Patrick E. Craig's Blog, page 7
June 18, 2013
The Revelation: The Road Home – Apple Creek Dreams
The revelation came with such startling clarity that Jerusha gasped out loud. She nodded her assent and looked over the quilt one more time. The next part that she had to repair was the torn rose petals. She pulled out the piece of red silk and laid it on the table. Then she carefully laid a piece of paper over one of the complete petals and traced the shape. It needed to be exactly the same. She took her scissors and cut out the pattern. Then she laid it on the red silk and began to trace out the five petals that she needed to replace the torn ones on the quilt. As she did she spoke out loud again.
“Lord, I know you are speaking to me through the quilt, but I don’t understand yet. How does fixing the quilt show me how to help Jenny? Even though it is repaired the quilt is not the same as it was when I first made it. It is second-hand, used. No matter how skillfully I repair it, the truth is, it has still been damaged.”
Again the still, small voice came to her.
The red silk, Jerusha. What does it represent?”
“I always felt that the red silk was like blood, even your blood, the precious blood of Christ. But what does that mean?”
Everyone in this world has been damaged, Jerusha. Ever since that moment when my son, Adam, decided to go his own way, humans have been damaged and useless to my purpose.
“Dead in their trespasses and sin?” Jerusha asked.
Yes, Jerusha, all men are dead in their sin. But I, in mercy and grace, so loved the world I created that I …
“You sent your Son, Jesus!”
Yes, and what did he do, Jerusha?
Suddenly the thing that the Lord was showing her became clear, like a bolt of lightning into her mind.
“He shed his blood! He shed his blood!”
Yes, and when he did, what happened, Dochter?
“All things were made new, the old creation passed away and a new creation was born.”
In that incredible moment of clarity, Jerusha’s heart filled to overflowing with the wisdom and love of her God. She picked up the piece of red silk, the petal of the Rose of Sharon quilt, and she stared at the beautiful deep red color.
Like a rose … or the blood of Christ.
Again the peaceful voice came.
Jerusha, how are you going to repair the torn petals? Are you going to take the old ones away and put new ones in?
“No, Lord, I’m going to put the new piece right on top of the old one and sew it on using the same stitch that I used before.”
So the new piece will … will what, Jerusha?
“The new piece will completely cover the old one and hide all the torn places and the imperfections of the ruined piece.”
So you are not going to remove it you are going to … Jerusha?
“I’m going to cover it, Lord. But what…?”
And then like the sun, rising over the eastern hills on a quiet spring morning, the answer came.
“Oh! All my sins and imperfections and all of Jenny’s, they are…they are covered.”
By what, Jerusha?”
“Oh my Lord, by your blood … by your blood!”
And then Jerusha knew the answer and she understood for the first time in her life that the same power that had raised Christ from the dead was in her, and in Reuben, and in Jenny. And the blood that was shed to release that power into the world was fully and absolutely capable of healing her daughter’s life and making Jenny whole and complete. The wonderful revelation overpowered her. Jerusha put her head down on the table and began to sob. And as she did, a great weight was lifted from her and the blood of her Savior began its marvelous work…
The Road Home – 2nd in the Apple Creek Dreams series – coming September 1, 2013
June 16, 2013
The Trees of Eden – from Jenny’s Choice – Apple Creek Dreams
When I left Paradise in 1978, it was a time of great bitterness in my soul. The days were dark, my heart was empty and my future stretched away before me like some great desert – a place of burning sands and bitter winds. Thorns came up in my palaces, and nettles and brambles, and my life became the habitation of dragons.
But today I look homeward, and though my heart is weary with the adversities of the last years, and I bear the scars of them like great scourgings, in my heart a joy begins to rise as I remember the words of my God…
I will make your wilderness like Eden, and your desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. And they shall say, this land that was desolate is become like a garden…
And I will dwell among the Trees of Eden, and I will be glad.
The Trees of Eden – from The Journals of Jenny Hershberger
Jenny’s Choice – Patrick E. Craig – Coming January, 2014
June 1, 2013
Repairing The Quilt – from “The Road Home” – Apple Creek Dreams
As she planned the repair work, her thoughts flew back to the wonderful days when she had learned the art of quilting from her grandmother. Those had been the happiest days of her childhood and she could hear Grossmudder Hannah’s voice speaking gently to her as she helped Hannah cut the pieces for a star quilt, the first Jerusha had been allowed to work on. She remembered watching as her grandmother cut the chosen pieces of fabric into perfectly matching parts.
