are a perfect people who live faultless lives away from the world. They’ve romanticized the whole Amish lifestyle. But I know from personal experience that the Amish have as many troubles as people out in the world. Many of them aren’t even saved. They’re religious, but they don’t really know Christ. I want that for them, and I believe your book can help them. Your mother and father both had to find a saving relationship with Christ in order to endure the terrible ordeal of Jenna’s death and everything that happened afterward. It’s a wonderful story and needs to be told.”

Jenny listened to the impassioned words pour out of Jeremy. She saw his heart for the first time and was drawn by what he was saying. Then to Jenny’s surprise, Jeremy reached across the table and took her hand. She tried to pull her hand away for a moment, but he held it in a grip of steel and looked straight into her eyes.

“Jenny, there’s something else. I’ve struggled with this for several months, and I don’t know any other way to say it. I’m in love with you. I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You’re smart, full of life, and a brilliant writer. I know you’re still sold on the Amish way of life, but I can’t help that. I love you, Jenny, and I want to marry you.”

A crushing weight gripped Jenny’s heart. It was the moment she had dreaded and yet longed for. She felt a great struggle raging inside her. She missed the closeness of a married relationship. And yet….no, it could never be.
I am still Amish and he is not. He will not go back. If we were to be together, I would have to leave my church.

She pulled her hand away and said, “Jeremy, I could almost surrender to you. Almost. But I can’t go against who I am—I’m Amish. Beyond that, I’m not ready to fall in love again. I still love Jonathan. Even though he’s been gone for two years, my heart is still his. It would not be right for me to give myself to you. You would always be playing second fiddle to Jonathan’s memory. No, Jeremy, I can’t marry you.”

Jenny got up to leave.

“But then what about the book, Jenny?”

“I don’t know, Jeremy. I will have to pray about that.”

Then she turned and walked away.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

The Quilt

“W
HAT IS HAPPENING TO ME
, Mama?” Jenny cried.
Meine Leben wird alles verwechselt
! What is
Gott
doing?”

Jenny flopped down on the sofa in the front room of the Springer home. Jerusha stood in the kitchen doorway, a bemused expression on her face. “I take it the meeting with Jeremy was upsetting?”

“Upsetting? It was more than upsetting. I felt like I was in the middle of a hay baler—getting scooped up and tossed around and wrapped up and spit out. It was terrible.”

Jerusha sighed.

“Mama, Jeremy asked me to marry him!”

“So you were right about his feelings for you.”

“Yes, Mama. And he was so persuasive, it would have been so easy to just surrender and turn my life over to him. He’s smart and successful, he could make a home for Rachel and me, and he would be a good husband.”

“Did you find out why he is under the
meidung?
”

“Yes. According to Jeremy, the
bisschop
isn’t the paragon of virtue he pretends to be.”

“What?”

“If what Jeremy told me is true—and I do believe him—before Samuel Lapp was
bisschop,
he forced Jeremy out of the Lancaster church so he could marry the girl Jeremy was in love with. He lied about Jeremy and got some others to back him up. Jeremy is reconciled to what happened, but he won’t repent of something he says he didn’t do.”

“If what you say is true,
ist es ein schreckliches Ding
.”

“Yes, it is terrible. I thought the Amish were different, but it seems we are not.”

“You can’t judge a whole church by one man’s actions, Jenny.”

“I know, but he’s a
bisschop
! He should be an example. I didn’t like him from the first moment he spoke, and I remember Papa had to control his anger at our meeting. For a moment, when he insulted you, I thought Papa was going to hit him.”

“Yes, and
Bisschop
Lapp would not have fared too well. I have seen what Reuben can do to a man when he is protecting me.”

Jenny looked at her mama in surprise. “You saw Papa hit someone?”

“It was a long time ago, Jenny. It was just after we met at my
grossmudder
’s funeral. I was walking through the woods to the village, and two men accosted me. Just as they were about to pull me into the woods, Reuben appeared out of nowhere. Those men didn’t stand a chance. Before I could even say a word, Reuben stretched them out on the ground.”

“Papa did?”

“Yes, but I should not have said anything. You will think badly of him. He was very young and not in the church at the time. In fact, it was just before he went to be a soldier.”

“I don’t think badly of him, Mama. In fact, I think it’s very romantic.”

Jerusha smiled and blushed at the memory. “Yes, it was. I have never admitted that to anyone before, so please keep my secret. But go on about your meeting with Jeremy.”

“There’s not much more to say. The book is not going to be published, I hurt Jeremy’s feelings by turning him down, and I’ve earned the enmity of a
bisschop
of our church. What else could go wrong? Mama, everything is all mixed up, and I don’t know what to do.”

Jerusha looked at Jenny thoughtfully for a moment. “
Kommen Sie mit mir
,” she said. Then she turned and walked back to her sewing room with Jenny following her.

Jerusha knelt down at the old cedar chest and opened it. She pulled out some pieces of fabric and batting and laid them aside until she got to the bottom. She took out a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, setting it to one side. Then she put everything back into the chest and closed it.

