“I’ll talk to him.”
Jake shut the buggy door, patted the horse goodbye, and turned to wave as he walked off. I watched until he joined the handful of people already at the bus stop, some chatting on cell phones, a few smoking, the rest simply staring off into the distance.
Turning my eyes from the scene and swallowing hard, I waited for a lull in the traffic and in my racing thoughts before signaling and easing the buggy back on the road.
I spent the rest of the day at the Bowmans’, silently beseeching God to help me find the right words to tell Daadi I was struggling with something I hardly knew how to describe. I was also praying He would show me the right time for that conversation to happen. God answered my second prayer first. Actually, He answered only that prayer.
The next afternoon, back at the buggy shop, everyone was either done for the day or working outside in the covered bay, and Daadi and I ended up inside alone. It was obviously a great time to have a quiet conversation with him, but I had no ready words at my disposal.
His final task of the day was to mount a new set of tires on a courting buggy. As he did that, I worked in the space next to his, adding extra suspension to the rear axle of a new top wagon. Daadi slid the first tire on the back axle and then pulled out a wrench and began tightening the nuts. Glancing his way, I could almost feel God whispering over my shoulder.
This is the time you prayed for.
Pausing in my work, I cleared my throat. “Daadi, I need to talk to you for a minute.”
“Oh?” He looked relaxed and unfazed, his eyes on the task at hand.
“I’m struggling with something, and I don’t even know how to put it into words.”
He stopped turning the wrench and gave me his full attention. “Have you done something you regret, son?”
“No. No, it’s nothing like that.”
He began to turn the wrench again, perhaps sensing it would be easier for me if we kept working while I stumbled through what I needed to say. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
And so I told him, as near as I could, what I had admitted to Rachel and Jake, what I had been sensing lately when I went to the pond on early mornings, and how I had begun to feel that God Himself was beckoning me from beyond Lancaster County—though for whatever reason I couldn’t imagine. Daadi continued to mount the tires as I talked, pausing now and then as I spoke but saying nothing.
As soon as I was done, I felt a crushing weight, not a lifted burden. Despite what Jake had said about my situation being different from my mother’s, I knew this conversation had to be nearly as hurtful to Daadi as when she ran away from the Amish life almost twenty-five years before.
“I’m sorry if this is hard for you to hear,” I concluded. “It’s hard for me to say. But it’s been even harder to keep locked up inside me. I had to tell you.”
“Yes, you did.” Daadi set the wrench down. “And I’m glad you did, Tyler.”
“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to be anywhere else but here, but I can’t ignore this restlessness inside me.”
He nodded. I could tell he was thinking. Maybe praying. Trying to form the right response.
“Rachel thinks this has to do with my dad and the fact that he essentially abandoned me here all those years ago,” I added.
“Hmm,” Daadi said, but nothing else. He was deep in thought.
“But I forgave him for that. It’s not like I lie awake wondering why he didn’t want me. I’ve been happy here. You and Mammi and Jake and the aunts and uncles—you’re my family. And I had my chance to go back with my father.”
“Yes, you did. A long time ago.”
“But I’ve never regretted staying, Daadi. Not once. This is my home. This is my life.”
“And yet you have not gone to the bishop to seek your vows of membership.”
I opened my mouth and then shut it again. What could I say to that? My mind spinning, I returned to my own work. Outside in the work bay, I could hear various strains of conversation as one by one the other workers called it a day and began to head home. Inside, Daadi and I were quiet save for the clink and clank of our tools, both of us lost in contemplation.
Finally, I turned to my beloved grandfather and said, “It can’t really be God calling me from outside, can it?”
He tightened a bolt. “God is everywhere. You know this, Tyler. If He can call Father Abraham out, He can call you.”
“Yes, but why would He? What is out there that is better than what I have here?”
Daadi finished putting on the tire, and then he went over to the bench behind us, sat down, and patted the seat next to him. I set my screwdriver aside and joined him there.
“Your life is not one to be spent in pursuit of what is better or best. Your life is to be spent in surrender, Tyler. Surrender and service to God.”
“But I am to be separate,” I countered, hearing the words of the Ordnung in my head.