GRACIOUS LORD, AS I prepare for sleep, I remember your Providence and grace and care. I remember how you watched over your people Israel, how you delivered them when they were slaves in Egypt. I remember my Savior, how he gave his life and his blood for all of us. I remember your love for all of us, written in that very same blood.
I remember all of these things, but I will admit that I am afraid. Sinner that I am, weak in the flesh, I cannot help but be afraid. Though I seek your peace and your calmness in all that I do, I find that my fears for my loved ones are strong. I am nothing, and I do not fear for myself. But Hannah and Sadie and Jacob are not me, and I love them so. I see that darkness is coming, and has come, and is all around us.
Care for them, Father. Watch over us. Give me your peace, that I might have the strength that is needed for those we both love.
In the Blessed Name of Jesus I pray, Amen.
October 4
The morning found the world again touched by a coolness, a blessed coolness. Not a chill, but an easing off. No longer summer, whispered the morning. No longer summer.
With the animals fed and breakfast eaten, I hitched Nettie up to the buggy and waited as Hannah readied herself and Sadie for worship. Jacob walked along the path, dressed neatly, or as neatly as he can be. He grows like beans on a vine, that boy does. His pants seem always too short, his broadening shoulders straining his dark jacket, his hat just a tiny bit too small.
I watched him, walking in the drive, aimless and thinking, kicking a rock through the dust. Still a boy, but not for much longer. I wonder, for a moment, about his running-around, about his rumspringa, just a few years away. How will he run around, if the English world is in tatters? I do not know.
Nettie sat patiently in the harness, and so I walked a little myself, pacing down the drive. I could see, here and there, a whisper of yellow in the leaves of the big oak near the gate. Not much yet, just a hint, like the first speckle of pepper gray in a man’s beard. The rising sun played across the tree, catching it with that rich, warm morning light.
And there, in the air beneath the canopy of the oak, I saw a single bright yellow leaf. It was not falling. It hovered, whirling, floating and bobbing and moving. It did not fall. It refused to fall.
I watched it as it danced, defying the fall, a leaf that would not come to earth. It was magic, this leaf.
A soft morning breeze rose up, and the golden leaf lifted upward, arcing back toward the branches that had cast it down. Like a fallen angel, repentant, straining back toward heaven.
I knew what I was seeing, even though I could not see it.
Attached to the leaf, defying my sight, beyond my human seeing, there was a single silver thread. That cord was there, though I could not see it, strong as steel, light as air. I knew this. It was woven by a spider, and fixed to the leaf, and fixed to the tree.
That is why I was seeing a leaf that would not fall. I knew this.
But it still seemed magical. Just like everything in our world.
When she came out, I showed it to Sadie, who always loved such things. She hugged me, and planted a little kiss on my cheek.
“Hope, Dadi,” she whispered in my ear.
WORSHIP TODAY WAS LONG, and made the longer by Bishop Schrock’s preaching. But that it felt long did not mean that it felt unspiritual. We sang with fervor, and listened to his preaching, and even though it was long, it felt needed. We were hungry for it, for the comfort of our worship, for the songs.
He talked and he talked, and his voice was dry and it did not vary. But there was something different in the tone and the way that he was speaking. Or perhaps there was not, and it just seemed so.
He always does talk about the importance of staying strong in the spirit of calmness, of being dutiful and diligent in pursuit of peacefulness, of how important the many rules of the Order are for giving our lives joy and balance. I have heard the same words from Bishop Schrock in every sermon he has preached since Bishop Beiler became too weak to preach.
He is like the sun rising in the morning, or the full moon coming in its turn. Always the same.
But today, perhaps I needed to hear it in a way that I usually do not. When the world is wild and inconsistent, sometimes simple and consistent are a comfort.
He was nearly finished speaking—I think—when the helicopters came over. They have been flying these last few days, back and forth, in threes and fours. Great big helicopters. One of the neighbors told Joseph Fisher that they were carrying thousands and thousands of MREs, which is some kind of preprepared food that the army uses. The same food that is in the columns of trucks that move and rumble through the night.
They were low and huge and flying close together, and the room shook with the thunder of them. You could feel it in your skin, in your body and bones, the beating of those blades against the air.
It throbbed like the beating of your heart in your ears when you have been running. It was the whole world. It was so loud that Bishop Schrock stopped talking. That takes some doing.
We all stood still for a moment, and then another, as nothing could be heard or said or sung. They passed, fading off into the south. There was a moment of silence in the fading of the sound, as if the room was holding its breath, as if all of us were listening for another sound. What more might come? What sounds of violence would follow?
And then the Bishop began talking again, without missing a single word, as if nothing had even happened.
It is moments like that, I think, that I most appreciate him.
WE RODE BACK TOGETHER, after the day of worship at the Schrock farm. It was good, without question, to spend that time together. There was much talking, much speculation. There is worry. Nothing seems to be changing, at least not for the better.
In the buggy, with the sound of the hooves and the smell of horse, we were all silent after a long worship.
Home we went, and then prepared to go over to see the Fishers.
JOSEPH MET US AT the gate, along with young Rachel, who called out to Sadie and Rachel and their five, plus the older Rachel pregnant again, they have been blessed and fruitful.
The three boys hollered out to Jacob, and off they all went running, off toward the creek at the edge of the Fisher place. We brought food in, and Hannah settled in to chat with Rachel in the kitchen as the food was readied, while Joseph took me around to see how the painting of the storm damage had been going.
Sadie and young Rachel went off walking and talking, as they do. It was good to see that, good to see her at ease. She was always so, I don’t know, so awkward around other children. When she was little, oh, it was fine. But she would say such strange things to them sometimes, and children can be so . . . hard. So hard on those who are different.