The Prayer Chain and the Birthday Party

Wednesday night

Our church is the Lutheran church on the corner of Main and Third, red brick with a white steeple that leans a little if you look at it from the Cenex.

On Wednesday nights in the fall there’s a soup supper in the basement and then prayer group at seven.

About forty people come on a normal week. Mostly older. Farm families, a few retired teachers, the quilting circle, and Pastor Jim in the same brown cardigan he has worn since I was confirmed.

Ben had told me that afternoon he would not make it. The corn was dry and the weather was supposed to turn.

I said I understood, and I did, and I put Eli in his car seat and drove to church by myself.

Ben’s dad met me at the basement door and took Eli by the hand to the nursery room, where the two of them would sort the Sunday school crayons by color for an hour, which is Eli’s idea of a fine evening.

Donna was at the coffee urn in her lavender sweater, filling cups.

She saw me and her whole face lit up, and she came over and hugged me hard, and I let her, because I love her and because I had not decided anything yet.

“I’m so glad you came, sweetheart,” she whispered. “So many people have been asking about you.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve met a lot of them.”

She didn’t hear what was in it. She patted my back and went back to the urn.

We ate chicken and wild rice soup. The basement smelled like that soup and like old hymnals and the radiator paint.

At seven Pastor Jim stood up at the front with his reading glasses on the end of his nose and his list in his hand.

He went through the names one by one. Jeff’s knee. The Olsons’ grandbaby, who was home now and nursing well.

Rain, which had come. Then he cleared his throat and looked toward me, kindly, over his glasses.

“And we continue to hold up little Eli Nygaard,” he said, “and his mother Jessica, as they…”

I stood up before he could finish. My chair scraped on the tile, and forty heads turned.

I had not written anything down. I just stood there in my clinic fleece with my hands at my sides and told them.

“Thank you,” I said. “I mean that. I know a lot of you have been praying for Eli this week, and I know you meant it with your whole hearts. I’ve seen it on your faces at the store.”

A few people nodded. Somebody near the back said, “Amen,” softly.

“But I’ve noticed something,” I said. “You’ve been praying for a boy you haven’t met. Not this Eli. Not the one the doctor in Iowa City sat on the floor with for an hour.”

The room was very still. I could hear the furnace.

“So I’d like to fix that. His sixth birthday is Saturday. Two o’clock, at our place out on the gravel road past the elevator. You’re invited. Every person in this room. And anybody who got that email this week. You’re all invited.”

Pastor Jim took his glasses off.

“There’s no need for presents,” I said. “He would rather you didn’t. But if you ever drove a tractor, he’d like to hear about it. That’s the only thing I’ll ask.”