A Stranger's Wish Read Online Free PDF Page A

my knees.
    “What?” He was on his feet again. “Without consulting me? I’m the one paying your tuition, young lady.”
    “I’ve consulted with the Lord.” I tried not to sound too self-righteous. “I’ve prayed and prayed, Dad, and I’m convinced this is His will for me.”
    What’s a Christian parent to say in the face of this argument? Forget God’s will? I know better than He what’s best for you?
    Dad narrowed his eyes, clearly suspecting manipulation.
    Help him to hear my heart, Lord!
    “Please, Dad. Let me be happy.”
    He yielded because he saw my desperation, but he never understood. He wouldn’t understand my move to the farm, either. Nor would Mom or Patty. They would try not to be disappointed in their artsy child/sibling who had no common sense.
    “She’s sweet as can be,” I overheard Patty say to one of the guys she brought home for dinner, a young lawyer in the firm. I heard her “but” long before she said it. “But she—” Hesitation as she sought a way to say whatever it was delicately. “She’s different.”
    The confusion in her voice made me shake my head. That day I walked into the living room to a sea of navy pinstripes and smart black shoes, sleek haircuts and bulging briefcases. Mom, Dad, Patty, and her guest all stared at me in my broomstick skirt of many colors, my red scoop-necked ballet top, and white full-sleeved artist’s big shirt. It was probably my gladiator sandals that gave them indigestion.

3
     
     
    I was smiling contentedly when I handed Mary my empty root beer glass and excused myself. I climbed the stairs to my two rooms, my home for the next year at least. I stopped in the doorway and surveyed my quarters with pleasure.
    My living room was very attractive, even though the two overstuffed chairs were obviously much used and the end table had led a full life prior to becoming mine. The truth was that the room could have been as stark and ugly as an army barracks and I still would have loved it. But that uncanny eye for color I’d noted downstairs showed itself again in the blues and green of the chairs and rug with cream decorator pillows resting against an arm of each chair.
    Sitting along one wall was a huge, scarred desk of blond wood with a straight-backed chair behind it.
    “John found this desk for you at an auction in Intercourse,” Mary told me earlier as she ran her hand across its scarred surface. “He said every teacher needs a desk to work on.”
    What, I wondered, did John and Mary think of a teacher who taught only art, who helped children draw pictures, paint their imagination, and form their clay into shapes that were often totally nonutilitarian? Did Amish schools teach art? Or did they teach only the three R’s and Amish culture? I suspected that imagination wasn’t a prized commodity because it brought about individualism; community—not individualism—was all important among the People.
    I looked at the battered desk and remembered kindergarten and the frightening Miss Stangl who had sat behind just such a piece of blond wood. I should have known art was my true future the day she actually smiled at me. I had drawn my tree with leaves of orange, yellow, and red all swirled together in wild overlaid circles until my fat new Crayola crayons were worn down to the paper wrap.
    “My, my, Kristina, you do like color,” Miss Stangl said. “You are different from Patty, aren’t you?” And she smiled. She never smiled.
    I blinked, understanding in an appalling flash that all this wild color I so loved was somehow not good, that if it made me different from Patty, my parents would be disappointed. Even then Patty was perfect. Thereafter all my trees were green leaved and bland, and my crayons were carefully used. The wild glory of sunset and autumn was for God to paint, not me.
    I sighed and put a flourishing philodendron on the corner of the desk to make it look user-friendly. My laptop lay in the center and my portfolio leaned