“If the quilt is going to be even and symmetrical, the pieces must be true,” she said.
She let Jerusha try her hand, and even on her first try Jerusha cut the pieces straight and perfect.
“Ja, das is gutte,” Hannah said. “You will be a fine quilt maker, my girl.”
Once the pieces were cut correctly, Gossmudder had pieced them together with pinpoint accuracy.
“If the quilt is not aligned properly, even in just one small part, the whole thing will look off-balance and might pucker,” she told Jerusha. “If the design is to be even and pleasing to the eye, each individual piece of fabric must be stitched together just right, in order for it to fit together properly. You must trust your own eye and sewing skills for measurement and accuracy. It is a gift not every quilter has and it is from Der Schöpfer-Gott, the Creator.”
As the memories flooded over her, Jerusha began to see something that she had never seen before. For her, the completed quilt had always been the purpose for her life, and the process of making the quilt had only been a means to an end. Now she began to see that the process was everything, and the finished quilt was only the revealing of the work that had been put into the quilt. That understanding was like a light turning on in her heart.
“You are the Master Creator, Lord, and you put each life together the same way my grandmother made a quilt. You cut each piece that fits into the fabric of our lives and you stitch them together perfectly. You always have a plan for each of us. And you planned each part of our lives to fit together perfectly.”
Jerusha began to see the correlation. Each piece of a life had to be laid in perfectly and if the pieces were uneven or not stitched together properly, the result would not fulfill the Creator’s purpose for that life.
Jerusha remembered something Reuben had taught her. They had visited a neighbor’s farm one day and watched as the men helped their neighbor tear down the framing of what was to be a new barn and start over.
“Why are they tearing the barn down?” she had asked Reuben.
“Bruder King made a mistake when he laid the foundation,” Reuben said. “It was not level and true. It was pointed out to him when the first wall went up and the men had a great deal of difficulty plumbing it up. You see, Jerusha, when a foundation is not laid properly and you build on it, everything in nature, even gravity itself, conspires to drag that wall down. But if the foundation is true, then when you build on it, gravity pulls the wall straight down onto the foundation and it will stand for years, supporting itself.”
She had wondered about Reuben’s words that day, not really understanding, but now as she looked at the quilt, they became clear to her. Everything in Jenny’s life had been built on a poor foundation and so even nature had worked against her, robbing her of peace and joy and leaving her with a sense of incompleteness.
That is what happened to Jenny. The foundation of her life was not laid in straight and true and she has been struggling to build on that poor foundation.
From The Road Home – The Apple Creek Dreams series by Patrick E. Craig
May 25, 2013
Jenny’s Choice – The Third Book in the Apple Creek Dreams series – coming January 1, 2014
In the concluding novel to the Apple Creek Dreams series, Jonathan and Jenny Hershberger are happily settled in Paradise, Pennsylvania on the farm Jenny inherited from her grandfather. But when a tragic accident takes Jonathan’s life, Jenny and her young daughter, Rachel, return home to Apple Creek, Ohio to live with her adoptive parents, Reuben and Jerusha Springer.
As Jenny works through her grief and despair, she discovers she has a gift for writing. A handsome young publisher discovers her work and, after the publication of her first book, Jenny is on the verge of worldly success and possible romance.
But when a conflict arises with the elders of her church, Jenny must ask herself how far she’s willing to go to pursue her dreams.
A touching story of devotion and triumph over adversity.
Sometimes I think that life is like a rushing river that begins its journey high in the mountains, tumbles down over jagged rocks, rushes headlong over cliffs, and pours booming through the portals of nameless chasms until at last it breaks free of the confines of harsh stone walls and finds a broad plain spread before it – and then the once chaotic millrace flows deep and quiet through lush, verdant meadows, between banks that hold it tenderly.
The choices we make on the way to this place are usually made quickly and without thinking, like the one a boatman makes as his vessel poises on the brink before it plunges headlong into the rushing maelstrom of the rapids. These are the choices we formulate in an instant that, if we live, we look back on and understand, with a quiet shudder in our soul, the eternal enormity of a moment.
But even so, I think it is the choices we make as we drift in the place of safety and security that can be the most consequential. For every soldier knows that it is in the lush growth beside a quiet river, or beneath the deep underbrush of a peaceful forest that the enemy is most likely to be hidden.
