Planted with Hope

by Tricia Goyer

  “Ja, there’s a garden, but it’s a private garden. Emma and I are thankful that Hope has invited us to help.”

  “Ja, but Aenti Ruth Ann said… ”

  Jonas placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. She looked up and he fixed his eyes on hers. “I know what your aenti has said, but having others work in the garden is Hope’s decision.”

  Emma nodded. “I know, but I don’t know why she would want to do all that work by herself.”

  “It’s not up to us, Emma.” Jonas spoke in a deeper tone.

  Emma sighed and returned her gaze to the jump rope in her hands. “Yes, Dat.”

  Then Jonas scanned the crowd of children, making eye contact with as many of them as he could. “There is a garden behind the pie shop, and we might get to go see it, but for right now please don’t bother it. There are some people who like their quiet, their space, understand?”

  The children nodded, and a few seconds later they went back to their play. It was only Emma who stood to the side with her head lowered and her arms crossed over her chest as if her feelings had just been crushed.

  Emma’s lower lip began to quiver. “I thought Hope was nice.”

  “She is nice.”

  “If she was nice she’d let us help.”

  “She lets you help, doesn’t she?”

  Emma lifted her eyebrows and turned to him. “Am I the only kid she likes?”

  Jonas opened his mouth to respond and then closed it again. How could he answer that? “I—I really don’t know. I’m sure there are a lot of kids that Hope likes. Now run and play. We only have a few minutes of recess left.” He reached over and patted her shoulder.

  Emma scampered off to join the other girls who were jumping rope, but her questions wouldn’t leave Jonas’s mind. How much did he really know about Hope? Did she like children? Would she want to have more someday? Was she a good choice for a wife?

  Jonas sauntered back to the classroom, wondering if his attraction to Hope was getting in the way of logic. His heart was drawn to her—that was certain—but would Hope ever be willing to open up her heart? She was having a hard enough time just opening her garden. If she couldn’t allow people into her private spaces, what type of wife would she be within the Amish community? Would she always feel distant and aloof? As Jonas returned and sat at his desk he knew he had a lot to think about. And for the first time since meeting Hope he worried about where his feelings for her would take him.

  Upside-Down Vegetable Cake

  2 cups sifted flour

  2 tsp. baking powder

  ½ tsp. salt

  ¼ cup shortening

  1 egg, beaten

  1 cup milk

  4 cups mixed cooked vegetables (peas, carrots, celery, lima beans)

  ½ cup vegetable stock

  2 Tbsp butter

  Mix and sift dry ingredients together and cut in shortening. Combine egg and milk; add to dry ingredients, stirring until mixed. Arrange hot seasoned vegetables in bottom of a greased shallow baking pan, add vegetable stock, dot with butter, cover with first mixture, and bake in hot oven (425°) 20 to 25 minutes. Turn out on hot serving plate with vegetables on top and serve with tomato or mushroom sauce. Serves 6.*

  * Ruth Berolzheimer, 250 Ways to Serve Fresh Vegetables (Culinary Arts Institute, 1940), 45.

  Chapter Nineteen

  God puts us on our backs at times so we may look up.

  AMISH PROVERB

  The fabric store was quiet as Hope entered. Joy had the day off, and Elizabeth was the only one behind the counter. She was looking through some swatches of blue, as if trying to find the perfect shade.

  “There she is!” Elizabeth said as if she’d been waiting for her all day.

  “Hello, Elizabeth.” Hope approached the counter with a smile. “It looks like you’re busy with a project.”

  The fabric store smelled of cinnamon from the candle Elizabeth had burning near the cash register. The large window in front welcomed in the Florida sun, which splashed across the neat bolts arranged by color along the aisles. Elizabeth sat behind the counter on a high stool with a back. On the wall behind her a beautiful antique quilt was displayed, in purples, pinks and dark grays. It reminded Hope of the quilt that used to be on her grandmother’s bed, and she was thankful for the memory and thankful for the peace she felt in this shop.

