A Simple Amish Christmas by Vannetta Chapman

his rebuke that her family had a right to know about her nursing degree still irked her.
    “There’s actually quite a lot I haven’t told you,” Annie murmured. Then she turned, grabbed her coat, and walked out of the house.

     
    Annie told herself she wasn’t running away, but sometimes she feared she’d go crazy unless she broke free of the house’s four walls. Fortunately, today the weather was unseasonably warm. Clouds hung low over the fields.
    At breakfast the men had discussed a heavy snowfall that had been forecast—it was due to arrive before Monday. All themore reason to walk out to the garden now and have a look at what might be.
    She’d been in the small fenced-in area less than ten minutes, pacing around and doing her best to remember spring, when her mamm joined her there.
    “I come here a lot myself.” Rebekah sounded as if she were discussing where to plant the radishes in April, not questioning why her daughter felt the need to rush out into a snow-topped garden on a Saturday afternoon. “Mostly, I walk out this way when I start feeling like I could outrun one of the horses in Jacob’s barn.”
    Annie stole a peek at her mother. “I thought you were always perfectly content.”
    “No one’s always perfectly content, dear.” Rebekah brushed snow from the top of the fence post, then moved past her into the garden area. “Secrets aren’t always bad, Annie. Unless they weigh heavy on your soul—like the clouds pushing down over our fields.”
    Looking out at the land, Annie realized her mother was right.
    She’d been carrying this burden around far too long—not just since she’d come home, but since she’d left over three years ago.
    “When I went to stay with aenti , I continued my schooling. I couldn’t seem to stop. Learning more made me want to learn even more.” She moved closer to her mother, near where the vines would flower and bear fruit in the spring.
    “I became a registered nurse, mamm . I worked in a hospital with sick kinner .”
    Rebekah reached out, touched her face as gently as the breeze touched the vine they stood beside. “And I’m expecting you’d be missing those children some days.”
    “That’s it?” Annie’s voice rose in disbelief. “That’s all you have to say? I must miss the kinner ?”
    “Well, don’t you?”
    “Of course I do.”
    Annie’s thoughts tumbled over one another, as she tried to grasp the gentleness in her mother’s voice, the compassion on her face. “That’s not the point, though. I thought. That is…”
    She finally gave up and sat down on an upended milking pail.
    “Are you so surprised I would have guessed what you were doing, Annie? You’re my oldest girl. I’ve watched you for twenty years. I know you better than anyone does.”
    “But, what I did was wrong. It goes against our teachings, our ways. Tomorrow I’m to be baptized, and I hadn’t even told you of this. I thought you’d be angry with me. I thought…” Her voice fell away like so many leaves scattered in the wind.
    “That you needed to hide who you are—what you are— from your parents? Oh, Annie.” Rebekah leaned forward, folded her in an embrace that was softer than the downiest quilt. “We love you because you are our dochdern , because you are a beautiful person God has shared with us. And we’re proud of you.”
    Taking Annie’s face in her hands, she looked her straight in the eyes, as if this was the most important thing she’d said all morning, perhaps in many years. “Baptism is a committing of yourself to God, to our church and our community. We will speak with Bishop Levi before the service. He already knows of your time with the Englisch , but if he thinks a confession is necessary then so be it.”
    Annie nodded, brushed at her tears.
    “As for the gifts God has given you, I have no doubt he’ll provide a way for you to use them in our community, amongyour Amish schweschders and brethren. God has a reason for everything, dear