Choices – From The Journals of Jenny Hershberger
May 18, 2013
Jerusha’s Prayer: From The Road Home – The Apple Creek Dreams Series
Jerusha knelt by the bed and prayed for Jenny. She felt helpless, alone and fearful. As the hours went by she wept and begged, challenged and whimpered, but the heavens were silent. Finally, when she was drained and exhausted, a thought came to her.
This is what I did before Jenna died. I cried out to you, but I didn’t listen when you were trying to reach my heart.
Jerusha stopped then, and lifted a simple prayer to God.
“Jenny is your daughter, Lord, and you have a plan and a purpose for her life. If it is your will, let me be a vessel for You to work through to help her.”
As she finished her prayer, a picture came to her mind, clear and distinct. It was the quilt – the quilt that she made for Jenna but that ultimately became Jenny’s salvation. Suddenly, a great urgency came over her. She rose from her prayer and went to her sewing room. The old cedar chest stood against the wall. She knelt before it and opened the lid. Pieces of fabric and batting filled the chest and the faint, comforting smell of the cedar wood rose up to greet her. She began to take some of the pieces out and lay them aside until she came to the parcel wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. She lifted it out reverently and placed it on the floor, untied the string and opened the package. There was the Rose of Sharon quilt, the most beautiful quilt she had ever made. Tenderly she spread it out on the floor. There was something about just looking at the quilt that built her faith, something of both of her daughters that comforted her and gave her hope. The red silk rose in the center of the quilt with its hundreds of petals, glowed in the light, and the rich blue silk backing set it off like a jewel. It was still a beautiful quilt even though it was ruined.
Then she heard a voice within her, the same comforting voice that had led her through the storm so many years ago; the voice that showed her the truth about herself as she waited in the cabin for Reuben to come. A familiar, deep peace filled her soul.
Jenny’s life is like this quilt. Though it is beautiful, it is not whole. There are pieces that are missing and stains that must be washed away. You have been chosen to be part of that cleansing. You are a key to Jenny’s happiness and wholeness.
Startled by the clarity of the words, she answered out loud.
“But I can’t do anything. I’m here, alone. Reuben and Bobby are the answer.”
Again the voice came to her.
I will say again – Jenny’s life is like this quilt. Your hands will give you the key to your prayers, and through them her life can be made whole. Kumme, Dochter! There is work to be done.
Hope leaped up in her heart. Suddenly she gathered up the quilt in her arms and stood up. It was clear to her now. Jerusha knew what she must do …
The Road Home – Apple Creek Dreams by Patrick E. Craig
May 7, 2013
Paradise Lost: From “Jenny’s Choice” – Apple Creek Dreams Series
Sometimes I think that life is like a rushing river that begins its journey high in the mountains, tumbles down over jagged rocks, rushes headlong over cliffs, and pours booming through the portals of nameless chasms until at last it breaks free of the confines of harsh stone walls and finds a broad plain spread before it – and then the once chaotic millrace flows deep and quiet through lush, verdant meadows, between banks that hold it tenderly.
The choices we make on the way to this place are usually made quickly and without thinking, like the one a boatman makes as his vessel poises on the brink before it plunges headlong into the rushing maelstrom of the rapids. These are the choices we formulate in an instant that, if we live, we look back on and understand, with a quiet shudder in our soul, the eternal enormity of a moment.
But even so, I think it is the choices we make as we drift in the place of safety and security that can be the most consequential. For every soldier knows that it is in the lush growth beside a quiet river, or beneath the deep underbrush of a peaceful forest that the enemy is most likely to be hidden.
Choices – From The Journals of Jenny Hershberger
Jenny’s Choice – The Apple Creek Dream Series
April 13, 2013
Apple Creek, Ohio – The Real Town in “A Quilt For Jenna.”
Apple Creek is a real place. It is a village set in the heart of Wayne County, Ohio, eleven miles from Dalton and ten miles from Wooster. There are real streets, and real people in Apple Creek. There are Hershbergers and Springers and some Halversons living there. Apple Creek and the surrounding area is home to a large Amish community and has been since the mid 1800s. Not far to the east lies Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the first Amish that came to America settled in 1720. I chose Apple Creek as the setting for “A Quilt for Jenna” while doing research on the Amish in Ohio and in particular on Amish quilt-makers. Apple Creek, Dalton and Wooster, Ohio are known throughout the country for the marvelous Amish quilts that are produced there.
