Free An Uncommon Grace by Serena B. Miller

So clean that he was almost afraid to sit down. The women from his church had taken over, washing each room from top to bottom just as Maam always did in the weeks leading up to their turn at hosting church in their home.
    It had felt strange coming home from the hospital and finding women working inside and out, including finishing the laundry his mother had begun. Several men from church were feeding the livestock and tending to the other numerouschores around the farm. It appeared that the only chore left for him to do before the funeral, besides carry down his mother’s bed, was to gather the eggs and brave the bad-tempered rooster who was all ruffled up and annoyed over the comings and goings of so many people.
    On his way to the house, he stopped. A handful of hermit thrushes were thoroughly enjoying the warm weather, fluttering and twittering among the branches of a young apple tree. It was nice to see that the little things had survived the winter. He inhaled the sweet fragrance of the snowy white apple blossoms and tried to calm his mind.
    Whenever his heart was heavy, he had found that it helped to focus on natural things. Things that he had grown up with. Natural gifts from the hand of God. Things that reminded him that there truly was a God.
    He missed his mother, his sister, his little brothers, and his stepfather. Abraham had come into his life when he was only ten years old. His widowed mother’s new husband was a fair man who had taken his role as a father seriously and had taught Levi much about the practical aspects of making a living.
    Basket-weaving was one of the things Abraham had taught him, patiently and in great detail. It was an occupation plied by many Swartzentruber families. The tourists each summer would buy almost any amount they could make over the winter, but Abraham was especially skilled.
    As was Levi—thanks to his stepfather.
    He wondered if it had been a sin to create such an intricately woven basket for Grace. As he pondered it, he decided that it was a prideful thing he had done. He had sketched it out on paper first, taking great pleasure in losing himself in creating a design that he had never made before. It had taken all of his skill in design and execution, but the look ofamazement in her eyes when she had seen it had been worth every second.
    As had the look of respect.
    It was hard—this thing of being Swartzentruber. But it was all he knew how to be. Every relative he had was Swartzentruber except Rose, who had made the decision to cross over into Old Order Amish. It had been a terrible thing at the time. It was still a terrible thing, in his opinion. Because of the ban, Rose and her family had not been welcome at his mother’s table for a little over ten years.
    He still marveled that Rose was the person his mother had wanted to care for the children. She had told him later that it was because she knew that in Rose’s household the children would be loved, and they would need all the love they could get after what they had been through. She had been afraid, she said, that they would simply be tossed in with the other children in any of the other Swartzentruber homes—some of which had as many as seventeen children in them.
    Being a member of his church was decidedly not easy, but the preachers said that the road to heaven was narrow and the hardships his people chose to endure would someday be worth it. What bothered him most was not the extra work, or the restrictions on how much he could charge for his work, or even the lack of conveniences that other Amish got to enjoy. The thing that rankled him the most was the contempt in which his people were sometimes held by some in the less conservative Amish sects.
    In some ways, he understood. His aunt and uncle’s Old Order farm fairly sparkled with new paint and a well-kept lawn and gardens. In the summer he was certain it would be bursting with flowers. Their driveway had been well covered with a thick layer of