Fearless Hope: A Novel

by Serena B. Miller

  “I’d rather be here in the barn than in church,” Simon said. “I’ve had enough preaching to last me a lifetime.”

  “Simon’s been staying with me for the past few days,” Logan explained to Ivan. “We found out that his dad has a bit of a temper.”

  “I don’t know your father well,” Ivan said, “but I can imagine that being the case.”

  “Why don’t you go eat,” Logan said to the boy. “It looked like there were plenty of leftovers.”

  “But I didn’t go to church. Daed always said if we didn’t go to church we didn’t get to eat.”

  “That isn’t the rule at my house,” Logan said. “I’m certain Hope would want you to come eat whether you went to church or not.”

  Without another word, Simon loped off, his lanky frame looking like a scarecrow in Logan’s larger clothes. He made a note to go purchase something in an appropriate size for the boy, since it looked like he’d be staying around for a while.

  “So, you’re taking in strays now?” Ivan said.

  “Simon was pretty banged up when Hope found him in the barn last week. I have plenty of room and he’s good company. I don’t mind.”

  Ivan leaned over a stable door and stroked the nose of one of the horses that had been stabled there.

  “I thought you didn’t like horses,” Logan said.

  “Just working with them. They’re still nice to pet,” Ivan said. “You said that Caleb wanted you to stop coming around? That concerns me.”

  “He took offense when I said that I felt like I’d been in your house before,” Logan said. “I never did quite figure out why that upset him so much.”

  “Caleb’s my eldest son,” Ivan said. “And sometimes an eldest son takes the responsibility for the family on his shoulders, becoming a little more protective than necessary. Ever since Caleb was sixteen and . . . made a mistake that ended up hurting the entire family . . . it’s as though he thinks he has to be the family watchdog. Sometimes he takes it too far. It is my house, not Caleb’s, and you are welcome anytime. My wife sends her greetings as well.”

  “Sixteen is a tough age. It is easy to make mistakes then.”

  “It’s even tougher when you allowed your little brother to accidentally drown.” Ivan, so quick with a joke, turned deadly sober. “His name was Joseph, and Caleb has never forgiven himself.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Logan said.

  “Our baby is with God,” Ivan said. “I often think of him sitting on Jesus’ lap with our Lord’s arms about him. It comforts me and Mary to envision that.”

  Logan was impressed with Ivan’s reaction to his loss. What a comfort it must be to think in terms of a God who would cradle a loved one.

  “With Simon living here, are you going to put that boy to work on some of these fields of yours?” Ivan quickly changed the subject. “It’s almost time to plant.”

  “Hope suggested it, but I think it would be difficult to go about getting the equipment that he would need. According to Simon, he only knows how to farm with horse-powered equipment.”

  “Oh, I have the equipment. I never got rid of it. You’re welcome to use whatever you want but you’ll need to find Simon a good pair of plow horses, unless you want to teach him how to drive a tractor.”

  It occurred to Logan that a few months ago, had someone told him he would soon be standing in the middle of his own barn, with the smell of fresh hay and horses all around him, discussing farming with a real farmer—he would have laughed in their face. Instead, he picked up a piece of straw, stuck it in his mouth, and leaned against a support beam, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Do you recommend I do that?”

  “No. Simon knows how to farm in the old ways. If his father happened to see him driving a tractor, it would go hard on the boy if he ever decides to go back.”

  “Do you think he will?” Logan asked. “After all he’s been through?”

  “Most of them do,” Ivan said. “Swartzentruber boys and girls don’t leave their families easily. Most of them stay until they marry, and even then they stay close. To make a complete break from his people—it probably won’t ever happen.”

  “But after—”

  “Spare the rod and spoil the child is the proverb they fall back on,” Ivan said. “Way too much, in my opinion. I had trouble even spanking my kids.”

  “Your family turned out well. How did you do it?”

  “We prayed a lot, got through each day the best we could, but one important thing is that Mary and I made a choice that our family would stand for something bigger than ourselves. After Joseph’s death, we decided we would put our strength and what money we had into doing something that mattered.”

  “Like what?”

  A sweet smile settled on Ivan’s lips. “Giving away cups of water.”

  “Water?” Logan visualized Ivan pouring water into cups and handing them to people on the streets of Holmes County.

  “I know I joke about it sometimes, but my move to the Mennonites involved more than my poor relationship with horses,” Ivan said. “The Amish are not evangelistic. Nor are they allowed to fly, except in medical emergencies. The Mennonites, however, have all kinds of evangelistic outreach and no problem at all with climbing on an airplane. At least that’s true of the more liberal ones.

  “The way we Mennonites tend to evangelize is by serving. Mary and I chose to focus on one of the most basic teachings of Christ. When Jesus talked about giving a cup of water in His name, we took it literally. Our family has devoted itself to getting sanitary water into the hands of third-world families. We do it through deep wells, installing basic filtration systems, and shipping in special purification packets that cost us less than five cents and produce five gallons of water each.