Dalton has one of the biggest quilting fairs in Ohio. A town named Apple Creek was just too good to pass up as a location, so I started my story there. I used the actual streets and highways, the localities and even local family names. As I mentally planted myself in the heart of Apple Creek, the characters in the book began to spring out of the earth, fully grown, with lives and stories, joys and sorrows. The story was easy to write because it seemed as though I was reading someone’s journal as I wrote it.
The more I explored Apple Creek, the more I realized how connected I was to the village. My great-great grandfather, Anthony Rockhill, was born 49 miles from Apple Creek in Alliance, Ohio in 1828. Apple Creek is 85 miles from the site of Fort Henry, West Virginia on the Ohio River. Fort Henry was the site of Betty Zane’s run for life during the British and Indian siege during the revolutionary war in 1782. The book ‘Betty Zane,’ by Zane Grey, was a childhood favorite and still has a place on my bookshelf. As a child I poured over stories about Lewis Wetzel and Jonathan Zane and followed them through the trackless Ohio wilderness only a few miles from what would become the village of Apple Creek. I’ve never been there, but I feel I know the area like the back of my hand. And so it was no coincidence that I came to choose Apple Creek.
Though the characters in this book are fictional, they have become very real to me, as I hope they will become to you. It is my hope that their stories will touch a place in your heart as you read, and that you might find something of your own life here in Apple Creek, Ohio, that may be changed for the better by the end of the book. So, as I think about it, maybe it was coincidence that I chose Apple Creek. After all, coincidence is just God choosing to remain anonymous …
*Thanks to Ron Jansen, my new friend from Apple Creek, who sent me these pictures. Ron and his wife found “A Quilt For Jenna” in the ‘choice books’ display at Der Dutch Restaurant on Kidron Road. Kidron is the road where Jerusha and Henry crashed their car on the way to the quilt fair in Dalton. Coincidence??
March 23, 2013
Dreaming of Home: From “The Road Home” by Patrick E. Craig
In each of our lives there is a longing, deep rooted and unshakable. It is the longing to return to the place of our birth, the place where we grew up, the place that we call home. No matter where we are, or what we are doing, the memory of this place of our origin can rise to the surface of our thoughts like a trout rising in a still lake when the sun has just gone down over the mountain, and then a yearning comes into our heart to return, to go back, to turn our steps toward home. These moments can spring unbidden from the deepest recesses of our being and when they do we can be overwhelmed with memories, pictures, and emotions. It is as though we climb the dusty stairs into the attic of our consciousness, open the old chest filled with our past and take out the quilt of our lives. In the dim light we kneel in our thoughts and look upon all the days we have lived, each day stitched to the one before and the one after, and though each may be different, the whole connection of those days makes a pattern that only becomes clear as we look back with eyes that now know that there is a beginning…and an end. It is in this moment that we remember the road we have traveled and, as we turn to look, we see our own footprints mixed with those of all who have traveled with us. Then we know that though this road goes on into a future to reach an end we cannot yet see, and may even fear, it is also the road home.
Patrick E. Craig – Coming September 1, 2013
March 21, 2013
Coming Soon! “The Road Home” by Patrick E. Craig
Part One: Apple Creek Again by Patrick E. Craig
There is something about an agricultural town that is unique and wonderful, for with the deep link to the land comes a settled-ness and a sense of permanence found nowhere else. All the bright days of youth in such a place are held in the mystery of God’s eternal circle of life and death, winter and spring, summer and fall. The cycles of the seasons dictate the deepest feelings in the heart of one who dwells there, with days marked, not by events, but by smells and colors and sounds and all the other sensory signals. The temperature of a morning’s rising can tell you everything about the day ahead, be it the coolness of a daybreak in spring, the heat of the long, languid days of summer, the crisp bite of a fall day, or the chill of winter that pushes you with icy fingers back under the welcoming warmth of the lovely down quilt. The lilting chirp of a robin outside an open window, or the haunting call of the Canadian geese heading south can manifest the procession of days more surely than any calendar. The solemn silence of a winter night, with feet softly crunching on the fallen snow as you make your way toward the light in the window ahead, or the grinding of the machinery and the smell of the thick harvest dust; it is these things that mark the passage of time and bind one surely to the beloved land and the life so graciously granted by the Master of the Vineyard.