  “Busy? I don’t believe in being busy at my age. Life is too short not to enjoy each day. I have been messing with these colors though—just trying to find the right fabric to start piecing together a wedding quilt.”

  “A wedding quilt.” Hope’s eyes widened. “Do I know the happy couple?”

  “Well, last I heard you share a room with Lovina.” She winked. “I know the wedding isn’t published yet, but every time I see that couple I know that it won’t be long now before we hear the gut news. I’ve seen many couples, and those two seem to complement each other so well.” She reached across the counter and patted Hope’s hand. “But enough about that. Tell me why you’ve come.”

  Hope took the older woman’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Elizabeth’s skin on the back of her hand was soft and thin like the breezy white cotton she sold.

  “Oh, I’d like to order another gardening apron. Little Emma Sutter saw mine, and she just loved it. I think she’d be excited if I had one made for her.”

  A smile filled Elizabeth’s face, and the lines around the corners of her eyes stretched outward as her cheeks pushed up. “Oh, that would be a fun project to make. I just love when new friendships are made. That little girl looks up to you, you know. Every time I see her she has something to say about Hope or the garden. Is it going well with them? I hear Jonas is doing a fine job as our teacher.”

  Is what going well? she wanted to ask. It’s just a friendship. But from the sparkle in Elizabeth’s eyes she knew she’d never fool the woman.

  “Ja, it is.” Hope’s stomach tightened and she nearly held her breath as she thought of a way to cause the conversation to shift. “I enjoy… them. We enjoy being in the garden together.”

  “And is the garden everything you’d hoped for?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Ja, except… well, I’m getting a lot of visitors. Just this morning two Englisch ladies were at the pie shop and they got so excited when they heard there was an Amish garden out back. I was just leaving when they came back there and asked if they could take photos. I told them I didn’t mind if they took photos of the garden, but I didn’t want any of me.” She sighed. “Though I guarantee they did when they didn’t think I was looking. I thought there were a lot of tourists in Walnut Creek, but I’m seeing them more and more around Pinecraft. Who thought being Amish would be so popular?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I think people are drawn to our simple ways. There is so much busyness and hurry in our world. The Englischers like to know that some people are making different choices.”

  Hope snickered. “It’s not so simple sometimes, being Amish. At least it hasn’t felt that way lately. Sometimes I wonder if we’re really that different at all.”

  Elizabeth cocked an eyebrow. “What do you feel is most important about being Amish?”

  Hope paused, having to think about it. This wasn’t the question that she expected from Elizabeth, not today. “Being Amish is living plain. Not putting ourselves over others. It’s living in humility and making one’s family the center of your life. It’s loving God, too, which I should have said first.”

  “That’s very good. And all those are important things. But there’s something you forgot. Something important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Before I answer that I have to tell you a little story.” Elizabeth pushed aside the scraps of fabric, folded her hands, and leaned against the top of the counter. “Hope, there was a time when I questioned if I should remain Amish. After forty years of marriage my husband died, and that whole time God never did bless us with children. It was just a few years after we moved to Pinecraft, so this didn
’t feel really much like home yet, and the home I had in Indiana was gone—sold to a young couple starting their lives.

  “I didn’t want to feel like an outsider, but I did. When I sat at sewing frolics everyone talked about their children and grandchildren. When I attended weddings I always found myself seated with other widows, but even they had family to talk about. At the same time, my shop started doing well, and I had a growing customer base, not only from the Amish, but the Englisch too. Women like Janet.”

  Hope nodded, listening. She imagined if she spent more time with Janet she’d consider her a good friend too.

