Big Decisions Read Online Free PDF Page A

told Lizzie she had to be careful. She told her she could rejoice in other ways than clapping and shouting, like when she was all alone and stepped out of the house on a beautiful spring morning and heard the birds singing and saw the sunrise and the green leaves on the trees.
    Lizzie promptly informed Mam that it wasn’t the same if you didn’t have someone thumping on the organ or piano while the people around you sang as loud as they could, just all caught up together in that moment of rejoicing.
    Mam’s quiet, “Tsk, tsk,” was her only response, before telling Lizzie she read too much.
    “Contentment and continuing the quiet way of life are the virtues I most admire in Amish people,” Lizzie always said. Of course, she wanted to be Amish. She never even thought of not being a part of the Amish way of life. She just wanted to really let loose sometimes.
    Being Amish was the only thing she had ever known. She had no real longing to leave her parents, go into the big, wide world, and try to become an English person. That would seem all wrong. Some Amish people did that, so she guessed they were comfortable with that, but she wouldn’t be.
    That winter, Lizzie learned in lots of different ways what was expected of her when she became a member of the church. The ministers explained lots of the lessons in the Old Testament, as well as what happened to people when they rebelled openly against God. The ministers also spoke a great deal about the difference Lizzie and her friends would experience when they lived within God’s will, serving God and not idols. That was not hard for Lizzie to believe, and she learned to appreciate the stories in the Old Testament, as well as the words Jesus spoke in the New Testament.
    But sometimes Lizzie despaired, overwhelmed by the fear that she would never be good enough to be baptized in the fall.
    “I’m not that different than before, Mam,” she repeated sourly as she sat in the kitchen with Mam and Mandy.
    “Oh, but you’re making an honest effort, Lizzie. That’s all you can do. Grace supplies everything, really, in the end,” Mam said.
    Lizzie eyed her suspiciously. She was just about sure that Mam didn’t always know what she was talking about. For one thing, she claimed “all your own righteousness was like filthy rags in the sight of God,” and yet, all winter they were instructed to live righteously. What sense did that make?
    So now if you tried as hard as you could to do good, to live in the way you were instructed, then it was nothing to God, and it all amounted only to grace? So why didn’t people just go out and do what they wanted to? They may as well, if grace took care of everything.
    Mam scooped out some cookie batter and dropped it onto the baking sheet, using the back of her hand to brush away a strand of hair from her cheek. Beads of sweat clung to her forehead and the color in her cheeks had heightened as the heat in the kitchen had escalated during the afternoon.
    “Mandy, be careful there. You’re trying to put too many cookies on that sheet, all right?” she instructed.
    Mandy nodded, pushing up her sleeve with one hand and sending the glass mixing bowl full of batter onto the floor where it smashed into a hundred pieces.
    Mam gasped, then sighed impatiently.
    “Who’s going to clean it up?” she asked.
    Lizzie thought that was an excellent example right there. “Okay, Mam, so why didn’t you get angry and yell at Mandy? You used to when we were little girls. So is that all your own righteousness now, and it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in God’s eyes? That’s what you claim.”
    Mam looked sharply at Lizzie, but then she smiled.
    “Now there, Lizzie, is the beauty of becoming a Christian. If we are all good and holy, acting righteous and prim and proper so that other people think we are such awfully good Christians, that is filthy rags. But if we live to become more like Jesus, if we just have a desire to be good, he quietly,