Apple Creek, Ohio, is such a place. It is especially beautiful in the fall. The leaves of the Buckeye trees turn bright red and the green, spiked pods that hide the horse chestnuts split open and drop their beautiful brown seeds on the ground. Children pile the leaves into forts and arm themselves with the shiny brown nuts against the trespasses of the kids from down the street. Mornings come armed with the warning bite of winter yet to come and the air itself is alive with the promise of families gathered at festive tables and the wonder of frosty nights that delight the heart with cathedrals of starry splendor. Soon the soft snow will blanket all living things in the quiet death of winter, but not yet, no not yet; for it is harvest time and the cycle of life is at its peak.
The fields surrounding the village are ripe and the air is heavy with the fecundity of the yearly progression come to its fullness. Though the world changed greatly after World War II and the Korean War, Apple Creek remained much the same. Even as the nation wandered into the disaster in Vietnam, the Amish community in Wayne County remained above the growing conflict and social revolution that would follow. It was as though Apple Creek had been captured in a back-eddy of time and slowly drifted in a lovely continuity of days, while the main current of civilization rushed by into an unknown and frightening future. The Amish in Apple Creek were connected to the land and the land was forever. The fields stretched to the horizon and the days were like the fields; reaching back into the permanence of the past and extending forward into a future that they knew held the same tasks, the same demands, the same feasts and the same succession of birth, life, and death. And yet they were not afraid of death, for they had their God and his promises, they had the land and the fruit of the harvest each year, and they had the children who were their inheritance and, at the same time, a down payment on the continuance of their lives. And above everything, they had the simplicity of their way. And it was enough… for some.
March 5, 2013
Apple Creek Again: From “The Road Home”
There is something about an agricultural town that is unique and wonderful, for with the deep link to the land comes a settled-ness and a sense of permanence found nowhere else. All the bright days of youth in such a place are held in the mystery of God’s eternal circle of life and death, winter and spring, summer and fall. The cycles of the seasons dictate the deepest feelings in the heart of one who dwells there, with days marked, not by events, but by smells and colors and sounds and all the other sensory signals. The temperature of a morning’s rising can tell you everything about the day ahead, be it the coolness of a daybreak in spring, the heat of the long, languid days of summer, the crisp bite of a fall day, or the chill of winter that pushes you with icy fingers back under the welcoming warmth of the lovely down quilt. The lilting chirp of a robin outside an open window, or the haunting call of the Canadian geese heading south can manifest the procession of days more surely than any calendar. The solemn silence of a winter night, with feet softly crunching on the fallen snow as you make your way toward the light in the window ahead, or the grinding of the machinery and the smell of the thick harvest dust; it is these things that mark the passage of time and bind one surely to the beloved land and the life so graciously granted by the Master of the Vineyard.
Apple Creek, Ohio, is such a place. It is especially beautiful in the fall. The leaves of the Buckeye trees turn bright red and the green, spiked pods that hide the horse chestnuts split open and drop their beautiful brown seeds on the ground. Children pile the leaves into forts and arm themselves with the shiny brown nuts against the trespasses of the kids from down the street. Mornings come armed with the warning bite of winter yet to come and the air itself is alive with the promise of families gathered at festive tables and the wonder of frosty nights that delight the heart with cathedrals of starry splendor. Soon the soft snow will blanket all living things in the quiet death of winter, but not yet, no not yet; for it is harvest time and the cycle of life is at its peak.
The fields surrounding the village are ripe and the air is heavy with the fecundity of the yearly progression come to its fullness. Though the world changed greatly after World War II and the Korean War, Apple Creek remained much the same. Even as the nation wandered into the disaster in Vietnam, the Amish community in Wayne County remained above the growing conflict and social revolution that would follow. It was as though Apple Creek had been captured in a back-eddy of time and slowly drifted in a lovely continuity of days, while the main current of civilization rushed by into an unknown and frightening future. The Amish in Apple Creek were connected to the land and the land was forever. The fields stretched to the horizon and the days were like the fields; reaching back into the permanence of the past and extending forward into a future that they knew held the same tasks, the same demands, the same feasts and the same succession of birth, life, and death. And yet they were not afraid of death, for they had their God and his promises, they had the land and the fruit of the harvest each year, and they had the children who were their inheritance and, at the same time, a down payment on the continuance of their lives. And above everything, they had the simplicity of their way. And it was enough… for some.
