Threads of Grace (31 page)
He laid his head on her shoulder. “Just as the Lord does, my beautiful wife.” Then he broke from her suddenly. “Stay here,” he whispered. “I’ve got to run upstairs and get something, all right?”
Soon he came pounding back down the steps.
“I told you once that I wasn’t painting you the way that I wanted,” he said. “This—this is what I truly see.”
He held out the canvas.
It was a pond of perfectly still water, deep and green and shaded, a bottomless pool in the midst of a rushing river. Upstream the water cascaded down over the rocks in a torrent so realistic that she could almost hear it. Beyond the still place, the river went on downstream in a gentle, peaceful current. Behind,
on the other side of the river, rose up layer after layer of majestic, mist-clad mountains. And in the foreground, on a large boulder, sat three figures with their backs to her. A golden-haired man, a dark-haired woman, and a child, all wrapped together in a beautiful quilt.
She sank down onto the bed, overcome by the wonder and awe of it.
“It’s a portrait of grace,” she said in a whisper. “Grace like the mountains, strong and solid and eternal. Grace like the rushing river, and like the deep, quiet pool. Grace like the rocks, a firm foundation.”
“And grace like the quilt,” he said. “Pieced together from all the different experiences of our lives into something warm and beautiful.”
“And what of the loose threads?” Grace asked, pointing to a few random strings that straggled from a frayed edge of the quilt.
“Those,” he said, “are the threads of grace that bind us all together.”
She took a breath and swallowed back the tears. “Thank you.”
“For painting the picture?”
Grace shook her head. “For that,
jah
, of course. It’s incredibly beautiful. But thank you even more for the vision of it. For seeing me that way. For loving me.”
He sank down on the bed next to her. “Loving you,” he said, “is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done.”
Seth looked at her, and his eyes held more than she ever thought possible. More love. More promise. More hope.
The fear was gone.
And all that was left was the love.
1. How does God use new beginnings in our lives to renew our faith like He does for Grace and Seth?
2. Abel is a unique child. How do you deal with people who seem very different to you and your way of doing things?
3. How does Grace’s relationship with her mother-in-law show us that we can be mothered in a multitude of ways? How are you mothered?
4. How do animals play a role in this story? How do animals affect your own life?
5. Grace faces many difficult and enormous decisions in her life. How do you feel God’s leading when you have a decision to make?
6. How does Seth’s relationship with his brother aid his life? Do you have a friend like this?
7. How does evil become “used for good” in this story?
8. How does God love us unconditionally, in much the same way that Seth loves Grace, even when we feel lacking in beauty on the inside?
I
would like to honor God, our Father, for the personal grace that He extends to me. I would like to bless Penny Stokes, without whom there would truly be no book here. Thanks in abundance also to Natalie Hanemann, Daisy Hutton, and my friend Brenda Lott. Thank you also to my agent, Natasha Kern, and to the staff at Thomas Nelson. I’d like to thank Beth Wiseman for her witness to me and also my family who prayed. Thank you to the Amish people of this world—long may they prosper.
AN EXCERPT FROM
Arms of Love
M
ARCH
1777
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
I
am going to die with the birth of this child, Adam.”
Twenty-one-year-old Adam Wyse stared at the older woman, his mother’s best friend and the mother of the girl he loved. He had little doings with the ways of women and understood the bearing of offspring better in terms of the horses he raised. But there was something calm and certain about the statement Mary Yoder had made, and he sought to turn her from such premonitions.
“You are anxious, ’tis all, as any . . . woman would be near her time.” He had almost said
mare
. He cast about the room in
hopes that inspiration would come to him. Instead, the bright sun of spring beguiled through the windowpanes. He longed to be outside, holding hands with Lena.
“Adam. This is not the fancy of some nervous horse; I have given birth to three other
kinner
with no problem. But this time—well, the Lord has revealed it to my heart, and I must make preparations now, especially with Samuel absent.”
The past three weeks had been a hard time for the Yoder family. Samuel Yoder had been hauled off to jail after refusing to give up his last cow to the Patriots’ cause of revolution, and there was no telling when he would be released.
Adam chafed a bit under Mary’s scrutiny and tried to look anywhere but at the mound of bedclothes covering her abdomen. “Would you like me to send Lena to you?”
