Growing Up Amish - A Memoir Part 15

My first desperate prayer, a few months back, had been heard and answered.

By quietly showing me Christas love, my friend had led me to the Source of that love. For the first time, I truly grasped that Christ had died for mea"suffered, bled, and dieda"and that I could be his through faith. I was amazed at how simple it really was. Why had it always seemed so hard, so impossible before?

I waited, then, for the light. Would it be in vain, like before? Like when I was baptized and felt nothing? Like when I returned to the Amish church, walked the gauntlet, and felt nothing? Would this end up the same? I waited. And it came. Almost immediately, a huge load of despair and anguish was lifted from me, replaced with a deep, quiet sense of joy and an internal peace beyond anything I had ever known. I couldnat believe it. This could not be happening. Not to me. But it was.

And so, alone in my room that day on my cousinas farm in Ligonier, Indiana, I reached the end of a long and tortured road, a road that had meandered through all the days and weeks and years of adulthood. A weary road of almost ten years. The end of my frenzied running from I knew not what to I knew not where. It all ended there, with a simple request for new birth and new life.

He who gives life to the lifeless gave life to me. I wanted to tell someone. Not shout, but at least express it somehow. But I couldnat. Not among the Amish. They would view my experience with grave suspicion. The mad bishop would launch an inquisition for sure, which would not be pretty. But it wouldnat be just him; others would look askance as well. Quiet and reserved, the Amish are not given to emotional testimonies about salvation.

I couldnat wait, though, to tell Sam the next time we met. It would be okay. He would understand. And when I told him, he didnat seem too surprised. He smiled quietly, and tears suddenly filled his eyes. aWelcome, brother,a was all he said.

And for me, it was like a new day had dawned. For the first time as an adult, I faced the future without fear. Not that the future was clear, because it wasnat. And not that there werenat a lot of issues to deal with, because there were. But somehow, I relaxed. I let go of all the emotional baggage that had burdened me for so long. Just released it. And itas not that it disappeared magically, because it didnat. It lurked out there on the edges of my consciousness like a ghost. It was still frightening sometimes, but it didnat get to me. I knew and held on to the truth. I was now a child of G.o.d. Nothing could take that from me. Not the sins of my past. Not the pain of all those vivid memories. Not the fear of death or dying. Nothing.

34.

Sam had always strongly encouraged me to value and embrace my Amish heritage. Thatas where he was, firmly established in the culture he had adopted as his own. He longed for me to be there and to share it with him. Together, he believed, we could go far. But I was dubious. Why would I stay with these simple people? Sure, they held on to a lot of the old ways. Some things were good. And some of their traditions, too, were okay in my mind. But their studied, deliberate ignorance still rankled and bothered mea"a lot. And I confronted Sam over and over again. Why? Why would I stay?

Always, he had the same response. aYou are your fatheras son,a he said. aGifted, like he is. Like he was all his life. Your dad is getting along in years. The Amish will need someone to take his place. Someone to write, to define and explain their faith. Their lifestyle. Defend it. You have a strong personality. Leaders.h.i.+p qualities. So why not you?a I had no comeback for that. And after my conversion experience, that suddenly didnat seem that important anymore. In the new, settled calmness of life, I decided to hang around for a while. See what happened. Come what may, I could take it. I even managed to dredge up a few good vibes for the mad bishop. Well, maybe thatas going too far. I didnat have good vibes, but my intense hostility toward the man diminished miraculously, mostly because I removed myself from his presence.

Late in the fall of that year, I moved out of his district and northwest, into the Goshen area. A nice older Amish couple, Samas friends, had an empty house on a small lot with an old dilapidated barn. They wanted someone to live there and maintain it. On Samas recommendation, they offered it to me for low rent. So I moved to a new district.

In the larger Amish communities, the rules can vary greatly from district to district. In one, you might be allowed power lawn mowers, rubber rims on your buggy wheels, and other progressive things. In another, you might be allowed only hand-powered push mowers, steel-rimmed buggy wheels, and so forth. A bishopas policies can drastically affect the value of real estate in his district. The more progressive the bishop, the higher the value of land and homes, because everyone wants to live there. Not surprisingly, real estate values in the mad bishopas district ranked way down there, among the lowest in all of northern Indiana. You could almost buy a farm there for the price of a simple house and lot in the northern districts.

Goshen was among the most progressive Amish areas in northern Indiana. A land of Canaan and the focus of the wishful gaze of many longing eyes from the southern districts. I was happy to shake the Ligonier dust from my feet and move to a land free of harsh, strange people like the mad bishop. A land of milk and honey. Goshen.