  “She became a gut friend, and I knew she loved God. I believed that because of Jesus—what He’d done for both of us and our acceptance of salvation through Him—both Janet and I would go to heaven at the end of our lives. I’ve never been foolish enough to believe that only Amish did things the right way in God’s eyes. Or believe that only Amish had any hope of heaven. So then I wondered, Why remain? If living plain didn’t save my soul, then why do it?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “I was being rebellious one quiet, Saturday evening, and I took off my kapp, just to see how it felt. And as I did I thought about the things Janet and I talked about most. The times in her life that she shared the most stories from—the war years. They should have been considered the hardest years of her life, but there was good mixed with the hardship and pain. And the person Janet admired most was the woman who’d faced very hard trials. Her mother, Pauline, was a widow. She had a child to raise on her own, and there was a war. She had to ration and raise her own food, but looking back it’s a time that Janet never forgot.”

  “Because of the garden?” Hope asked. Warmth filled Hope’s chest, and she had a feeling that it was. She remembered again why gardening had become so important to her in the first place. It was a place of life, of growth, and connection with God. And she supposed all those things could be found in a garden even during a time of war.

  Elizabeth didn’t answer right away. Instead, she looked into Hope’s eyes and offered the slightest smile, as if reading Hope’s thoughts.

  “No, it wasn’t the garden that left such a strong impression,” Elizabeth said. She brushed a strand of white hair back from her forehead. It was light and wispy. Hope wondered if it felt like cotton. It sure looked as if it would.

  “Not a garden,” Elizabeth said again. “A garden only grows for a season and fills our stomachs for a season too. The part that Janet will never forget is the people. Strangers who came together to make the garden grow and became friends.” Elizabeth’s smile grew. “Those friendships lasted longer than one season. They lasted long after the war. Who the neighbors became together was the most important part. What they did together bonded them for a lifetime.”

  Hope nodded, forcing a smile. She crossed her arms over her apron and wondered how long Elizabeth had been planning this talk. Did Lovina put her up to it?

  Yet just because something was right for someone else didn’t mean it was right for her. Still, she stood there and listened to Elizabeth. If it wasn’t the message, it was the conviction in the woman’s words that she’d pay attention to.

  “Janet was telling me about her mother’s garden during the time I considered leaving. It was so much easier just to be alone than to be around others and pretend I was happy for them every time they announced a new wedding, a new grandchild, or a new marriage,” Elizabeth continued. “And then, that’s when I felt my good God asking me to recite the Lord’s Prayer.”

  Tears filled Elizabeth’s eyes and her lower lip quivered. Tenderness and vulnerability filled her face. Hope shifted on her feet. She wanted to look away, and as she glanced to the blue printed fabric on the bolt on the counter, Elizabeth’s hand touched hers, pulling her back in.

  Hope cautiously looked back to Elizabeth, focusing on her eyes, tears and all.

  “Hope, will you say the first line of the Lord’s Prayer with me—just the first line?”

  Together their voices rang out in the quiet of the fabric shop. “Our Father who art in heaven.”

  Hope’s brow furrowed, and she wasn’t sure what Elizabeth was getting at.

  “Now, my sweet girl, will you just say the first word?”

  The word replayed in her mind, and then, as if someone had opened a spigot, it dripped down into her heart. Heat filled her chest, and she tried to open her lips, but they felt dry and almost stuck together. Hope licked them with the tip of her tongue and she swallowed hard. “Our?”

  “Our, yes, that is the word the Lord had for me. That was the reason He needed me to remain Amish. Many people today believe in God, but they think of it as a solo pursuit. They think of it as just between them and God. But Jesus reminds us of ‘our’ in this model of how we pray. It’s not just my God who art in heaven. It’s our God, and it’s a message that wearing this kapp displays, even when I’m not thinking about it. The kapp takes away my individuality, but for a good reason. It’s a symbol to our world—to the customers who come into my shop—that living in unity and serving one another is important.

  “Janet and I have talked about this and we agree that people are at their best for God when they are serving—not alone—but with others,” Elizabeth continued, emotion heavy on her lips. “God chose the nation of Israel. Jesus died for a sea of sinners. Most gardens don’t just feed one, but many, and sometimes the hardest part of being Amish, opening ourselves to others—allowing them to press in and mess up our order and our plans—becomes the best thing. Not only for them. Not only for us. But for a whole world that needs to be reminded not to think of God as mine but ours. We, Hope, are a symbol of what happens when we all unite—together—in God’s bigger plan for this world.”