“Nee
. I would like you to make a dying woman a promise.”
“Mary . . .”
“A promise, Adam. But some questions first, if you will?”
He nodded, resigned. “Of course, but I—” “
Gut
. Tell me, have you kissed my daughter?”
“What?”
“You heard me well.”
“
Nee
. . . Of course not.”
Mary laughed. “But not for lack of wanting, eh?”
He felt himself flush like some green lad, knowing he had held himself off like a wolf on a leash for want of kissing Lena in the past, convicted by her youth and delicacy.
“I wanted,” he said, unable to keep the roughness from his tone.
She reached to pat his hand. “As is normal. But I am glad that
your relationship has not progressed that far—it will make things easier later.”
“Later?” he asked, but she was on to another question.
“I know how your
fater
abuses you, Adam. I have seen the scars on your back. Why have you not left his home?”
“I—” He broke off in confusion. He’d never been confronted by the truth of his private life in so forceful a manner, even by Lena. It was not so simple a question to answer. His father did see fit to discipline him harshly, careful not to “spare the rod,” but he hadn’t actually beaten Adam in several years. It was more torturous games of the mind now.
“Well?”
He swallowed hard. “I stay because . . . because I am bound there. I cannot easily go out into the world without my father’s blessing, and—well, perhaps I deserve what I get from him.”
Mary snorted. “You deserve to be hurt, Adam? And your
mamm
standing by, helplessly? She can do nothing. She is a victim too, as is Isaac.” She covered his hand with her own.
He thumbed the contours of her fingers and shook his head, thinking of his older brother. “Not Isaac . . . He gets away from it somehow. He has escaped.”
“
Nee
,’tis not true. He’s lost himself in his own world, in his books and studies and animals, but he won’t walk away free. No one who lives in that house will ever be free.”
Adam felt unexpected tears burn at the back of his eyes. He swallowed hard. “
Ya
, there’s truth in that.”
“I believe that no one should have to live under such oppression of the spirit.”
He smiled then. “You sound like a Patriot.”
He was surprised when a thoughtful look crossed her face. “Well, maybe I am.”
“What?” No Amish person would ever admit to supporting the cause of the Revolution—except for a few men, mostly young, who had done so outright by enlisting . . . as Adam himself had secretly considered. But to hear a woman, a neighbor he had known all his life, speak in such a way was confusing, especially with her husband jailed.
“Ach
, do not worry, Adam. I am not being unfaithful about Samuel’s plight. But there is in me something that believes there are things worth fighting for. Do you agree?”
He thought about the bondage his mother was in to his father. “
Ya
, some things.”
“Is my
dochder
one of those things, Adam?”
He met her eyes, confused. “Lena? I know’twill sound forthright, but she loves me true, and I her.”
“Ya
. . . this is so.”
“Then why would I have to fight for her?”
Mary withdrew her hand from his to rub absently at her belly. “Because of the promise I mentioned before.”
“I will do whatever you ask.”
She looked at him, her eyes the bright turquoise blue of Lena’s own. “Will you, Adam?”
“If it is within my power, and with the Lord’s grace,
ya
.”
She smiled faintly. “Grace?
Ya
, that you will need . . . for I ask you to promise, Adam Wyse, to give up Lena’s love, to give her up, until you are free from your
fater’s
rule and are ready to build a new and free life for the two of you. I cannot die knowing that you would take her to your home as our custom decrees.”
“Of course I would take her to my home; it is our way. But
Fater
would never harm her.”
“And what of your
kinner
, Adam? Can you be so sure? What of your sons? And, Adam, it hurts me to speak thus, but do you trust yourself? What if you gave into a rage like your father’s?”
“Mary, I would never—”
“Perhaps I overstep . . . but I would still have your promise.”
Inwardly Adam reeled as though he had been struck; he could not fathom the request. “I can build a new home—away from my father’s house—farther out into the community.”
“If this were your intent, you would have done so by now.”
He bowed his head and felt a thickness in his throat. “You ask too much.”
“With the Lord’s grace, Adam . . . remember? You said that.”
“But I . . .” He stopped. He would not give in to the sob that beckoned from the depths of his heart. Give up Lena? How would he even go about it? He could not imagine breathing without her, let alone living out a life until he could do what Mary asked.