When Don and Trish sold us the PO building and former firehouse, they left behind an Old Town canoe, a curio cupboard, an electric coffee pot from one of the former post misstresses, a five legged table, and Mark*.

Mark is a young homeschooled man from a Mennonite family.  He has a gift for working on cars.  While Don used the former firehouse portion of the building to do autobody work, Mark rented the detached back garage for one of his own projects.  He would nod and smile here and there after we became the owners,  but other than that, he’s never been big on words. When he finished restoring his car, he surrendered the garage and went on to bigger projects working for area employers. It’s funny how you can miss someone you rarely hear or see.  But we did.

Thankfully, it turns out that Mark likes coffee.  He disappears for months at a time, then just when we think we’ve seen the last of him, he quietly slips in the cafe door brandishing a shy smile and a mason jar for us to fill with iced coffee.  

Most folks in town don’t know Mark.  He’s never met Ryan McGiver, for example, our vivacious neighbor up the street who just opened Scrumpy Ewe Cider tasting room.  But their worlds collided with mine this week.

On Saturday, Mark sits at the counter to wait for his drink, and in a slow moment, I pop out of the kitchen to chat with him.  “I heard you’d moved down south to bigger and better things!” I confess as I rest one foot on the stool beside him.  He shrugs and looks down at his napkin.  

“I been workin’ in Cobleskill,” he tells me.  His jaw tightens.

“So it was all just a rumor then?”

He looks at me, and his eyes seem bloodshot.  He consciously pushes a smile forward on his lips.  Then he stares back at his napkin and draws a deep breath.

“Well, it’s funny, I guess,” he starts.  I climb fully onto the seat and turn to face him.  He waits for me to settle in, then looks at me again.  “I left my last job because it wasn’t good for my health,” he explains.  “And I was working at a garage in Cobleskill.  But — I don’t know —“ He pauses for a second, then continues.  “On Monday morning, I — I just woke up and I prayed.  I asked God to put me where he needed me to be.”  His eyes look damp.  “And the phone rang, and my boss said he didn’t need me anymore.”

“Helluva sign,” I quip.  

He gives a little grin and continues.  “And then two hours later the phone rings again, and it’s Don.  He wants me to move down south to help him with his garage.  So I think, well, that must be where God is calling me.”

“How’s that feel for you?”

“That’s the funny thing.  Because then, a little while later, Don calls back.  He says Trish isn’t sure that’s what God wants for me.  That maybe God wants me to stay here and start my own business.”

I’m not sure what to say.  “God” is a funny word on my tongue.  I’m used to employing spiritual references that don’t pin me down to a specific religion.  Balderdash, I think.  Mark’s Mennonite, so God is his word.  Allow him that.  “It sounds to me like you’re looking outside yourself for messages from God,” I tell him.  “But how good are you at listening?”  I can see that pressure behind his eyes building.  I don’t want him to have a break down, but I feel like there’s something I have to say.   I point to his stomach.  “I mean, here, in your gut?  Because the way I see it, Mark, there’s a  deep spiritual calling inside you, and only you are going to be able to hear it.   And sometimes we can get messages from God in the broader world, but sometimes, especially if someone is as talented as you, there are just lots and lots of opportunities.  And if you interpret every opportunity as God calling, then you’re gonna be running all over the place trying to answer them.  You’ll get a lot of experience, but you may not actually be answering your true calling.”

He nods and reaches for the coffee Saoirse hands him.  Those are more words than Mark is accustomed to exchanging, so I figure I’d best throttle back.  I hop off the stool and head back to the kitchen to prep an order.  

But when I get there, the oven door won’t open.  This happens sometimes.  It sticks.  I tug it harder. It doesn’t open.  Another order shows up on my wall.  I yank hard.  The oven nearly topples over.  Dad, who’s washing dishes, stops and stares at me, his own eyes wide as he reads my panic.  Stay calm, I tell myself.  Ordinarily things like this are never a problem.  I have Bob for all things mechanical.  But the farmers market is open now, so Bob has to be there every Saturday.  And I miss him horribly.  Don’t think about what’s not here, I tell myself.  Just think.  What you need to solve this problem is here.  I move to the window and gaze out front.  Mark is at the register paying for his coffee.  “Mark!”  I shout out across the room.  “Can you come back here for a sec?”  He finishes paying and steps back to the kitchen.  “God put you where he needs you!”  I shout.  “I can’t get my oven to open!”