  Hope nodded, taking in Elizabeth’s words. They spoke truth, but she also knew what it would require. If she followed this directive she’d have no quiet. She’d have no peace.

  “All of that makes sense. You’ve given me something to think about, Elizabeth.”

  “And pray about, I hope.”

  “Ja, of course.”

  “I’m not going to tell you to do anything—make any decisions for you—but I learned long ago that in order to get a gut picture of what God’s doing in a place, you have to look back and see what He’s already done. How He’s already worked.

  “God’s been at work in this community long before you came, Hope. Long before I came too. And long before that Victory Garden was planted back in 1942. Maybe we can see more clearly when we turn back the pages of time… that’s all.”

  “And is that why you asked if I could borrow—could read the Victory Journal?”

  Elizabeth winked. “It just might be.”

  Hope sighed. “It wasn’t about the garden tips and the recipes after all, was it?”

  “Those don’t hurt. I’m sure you found some good things to try, some good advice. But, ja, now you know the real reason.”

  Hope took the Victory Journal out of the pocket of her garden apron, and she flipped through the pages, seeing the book in a whole new light. She paused at the Grapefruit Pie recipe that she’d shown Lovina just last night. And her breath caught.

  “And Lovina… the pie shop… this is part of it too. It’s a gathering place. Pulling people together.”

  A slow smile crept up Elizabeth’s face. She nodded and released a sigh. “Ja, isn’t the Lord gut? God urged me to pray for that place, and I’ve been doing it for a while. But until a few months ago I was just focused on the building itself.” She pushed her glasses farther up on her nose. “But I have a feeling that my prayers spilled over to the back—to the garden area too.”

  Hope nodded, and deep down she knew what she needed to do. To hear Elizabeth explain the importance of community proved her garden was just part of what God was doing. What He’d be doing for a while. She would have to pray that God would change her, soften her heart, and make her not so concerned if her carrot tops popped up in nice, straight rows.

  Oh Lord, I want to
be willing. Please make me so.

  Grapefruit Pie, 1940

  ⅓ cup cornstarch

  1¼ cups sugar

  ¼ tsp. salt

  1¾ cups boiling water

  3 eggs, divided

  1 Tbsp butter

  ½ cup fresh grapefruit juice

  1 tsp. grated grapefruit rind

  1 baked pastry shell

  grapefruit segments

  6 Tbsp sugar

  ½ tsp. vanilla

  Mix cornstarch, sugar, and salt. Add water slowly, stirring until well blended. Cook over boiling water for 15 minutes, stirring until thick and smooth. Pour into egg yolks slowly, return to heat and cook 2 minutes longer. Remove from heat and add butter, grapefruit juice, and rind. Cool. Pour into pastry shell and arrange grapefruit segments around edge of pie.

  For meringue, beat egg whites until frothy. Add sugar gradually and continue beating until stiff. Add vanilla. Pile on pie and bake in slow oven (325°) 15 to 18 minutes.*

  * Ruth Berolzheimer, 250 Superb Pies and Pastries (Culinary Arts Institute, 1940), 27.

  Chapter Twenty

  Anyone who practices what he preaches doesn’t have to preach much.

  AMISH PROVERB

  Hope tossed the journal onto her bed, thankful that Lovina had gone to a volleyball game with Noah. Thankful that she had their bedroom all to herself. She sighed and sank down on the bed next to it. As much as she’d like to go to the garden and enjoy the cool of the evening, she had a lot of thinking to do. Pauline’s story had stirred up so much inside her—so much that Elizabeth had confirmed today.

  Sure it was easy for Pauline to welcome people to help in her garden. There had been a war going on. They needed the food back then. They needed to work together.