“Is that the quilt?” Jenny asked.

“
Ja
, it is,” Jerusha replied. “The story of the Springer family seems to be sewn into this quilt, and I wanted us to look at it again. Maybe we can find some perspective in the midst all of this
wahnsinn
.”

Jerusha unwrapped the package reverently. Inside was the magnificent Rose of Sharon quilt. She unfolded it and laid it out on the floor. The beautiful red silk rose glowed in the morning light streaming in through the window. The lovely royal blue background was set off perfectly by the cream-colored backing. The double layer of batting inside was thick and warm.

“Mama, it’s so beautiful. It’s the nicest quilt you ever made.”

“
Ja
, it is, but I had a great deal of help with this quilt. Even when I was making it,
du lieber Gott
was leading me. I thought I was making it for Jenna, but it was for you.”

“I wish I would have known Jenna. I always wanted a sister.”

“I don’t know why
Gott
didn’t give us more children. I think it’s because He wanted us to concentrate on you. And He was so gracious to tell us the story of your life through the quilt. I wish I had been more attentive to His prompting when you were young. I almost missed what He was trying to show me about you. The whole time you were growing up, the quilt was right in front of my eyes.
Du lieber Gott
kept trying to use it to show me about your life, but it was like I was deaf and dumb. You were so much a part of us from the first day I found you that I didn’t even think about the possibility that you came to us wounded and in need of healing.”

“But you finally saw when I was in danger?”

“
Ja
. It was so important for you to find your birth mother, but Reuben and I didn’t understand. We just thought you had gotten a crazy idea into your head and were being very stubborn about it.”

“Well, it’s not like I wasn’t stubborn in those days.”

“
Ja
, you were, Jenny. And I’m grateful that you were. If you hadn’t been so stubborn, you would have given up your search, and your life would be very different.”

“And the Lord showed you about my life by using the quilt as a picture you could understand?”

“
Ja
, and that’s why I’ve gotten it out today. Something about this quilt is so special. It’s not like any other I have made. The materials I used are definitely not the Amish way. We would never use such worldly fabric. But I was going to leave the church, so when I found the red and blue silk, my pride and stubbornness overcame what wisdom I might have had, and I used it in the quilt. If I had actually gotten to display it at the Dalton fair that year, it would have caused
viel klatsch
among the women of our village.”

Jenny took the quilt in her hands and turned it over, inspecting each part. “And then you ruined it when you rescued me. But see! You
have repaired it so wonderfully that I can’t even see where the damage was.”

Jerusha pointed to a small, almost invisible stain near the border between the blue and the cream. “Here there was a very large stain.”

She turned up a corner and pointed to a barely visible serpentine stitch. “And here I had to replace the batting I tore out to start the fire that saved us, and then I had to restitch this whole corner.”

Jenny looked closely, but only when Jerusha actually put her finger on the repaired place did she see it.

“This was where I started to repair—inside, in the secret place of the quilt. I remember exactly what He said to me. ‘My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.’

“The Lord knew that in the inner part of you, a wound had to be healed. That was why it was so important for you to find Mama Rachel. Without knowing your Amish roots, you would never have come to know the Lord as you have. And Jonathan would never have given his life to the Lord. And there’s one more thing. When I was repairing the quilt, I found that I could think of Jenna without pain. As I remembered her, there was only joy. So
Gott
was healing me too.”

Jenny thought for a moment and then asked, “So you’re saying that
Gott
knew I came from an Amish family, and that was why He put me with you? So that I would understand who I really was when I finally discovered the truth?”

“
Ja
, Jenny. And then He blessed you by bringing you back to
Grossdaadi
Borntraeger and giving you the farm.”

“The quilt is wonderful, but where are we going with all this, Mama? I’m still confused.”

“Jenny, I’m thinking that if
Gott
showed us a picture of your life
in this quilt, the story didn’t stop when you found Jonathan and your
grossdaadi.
Somehow I feel your story is not yet finished.”

“And that’s why my story is about the Rose of Sharon quilt?”

“I think so. I don’t know whether the book will ever be published, but I’m sure you must finish it. Look here.”

Jerusha pointed at the red rose in the center of the quilt. It was perfectly sewn, with not a pucker or a wrinkle anywhere.

“One hundred and twenty silk rose petals are sewed together to make the rose. This was the hardest part. Each one had to be sewn in such a way that it’s impossible to see where one stops and another starts. I think our lives are the same way. Each moment in our life is sewn to the next one in such a way that we feel only the days and years going by. But
Gott
sees each moment and each connection as complete and separate events.”

“You know,” Jenny replied, “I haven’t looked at it that way in a long time, but I understood it once. Wait a moment.”

Jenny hurried down the hall to her room. She picked up the box that held her letters to Jonathan and searched for the one she wanted. When she found it, she went back to the sewing room. Jerusha was sitting in her chair, and Jenny curled up at her feet.

“This is part of a letter I wrote to Jonathan before we began courting. Let me read it to you.”