  “Just think, Logan, it only takes a nickel to turn fetid swamp water into five gallons of pure water that a thirsty child can drink without getting dysentery or cholera or God knows what else. My boys and I have also gone into war-torn countries without guns and left behind nothing but the ability for mothers to slake their children’s thirst with pure water. Five gallons of clean water wouldn’t seem like much to most of our citizens, but it means everything to a struggling parent.”

  “Is your whole church involved in this or just your family?”

  “Our church is involved, but my family has taken it on as our special project. We are just a drop in the bucket of all the good that is happening all over the world in the name of Christ, but we are a significant drop. Other Anabaptist churches, including some that are not connected to the Mennonites, are involved in projects like this as well. It’s amazing what pure water can do to raise the standard of living for a family. I’ve seen it over and over again. It is just about all I think about these days.”

  Logan was intrigued. “And you actually go yourselves to do this?”

  “Two or three times a year at least one of us is somewhere helping supervise, carrying equipment, or simply making arrangements for well drillers to come into the area. Once we get the water situation under control, we can teach people how to grow crops where there weren’t crops before. Sometimes the right knowledge and a few packs of seed is all it takes to make a big difference in a family’s life.”

  Ivan glanced at his watch. “Well, I need to get going. Mary will have dinner on the table by now, and Mother will have put her teeth in. The kids are all coming over today. We’re planning our next mission trip to Haiti. You should join us.”

  “Me?” Logan was surprised. “I’m not Mennonite.”

  “You don’t have to be.” Ivan chuckled. “You can use a shovel, can’t you? Don’t worry, we’d never let you loose with the Gospel without a driver’s license anyway. If there’s any Bible teaching to be done, we usually leave that up to William. He’s the scholar in the family.”

  Logan was baffled. “A driver’s license?”

  “That was a joke, son.” Ivan clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll ask Mother to pray about it. She always was a formidable force at praying
. Now that she’s half-blind, it seems like she puts in double the time. She says there’s nothing much else she’s good for anymore, so she might as well pray. She has such a strong hold on the Almighty’s ear, the rest of us step real careful around that woman. You don’t want to get on the bad side of her. No telling what she might pray for.”

  With that, his neighbor went whistling off, pausing every few steps to talk to people he knew.

  Logan saw Carrie with her head against a nearby tree, eyes closed, counting. Then suddenly the little girl took off running after her playmates. Logan could hear squeals and giggles as she tagged other children. Some of the older ones allowed her to tag them even though they could easily outrun her. Some pretended to stumble or ran comically slow. Several minutes into the game he saw a sweaty, flushed Carrie run to her mother and whisper in her ear. Hope poured her daughter a glass of water, and Carrie drank thirstily. Then she gave the cup back, wiped her mouth, and ran off to play again.

  What would it be like to love a child and not have the ability to quench its thirst? He couldn’t imagine.

  “What good do your books do?” Bishop Schrock had asked only yesterday. What good, indeed, compared to the Troyer family’s pure water ministry. Or compared to what Hope was accomplishing in raising her sweet children. Or his mother with her pro bono work at the shelter.

  He’d always considered himself one of the good guys. He had taken loving care of his wife during her final days. He had never deliberately hurt anyone. He didn’t cheat or steal. He voted and paid his taxes. But was that enough?

  Here he found himself surrounded by industrious, caring people who raised food, created homes, nurtured children, helped their neighbors, and made the world a better place in every way possible. He remembered the joy the elderly quilter with arthritic hands took in the extra-special quilt she told him she planned to donate to an upcoming auction for Haitian orphans. Even the WWII soldiers lived with the knowledge that they had done something to save the world.

  He, on the other hand, had spent most of his life sitting at a computer making stuff up. No wonder it had finally resulted in such a paralyzing writer’s block.

  He watched Bishop Schrock, standing in a corner of the yard in deep conversation with Simon as the boy poured out his heart. He saw the bishop put a comforting hand on Simon’s shoulder.

  He could see, across the field, all of Ivan’s family’s cars parked around the house, planning their next trip to make certain other people’s children got safe drinking water while William taught those who wanted to learn about Jesus. What kind of courage did that take? What kind of sacrifice? What kind of faith?

  Marla had been wrong about him. He didn’t need a shrink.

  He needed God.

  • • •

  The cleanup after church seemed effortless with so many people helping. Before he hardly knew what had happened, the benches were gone, the partition and furniture put back in place, the house and yard swept clean of any lingering debris.

  It was a little astonishing to have dozens of people laughing and talking with him one minute, and be standing there completely alone the next. With Hope and the children also gone and probably not coming back—he was left with a feeling of such aloneness that it was physically painful.

  He looked longingly across the field to where the Troyers were still having their weekly family get-together. Ivan had said he could come anytime. He understood better about Caleb now, and Mary had been so welcoming the last time he was there.

  He decided to chance it and walked over. When he arrived, Esther was sitting on the porch alone, a blue and white afghan thrown around her shoulders.

  “Who’s there?” she asked as he approached.

  “It’s Logan, ma’am. Your next-door neighbor.”

