Faking Faith by Josie Bloss Page A

I said, but she’d hung up before I could even say that I missed her.

TWELVE
    M y visit with Abigail settled into a pleasant sort of routine. Well, as pleasant as anything that involved getting up at six in the morning and wrangling a cow could be.
    But it was refreshing not to be spending all my time on a computer or closed up inside. The little kids were all shockingly well behaved, but they were still a loud bunch, clattering through the house and slamming the screen doors. The windows were always open, and someone was always cooking or baking something, and there was always work to be done. Daily life was productive and busy and full of people.
    I had to admit that all the Bible reading certainly got old. I could totally understand how Abigail was able to quote scripture by heart. At this point in her life, she’d probably been through the whole book twenty times.
    Generally I blanked out while the reading was going on. I tried to pay attention, but there just wasn’t much of it that spoke to me.
    The rest of their lifestyle was much more interesting, anyway.
    The third afternoon I was there, I helped Abigail weed. We put on old-fashioned straw hats and carried little baskets out to the big garden behind the house. It was a huge plot of land, but impeccably organized. There were neat rows of tomatoes and squash and cucumbers and peppers and other plants I couldn’t identify. And bright ripples of yellow and orange marigolds surrounded the whole thing.
    I think Abigail had already come to realize that I wasn’t as experienced as I’d claimed about gardening and household tasks, though she didn’t comment on it or laugh at me or ask if I’d lied. She just patiently instructed me, praising my efforts.
    “My sister does a lot of the gardening, so I’m a bit worthless at all this,” I explained as I floundered with my little spade, face flushed. “I’m sorry.”
    “You’re doing great!” she said, smiling.
    I smiled back, wondering how one person could be so … nice .
    We worked side by side, pulling up sprouting weeds from around the squash. And I looked down at my filthy hands, dirt caked under my fingernails, and then up at the puffy clouds breezing across the blue sky. I smiled as I realized I’d never felt so comfortable and purposeful being outdoors in my whole life.
    I caught Abigail watching me.
    “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
    “It’s just so beautiful out here,” I said. I wished I could tell her about the chaotic, traffic-ridden concrete suburb where I’d come from. How our yard was taken care of by a lawn service and that we’d never had a garden. How I’d never put my hands into the earth like this before, and the only vegetables I ever ate came on a salad at a restaurant or from the supermarket.
    “ ‘All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made,’ ” Abigail quoted. Her face was so shining and earnest and open, for a moment I couldn’t help but be desperately jealous. I wished that I could have such certainty about the world and how it worked.
    I smiled at her. “You really love this stuff, don’t you?”
    “What stuff?”
    “Gardening. Cooking. All these things that you … I mean, that we do all day.”
    She brushed her hands off and sat back on her heels. “I love being useful and productive,” she told me. “And it makes life so much nicer if you take joy in your work rather than resent it. And this is what we’re here to do, you know? As women. Feed the family, tend the hearth. We’re training for the rest of our lives, doing all this.”
    “Right,” I said. “But I was wondering … have you ever … oh, I don’t know.”
    “What?”
    I looked at her. “Sometimes I just think about maybe … wanting something more?”
    She looked disturbed, squinting at me. “Want more than to fulfill my God-given role? No, of course not. Faith, there’s nothing more to want!”
    “Oh,” I said, feeling embarrassed. That