In the morning, I woke with the sunrise. I got the feed in for the cows, and Jacob fed the chickens, and Sadie and Hannah worked to prepare the breakfast.
Mike had said that he would be helping me in the morning, and I will confess that I was a little surprised to see him and Tad and Derek all waiting by the kitchen door. They all looked tired, but Mike asked me what they could do.
First, of course, was breakfast. I asked if Shauna would be joining us, but Mike said she was feeling out of sorts and tired, and couldn’t get out of bed.
“Oh dear Lord God you have coffee” was the first thing Mike said as they came with me into the kitchen and smelled what was being prepared. It was like one long word, ohdearlordgodyouhavecoffee, and though he apologized, I thought it was a little funny.
Out at one of the tree stands on the edge of the property, an old oak had fallen during the storm, and it laid out into one of the pastures. It had broken the fence, and I had not yet been able to get around to repairing it. It was a task that required many hands, and with all of the damage done by the storm, it was not yet a priority. I was not worried about losing a few head of cattle, because the tree itself stood as an effective barrier to their departure.
So with the day still young, I asked Mike and his boys to take lumber from the barn, to saw up the tree and chop it for firewood, and fix the fence. He nodded, and Tad smiled, and Derek grunted sleepily.
We worked much of the morning. Mike is so handy, and a good man to work by your side. Work lights him up, and he delights in it.
Tad and Derek are . . . well . . . they are still young. They will learn, as they stay here.
IT WAS NOT TERRIBLE, having Mike and his boys here today. With no family here, with such a small household, I feel often as if we are a burden on the others. It is not a good feeling, and it is not a feeling that is right.
I know that we are all called to support and bless one another with care. It is a simple truth, that we all serve one another. I know it. And I have been told, again and again over the ten years that we have been here, that we are a blessing to this community. But I still harbor an old anger. I pray over it, and it disperses, as the Spirit gives the grace, but I know it will return.
I felt a twinge of it today, as we all sat at table. It was a simple dinner, and a good one, which Shauna had helped prepare, once she had woken. Hannah told me today that they talked, Shauna and Sadie and her, and that Shauna began to feel more at ease. The last two weeks had frightened her, and she had always struggled with fear and anxiety.
She seems to have pulled herself together a bit. Hannah is good for that.
And so the dinner was prepared, canned beef stew and winter squash, kale from the garden, bread and jam, simple and enough.
Around the table, there was talk and some laughter, and the house felt full. Still, I felt the stirring of something dark afterward.
I think it is an anger from our time of leaving, when I finally realized that we could no longer stay in the Ohio settlement founded by my uncle. We knew it was coming, but it was still hard, because both Hannah and I had been raised among those people.
So many were our friends, not just our family, and our bonds went far back. But after Sarah died in the womb, and after we learned that we would not be having more children, things changed. It was whispered among the women that this was judgment for pridefulness, and Hannah was deeply hurt.
When the whispering continued, month after month, I had brought it to my uncle, and he seemed to only affirm it. He said I needed to examine my heart for sin. I needed to consider why God had inflicted this punishment on my family, and to repent of it.
When I was a child, not yet a man, I would have yielded to this judgment. Submission and humility are how all must live, and accepting the authority of those chosen to lead is part of that. But I knew enough of the world, not the English world, but of other settlements and other districts. I had been through the wandering-around, and it had taken me places where things were different.
I knew the anger that such broken instruction stirred in me was righteous, and biblical. Job did not suffer because of sin. Christ did not suffer because he was sinful, and neither did the martyrs and the apostles. Good men were not punished by sickness, and good women did not suffer because they deserved it.
To say otherwise felt like a failure to grasp why our Lord and Savior had lived and died.
It felt like hochmut, like sinful pride at work in those who prospered. I felt it strongly, though I am not as strong in the spirit as my wife. It became a powerful wedge, driven between my uncle and me like an adz bites into dry wood. I prayed over it, and I prayed over it, but it would not leave.
I began to realize that my anger at it was not pride, but the thing that stirred me and made me determined to stand firm. It was not an anger that strikes a blow, or speaks a word of hatred. I was never disrespectful. It was, instead, the anger that tells you that a wound has been inflicted.
It was for that reason most of all that we left. Why I sold off all of the holdings and property that had been given me, and sought land in a settlement where there was more grace. It was a miracle that I found this house at just a time when land prices here were falling to within reach. Coming here proved so much easier than I had thought.
I only wish anger was as easy to leave behind.
I will pray over this more. But still, it is good to have the house filled with sound and with life.
October 18
This Sabbath day was to be a day of prayer, as it is every other week in normal times. I had told Mike and Shauna that yesterday. There were the very basic chores to accomplish, as there always were. But for the morning, the four of us would gather for a time of readings and praying, and sometimes we would sing. I wanted our guests to know that this was not our being inhospitable, and they told us that they understood.
I think Mike and the boys were really tired from all that they’d done the day before, so Mike said they would probably sleep in. Shauna, though, asked if she could sit with us, as we prayed and as we read together, and Hannah told her that it would be fine.
They had talked about it much yesterday, and so there she was, with us.
We sat in silence. It did not seem, this day, like we should try to sing together as a family from the Ausbund as we sometimes do. It would not be welcoming to Shauna, because she does not know the language, and so instead we shared readings from the Psalms in English.
When it came time to talk, our family custom was that I would say a few words about a scripture, and then Hannah, and then Sadie, and then Jacob. That is the blessing of a shared family worship, this time of reflection. So we each chose and read a passage.