Mark comes as close to laughing as I’ve ever seen him.  He walks past me, my panic sticking to his shoulders like dusty cobwebs.  He approaches my oven and does nothing, except gently tug the handle, then calmly stare at everything, looking at how the mechanism works, how each part touches and impacts the next.  He steps out to his truck, and a few minutes later he’s back with a screwdriver.  My oven is repaired and food is sent out to the tables before anyone even notices something’s wrong.  Mark disappears then, and his worries about where God wants him follow him to his truck.  

On Sunday, Bob and I are back down at the building, cleaning the vacation rental upstairs and getting it ready for our next guests.  I’m downstairs getting my scrub bucket when Ryan McGiver pulls in to the post office.  He’s been trying to set up a meeting with me for a few weeks now.  He has ideas he wants to share.  

Ryan’s a fireball.  He’s a few years younger than me, and as passionate about the hills of West Fulton as I am.  He started Scrumpy Ewe Cider a few years back, determined to introduce the region to traditional dry ciders from European, heirloom and wild apples.  He’s also an amazing Irish musician.  And a stone mason.  Scrumpy Ewe is growing fast, and Ryan has a lot of life energy to breathe into it.  It thrills me that West Fulton has grabbed his heart so powerfully,  that the flavors from our soils are defining his creative work. Ryan asks if we can have our meeting now.  I agree, and we go inside the empty cafe.  He sits where Mark sat, and I return to my prior stool.

Mark’s key word was God.  For Ryan, it’s pairings.  Terroir.  The flavors of West Fulton.  He wants seasonal dinners, pairing his ciders with Sap Bush meats.  And I’m enormously flattered, because he wants me to partner with him on it.  We vision dinners under the Sap Bush apple orchards, dinners at Panther Creek Arts, Dinners under a tent in the town park.  He gives me encouragement, “because you and I  know how to get things done, ” he says.   I nod and smile.  This needs to happen.  We’ll find a way.  Ryan leaves, and the room cools in temperature.  I go back upstairs to help Bob clean.

The next morning, as I walk to Mallet pond, however, my stomach is weighted with anxiety.  I think about when these pairings would happen, and I try to vision my calendar, how such events would work with the cafe schedule, my writing schedule, the farm schedule, my homeschool schedule.  I can’t make it fit.  

But this would be so incredibly beautiful, I think. And my mind tallies the hours I spend off hiking with Bob and the kids.  I think about our backpacking trips, our lazy nights watching summer sunsets, or rainy nights watching Gilmore Girls episodes, and all the books I like to read in the evening.  

But this is meant to be, I think.  This is what you were put here to do.  And then I thought of Mark’s question.  

Where does God want me to be?

And I remember sitting at the cafe counter with him, my own words flying back to me.  Opportunities are many.  They can’t be confused with our deepest calling.  

My deepest calling is being at my keyboard in the pre-dawn hours.  It’s sitting with my husband and daughters every schoolday.  It’s teaming up with my Mom and Dad, and getting everyone to jump on board to open the cafe on Saturday mornings.  

In these moments, I am as calm and centered as Mark when he stands before something mechanical.  My mind and my body just know what to do.  I am fulfilling my calling.  

…As long as I can fulfill it before lunchtime.  Because after that, I really need a nap. 

The very thought of tackling what Ryan proposes fills me with deep anxiety about how everything else I care about will suffer.

Ryan thinks I have the ability to get things done.  But that’s a bit of an illusion.   I get things done because I choose what I can’t do. Then my way is clear to focus. 

I want to believe that my special gifts could bring our vision to reality, but the truth is, my gifts, which all come out between 3am and 12 noon, will stand in the way. My fatigue will sabotage Ryan’s vision.  It will inhibit my creativity and exacerbate my short temper.  That said, I think there is talent in this town to pull off Ryan’s vision.  It is greater than my own.  Better still, those people  who hold that talent are awake after the sun sets.

And if Mark hadn’t come in Saturday morning, sat at my counter, told me his story and then fixed my oven, I don’t know if I would’ve figured all this out.  I guess God put him where he needed him to be. 

*Not his real name.