Harlequin Love Inspired March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 by Patrice Lewis (best large ereader .txt) 📕

think it’s Gott’s timing. My business started doing well just when I needed to hire a nanny. We roll with the punches in this life, dealing with whatever Gott hands us.”

“Ja, I suppose.” She lapsed into silence, idly watching the town pass by. Finally she thought to ask, “I assume you won’t need me tomorrow on the Sabbath?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” Levy’s mouth curved into a thin smile. “But it’s the Sabbath. I can’t ask you to work on your day of rest.”

“But no rest for the weary onkel, eh?”

“Right. I’ll cope somehow.”

Jane had her private doubts that he would be able to, but she let it go.

He dropped her off directly at her aunt and uncle’s house. “Vielen Dank, Jane. You were incredibly helpful and useful today.” He touched his hat brim, spoke to the horse and drove away.

Jane stared after him. Useful again. She blinked back tears and realized she didn’t want Levy to appreciate her useful qualities, but perhaps something more.

All day long she had worked side by side with Levy. Perhaps it had been her imagination, but she got the impression he was appreciating her for more than her usefulness. Now, it seems, she was wrong.

A small part of her wanted him to appreciate her for more than that.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sabbath mornings were different from the rest of the week. Jane looked forward to the church services. It was more than a chance to take a break from the relentless work, to focus on Gott, to pray.

It was also a chance for the community to come together, for her to see the friends she’d made and perhaps meet new ones. The thought made Jane clasp and unclasp her hands in her lap. Making new friends was difficult for her.

Wearing clean clothes and a freshly starched kapp, she rode with Uncle Peter and Aunt Catherine toward the home of the Millers, who were hosting the week’s worship service. Many buggies joined them on the road as they headed out, with occupants waving greetings.

“Ach, there’s young Lydia Yoder with Jacob. Looks like she’s about to have her baby any day now,” commented Catherine.

Jane peered around the edge of the buggy and saw a pretty young matron, heavily pregnant. “Is it her first?”

“Ja. She’s very happy.”

“And there’s Phillip Herschberger.” Uncle Peter waved an arm. “He broke his leg last month. I think he’ll be getting the cast off shortly.”

“And that’s the Stoltzfus family. They own the hardware store near our store.”

“I see Moses Bontrager.” Uncle Peter nodded toward an incoming buggy. “He’s been down with the flu. I’m so glad to see him up and about.”

So the comments about friends and neighbors in the community continued all the way to the Sabbath service. The older Miller boys directed buggies and horses, and men unhitched their animals and led them into a spacious shady corral for the day. Uncle Peter swung out of the buggy, handed down Jane and Catherine and unhitched his own horse.

Back in her hometown of Jasper, Jane had loved Church Sundays. People came together for a single purpose—worship—but it was so much more. It was a reinforcement of their identity, a chance to visit and strengthen bonds of friends and family and an opportunity to learn who might need help.

And now she had to join a whole new community. Jane resisted the urge to cling like a child to her aunt’s skirt and hide from strangers, as she used to do with her mother. She was a grown woman, and grown women weren’t supposed to be tongue-tied or self-conscious.

Everywhere she looked, people clustered in groups, chatting in subdued tones. Many women carried covered bowls and platters of food into the Millers’ kitchen, even though the service was being held in the large barn, where benches had been set up the day before. Children ran around, their shirts or dresses as colorful as flowers.

There were so many new people to meet, many of whom were her age. Jane’s heart should have swelled with the thought of new acquaintances who would not consider her a useful person, but instead a fun, even enjoyable person—but she was fooling herself. With sudden insight, she realized one of the reasons she made herself useful was that she knew she’d never be popular. She didn’t have the slightest idea how. So…she found other ways to be valuable to the community instead.

Despite the bustle, there was an air of solemnity. It was Sunday, the day to formally worship Gott. Socializing would come later, after the service.

Jane spotted Sarah and Rhoda, but there wasn’t time to speak with them before the community filed into the Millers’ barn and found places on the benches. She spotted Levy carrying Mercy, the only one on the men’s side holding a baby. He gave her a nod and settled down on a bench.

Jane found it very coincidental that the deacons settled on the biblical theme of service and how to use one’s gifts to the service of Gott.

Jane’s gifts—of soothing babies, of being “useful”—sometimes seemed like curses. Over the years, she’d struggled with a defiant spirit that rebelled against being plain, against the expectation from others that she enjoyed the hard work, that she never minded the times romantic dreams took a back seat to utility.

But there were times she longed to stop being viewed as merely useful and start being viewed as a woman with hopes and dreams of a family of her own. None of that was possible if she shrank from meeting new people.

Her friend Rhoda said it best at the barbecue a few days earlier. “That’s why I think you should keep coming to singings and other youngie events,” she had advised. “How else will you get to know anyone?”

So she sat and listened to the sermon and grappled with the awkward longing to get to know more people, which fought against the biblical call to service.

The worship service ended and people rose from their benches, stretching and talking.

Rhoda beckoned her over into