Chapter Fifteen
As the summer came to a close, Hannah wasn’t sure what to do.
She felt like her heart wanted to be part of both worlds: the world she had grown up in, where she could be anything so long as she put her mind and heart into it.
Or at least attempt to be anything; and the Amish world where she would be a farmer or a farmer’s wife and eventually a mother.
She had always known that she wanted to be a mother. Of course, she wanted to be a mother.
Thinking it over as she looked at the sunset two nights before her flight, she was interrupted when Olivia knocked on the room's doorframe. With her door open, Hannah had heard her coming long before she knocked.
“Come on in, Olivia. You might be able to help me with what I’m struggling with.” Hannah smiled a little. “I’ve had a question on my heart since I arrived, and I can’t seem to make heads or tails of it.”
“Maybe I can help, indeed,” Olivia said as she sat down on the bed beside Hannah. “What troubles your heart tonight, Hannah?”
“I am not sure where I belong. It seems that coming to the Amish community has opened something in my heart that I lacked in the city,” she shared.
“And I’m not sure how to take it. Do I follow my heart when I am unsure where it leads?
Or do I go back to what I know because it’s safe and I know that at least I will be protected from failing in life? ”
“And how would you define failing in life?”
Olivia’s question shocked Hannah. She had never thought about how people would define failure in life.
She wasn’t even sure how she would have figured out what she would define as a failure.
Would it be the fact that she never earned a degree from the college she attended?
Or would she define it as something less concrete than that, as failing to be happy in her life?
“You usually have an answer for everything, Hannah. Has this changed how you’re thinking? Or is there something else going on in your head?”
Olivia pursed her lips. Hannah put her head down and put her hands in her hair. She wasn’t sure how to respond.
“I’m not sure how I would respond to the idea of what makes my life a failure,” she finally said. “I’ve always been told I’d only be a failure if I didn’t try to go after what I want in life. And now that I’m at a crossroads… I don’t know which one I want to take.”
“Who says they don’t meet up again, even if it is years down the road?”
Hannah looked up at this point. That was another point to be made. There was always time to come back so long as she got her visa. It would take time, but visas always took time. It always had to take time. Too much time, in her opinion, but time all the same.
“I suppose that’s a way to look at it.”
“And you’re only a few semesters into your education, right?
” Olivia took Hannah’s hand. “Well, if that’s the case, then you have time here in the United States to figure out if you want to stay.
I know that your legal status is a bit more complicated than that of some of the other people we’ve seen come into the community, but you can figure it out.
I think you should at least think about it while you’re back at your dorm. ”
Hannah pressed her lips together.
“I think that sounds like a great idea,” she finally said. “I think that there would be a lot to figure out, but it’s at least worth looking into.”
“See? You just needed a listening ear, I think, and I don’t know how much of a listening ear you’d get in your dorm. Wendy, Jasmine, and Patricia don’t appear to be interested so much in our way of life,” Olivia said. “Do you think they’re going to keep in touch if you were to kumm here?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah admitted. “But I know that my parents would continue to write to me, no matter where I go. They’d want to stay in touch. I’d miss seeing them in person and on video calls, but I would learn to adapt if this is where I decide I need to be.”
“We’d love to see you more,” Olivia said. “John may not say it much, but he has loved having you here. There’s not always a chance to sponsor someone like this. We appreciate that you were willing to take us up on the offer.”
Hannah smiled.
Then, she frowned. How was she going to break it to Elias that she had decided to attend at least one more semester of school? As much as she didn’t want to admit it, her heart was mostly hung up on what she was going to do about not seeing him every day.
“Well, I’ll leave you alone to think about everything else,” Olivia said as she got up from the bed.
“Thank you, Olivia.”
With that, Hannah looked out the window again. She could see the farm just over the horizon, and she wasn’t sure how she would handle not being able to see it every day. All the animals… she shook her head.
There had to be a better way to do this. A better way to handle all the feelings welling up in her heart about what would happen when she walked away from the Amish way of life. Had her heart already figured out what she wanted, and her brain didn’t think it was worth it yet?
She didn’t know, but she had to find out. Soon.