  “Oh, how nice.” She patted the rocking chair next to her. “Come have a seat. I hear you hosted church today. How did you like it?”

  He obediently sat down beside her. It had not been his plan to visit with Esther, but ignoring the old woman would be rude. “I enjoyed it very much.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. The rest of the family are all inside working on their plans for the next trip to Haiti,” Esther said. “My job, as I see it, is to pray for them.”

  “What do you pray for?”

  “For safety. For wisdom. For the project to succeed if it is God’s will, for it to fail if it is not. For my family to bring honor and not shame to the name of Christ.”

  “That sounds like a tall order.”

  “No. It is not a tall order. It is my job, and an honor.”

  “Do you ever pray for other people?”

  “All the time,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Would you consider praying for me?”

  She stopped rocking and listened intently. “In what way?”

  “I feel like I’ve been wandering around in a dark forest for a long time.” He struggled for words. “And I don’t know how to find my way out.”

  “Ah.” She nodded and resumed her rocking. “Then it has begun.”

  “What has begun?”

  “Your finding your way out of that forest. I’ve been praying that might happen for you ever since I learned that an Englisch man had moved in next door.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Her voice held a hint of humor. “It just seemed like the neighborly thing to do.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything,” Esther said. “I may not know the answer, but I’ll answer honestly.”

  “I have a problem.” He wondered if he was being foolish, but something told him that Esther could be someone who might have an answer. He briefly described what had happened during the church service. “Do you have any earthly idea what might be going on?”

  Esther was silent for a long time. “Hope came to visit me the other day. She said that you were rather broken when you first came. She says you are getting better. By any chance does your mother pray for you?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Because a mother’s prayers can be a powerful thing. I wonder if God might have answered them by leading you here. Do you suppose He might have deliberately brought you to this place where you might find this healing?”

  He found Esther’s faith sweetly innocent and childlike. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but he was a little disappointed in her answer.

  “I can’t imagine God telling me where to live,” he said. “I’m sure He has better things to do with His time.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Esther said. “I’ve found that it is unwise to put God in a box and try to define what He will and won’t do.”

  “Mother?” Mary came to the screen door holding a sweater in her hand. “Are you chilly?”

  “Come out and say hello to our neighbor, Mary,” Esther said. “He finally got the courage to come back to see us.”

  Mary came out and handed the sweater to Esther—who obediently put it on. Then she sat down beside Logan. “I’m glad you decided to come back after that interrogation Ivan tells me Caleb put you through.”

  “That’s okay. Frankly, I’m a little envious that your other children have had a big brother who is that protective of them.”

  He saw a shadow pass over Mary’s face, but then she put on a determined smile. “Our Caleb has had his struggles, but he is a good man.”

  Logan did not ask what Caleb’s struggles were. He already knew. It could not be easy to forever carry the burden of responsibility for a child’s death. He searched his mind for a less emotional topic.

  “Ivan was just telling me about your family’s upcoming trip to Haiti. Are you going?”

  “No, I’m not,” Mary said. “I have the best job of all. I get to stay home and be the grandmother. Someone needs to be available if children get sick or Prudy has her baby. I help make it possible for Ivan and the boys to go. Ivan says he invited you to go along.”

  “Yes, but I doubt I coul
d be much help.”

  “You should go.” Mary put her hand on his arm. “Honestly, Logan. You should. They could use the help and it would change your life.”

  “You need to go.” Esther echoed Mary’s words.

  “Mom?” Now it was Caleb at the door. “Who are you talking to? Oh, hi, Logan.”

  The next thing Logan knew, the entire family had come out to the porch and he was surrounded by a well-meaning, enthusiastic family who seemed to think that the thing he needed most in life was to get his shots, update his passport, and join them on the trip to Haiti.

  He made no promises, but deep down he was beginning to think that it might be wise for him to go. Maybe it would help him find his way out of the forest.

  chapter TWENTY-TWO

  The girl that Hope had chosen to take her place as housekeeper showed up the very next morning. He was surprised that Hope had taken so little time to find her replacement. She must have made the arrangements while having dinner with the church.

  Agatha was awkward and shy. The poor girl could also have used a good dermatologist. She burned his toast, the bean soup was unsalted, and the potatoes she fried to go along with the beans were dripping with grease.

  If Hope was not such a person of integrity, he would be suspicious that she had chosen Agatha deliberately so that he would miss her all the more—which he did.

  It turned out that Simon could cook, and over the next few days the boy took it upon himself to help Agatha. At first, Logan thought it was merely a matter of survival on Simon’s part. Then he realized that Simon and Agatha had taken an immediate liking to each other and there was much awkward flirting going on in his kitchen. This worried him. He had never expected to find himself in the position of having to be a chaperone for two Amish teenagers, and he wasn’t sure how to go about it. As the week drew on he realized that he needed to find something to occupy Simon besides the new housekeeper.

  He knew that morals had changed for society at large, but he had a strong suspicion that they had not changed at all for the Amish and that if his new housekeeper ended up getting pregnant on his watch, he would have some explaining to do.