The Wonder of Your Love - By Beth Wiseman Page 0,11
why did Lucy Turner have him when You decided to call him home?
She laid the warm washrag across her face as she thought about what Martha said. I am happy. She was happy about being a mother and thankful that the Lord had blessed her with Jonas. But she wasn’t fulfilled. And it was no mystery to her as to why. Her relationship with the Lord had changed since Ivan’s death. She just couldn’t understand why everything had to happen the way it did, and through no rhyme or reason could she understand what God’s plan for her might be. She’d been taught her entire life not to question the Lord’s will, and the more she did so . . . the further away she felt from Him.
After allowing herself another fifteen minutes of self-pity, Katie Ann pulled herself from the tub, dressed in a clean blue dress, and went into the living room. It was too early to change into her nightclothes and go to bed. Jonas would be up for another feeding, plus she didn’t want to get caught in her nightclothes if Lillian or Samuel came calling after the wedding.
She sat down on the couch, crossed her legs, and opened up a book she’d bought in town about being a new mother. That is all I need to concentrate on . . . being the best mother I can to Jonas.
SATURDAY MORNING, KATIE Ann bundled up Jonas and herself and walked next door to her sister-in-law’s house. She knew Lillian would be baking, and Katie Ann often visited with her this time on Saturdays.
She lifted her tall black boots and picked her way carefully across the snow as she toted Jonas in his carrier. She was thankful to have gotten more sleep the past two nights. Thursday night after the wedding she’d been exhausted, and both she and Jonas had slept much better. She’d only gotten up once to feed him and once to soothe his gassy tummy by using Eli’s technique with the baby oil, which had worked— and twice she’d tiptoed into his room to make sure he was breathing. Friday she’d gone back to help Vera with cleanup, and again she and Jonas had gone to bed early and followed the same routine as the night before.
Martha had overstepped her bounds by inviting Eli to supper, but she’d worry about that later. This morning she needed to talk to Lillian about something else. As she eased up the porch steps to the old farmhouse, she marveled at all of Lillian and Samuel’s hard work. In a year they’d taken this run-down old house with no bathroom, no insulation, in need of an entire overhaul, and turned it into a beautiful home. She knocked on the door.
“Hi, Aenti Katie Ann.”
Katie Ann smiled at her youngest niece, Elizabeth. The five-year-old was Jonas’s biggest fan and loved to keep him company while Katie Ann chatted with Lillian.
“Hello, Elizabeth.” Katie Ann moved past the little girl and into the living room. “Is your mamm in the kitchen?”
“Ya. She’s making peanut blossoms!” Elizabeth bounced on her toes.
Katie Ann let out an exaggerated gasp. “Really! That’s special, Elizabeth. We usually make those only at Christmastime.”
“I know, I know!”
Katie Ann followed Elizabeth across the living room and into the spacious kitchen. Katie Ann recalled the chipping blue paint on the cabinets when Lillian and Samuel had first moved in, now shimmering with shiny white paint and gold knobs that bordered on being fancy . . . but Lillian said she deserved the knobs after having to live in that house prior to the overhaul.
Lillian hadn’t always been Amish. She’d married Ivan’s brother, Samuel, eight years ago and converted. Most of the time, you’d never know that she hadn’t been Amish her entire life, but occasionally she’d bend a certain rule based on her own way of thinking, and no one faulted her for it. Lillian was bubbly, happy, and kindhearted, and Katie Ann didn’t know of a soul who didn’t adore her.
“You are just in time for peanut blossoms,” Lillian announced.
Lillian’s older daughter, Anna, was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table mashing chocolate kisses on top of the warm peanut butter cookies. “Guder mariye, Aenti Katie Ann.”
Katie Ann placed Jonas’s carrier on the table. “Guder mariye to you, too, Anna.”
She was glad to hear Anna using their native dialect this morning. She’d worried about the girls when they were younger, because they didn’t know much Pennsylvania Deitsch. Normally, children