The Amish Nanny

The Amish Nanny

So much had changed in my life recently. So many things were so completely different than they had been before. Some days, I wasn't sure who I was or what was to become of me….After years of silence, half-truths, and out-and-out lies, my parents and several other close relatives had sat down in April with Lexie and me and come clean about the circumstances of our births. Lexie had always known she was adopted, but I never knew I had been adopted as well, the two of us raised by different families at opposite ends of the country, completely unaware that the other had even existed. All of that information had helped Lexie to find healing, but for me it had done the exact opposite, creating within me new questions and doubts and confusions about who I was and where I belonged.

Changes had even come to my relationships--well, one relationship in particular. Will Gundy. The handsome widower with three small children. The man whose glance could set my hands sweating and my heart pounding. All my life I had dreamed of being a wife and mother, but because of my condition I wasn't sure those were roles I would ever have. Then, once I had come to understand my disorder better and how to manage it, I had begun to feel as if marriage might be a possibility for me after all. I started to dream—not just of marriage but of marriage to Will….I thought he had feelings for me as well, but then I learned through the Amish grapevine that he was courting Leah Fisher, the bishop's daughter.

If that was really true, then I had no doubt the battle was already lost. I was no match for Leah and never could be. For one thing, my looks were far too ordinary—flyaway blond hair, angled face, dull brown eyes—especially compared to Leah, who was a dark and striking beauty. More than her glossy hair and red lips and sparkling green eyes, though, was the very vitality of her demeanor, the musical sound of her laughter, the way she flounced around and flirted with almost everyone she met. I couldn't compete with that, couldn't even try. Instead, I would quietly bow out. Will and Leah would marry.

And I would end up alone, after all.

Suddenly, a sob gurgled from my throat. Pressing a hand against my mouth, I held it there until the urge for tears had passed. In their wake I could feel a familiar, deep ache rising up inside of me, and I knew that eventually my heart would heal and my confusion would be sorted out, but what would remain was this, the ache of yearning that plagued my thoughts and fueled my dreams and sometimes threatened to suck the very breath from my lungs. I was twenty-four years old but had done and seen less that most children half my age. Bottom line, I wanted to live, to experience, to explore.

Taken from: THE AMISH NANNY Copyright © 2011 by Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould.  Published by Harvest House Publishers.
Eugene, Oregon 97402