I never saw the mad bishop again. I never missed him, either.

I settled into my new home, a rather ramshackle place, but livable. Batching it, alone, for the first time in my life. Mostly, I liked it. An English coworker from Goshen picked me up each morning for the ride to the factory in Topeka, as it was too far to bike, and I paid him a few bucks every week in return. Soon, I decided to go buggy shopping. I found a nice rig with rubber-tired rims, which were fully allowed in my new progressive church. I also bought a plump little mare, not too wild and fully road trained. I was set.

My Goshen Amish neighbors all welcomed me. They stopped by, introduced themselves, and invited me over for supper. They included me in their lives as best they knew how.

An elderly Amish widow lived alone next door, a few hundred feet away. Barbara was suspicious when I first showed up at her doorstep, but she warmed up immediately after we had chatted a bit. Might she have an old copy of The Budget I could borrow? I wanted to catch up on the news and Dadas latest letters. Her crinkled face lit up. Oh, yes, she did. After that, it became a weekly tradition. I stopped by to read the latest copy, sitting at her kitchen table, while she fussed and mothered me. Smiling, she served coffee and cookies while filling me in on the latest local gossip. Much of the time I had no idea what she was talking about, but I smiled politely and listened, commenting now and then where I could. We laughed a lot together. Lonely since her husbandas death a few years before, she eagerly antic.i.p.ated my visits. In some small way, we each filled a void in the otheras life. I had no family in the area. Widowed and childless, she was alone. We quickly became fast friends.

It was one of the most idyllic periods of my life as an Amish person, outside of childhood. Settled and calm, I absorbed and lived each day. I enjoyed life and laughed again. Not the hard, desperate laughter of the past, but the true thing, laughter from the heart, deep and real. I still saw Sam regularly, and we hung out as much as possible. He beamed at the new me and checked now and then to make sure I was still doing okay in my newfound faith. I was.

Holed up in my bachelor home, with little social life, I buried myself in books. By then I had acc.u.mulated quite an impressive library of my own. Each evening, after a meager supper of soup and sandwich, I lit the kerosene lantern and read into the late hours of the night, working my way through Will Durantas The Story of Civilization and random chunks and chapters from dozens of other books. My mind was hungry, and I fed it. And each night, long after the dim lights died in the houses of my Amish neighbors, I sat there, absorbing and devouring knowledge from those pages.

But it was not good to be alone so much. A man needs people around him, some sort of structural support. My friends tried to provide what support they could, but they all had friends and families of their own.

A single guy with no connections will quickly fall through the cracks, as I did. But to be honest, I didnat really want to hang around that much with most of the people anyway. Sam and the widow Barbara, those two relations.h.i.+ps I cherished. The others I could take or leave. Mostly, I left them, preferring my own company to theirs.

The long and lonely evening hours got to me eventually. And something stirred in me that winter, the winter of my discontent. Not the old frantic discontent of the past, but a yearning deep inside to be free. Free of the cultural chains that bound me. Free of this confining Amish life. And this time, as the deep longings stirred within, I realized for the first time in my life that I could leave.

Leave and not be lost.

It took awhile, to get my mind around a thing like that. To examine it, test it, and really grasp it without fear. To face it, accept it. The box of Amish life and culture might provide some protection, but it could never bring salvation.

And once I really truly grasped that fact, it was only a matter of time until the course of my future changed forever.

I didnat just pack up and leave the next day, or disappear, with no word to those around me. I didnat even consider such a course. I pondered the issue for days, weeks. Did I really, really want to give it all up? I had invested a tremendous amount of time and effort to reach this place, both my physical surroundings and the place of peace in my mind and heart. I had experienced a miraculous spiritual rebirth here in this area, as an Amish person.

And always, Samas words echoed in my head: Why not stay? Why not take on your fatheras work? The Amish need people like you. Why not you?

In those long evening hours alone in that house that winter, I pondered. Thought it through. Maybe Sam was right. Maybe, just maybe, I should stay. Be the man I could be among the Amish. The man Sam thought I should be.

I thought, too, of my parents back in Bloomfield. How disappointed they would be, especially Mom. For years, she had ridden the emotional seesaw, s.h.i.+fting back and forth between sadness and joy, sadness and joy, and if I left, sadness. Again. Even so, I realized the choice would have to be mine. Not their choice, and not Samas.

But my choice, for my life.

Then came spring, and new life sprouted on the land. And in the end, I could not find it in my heart to stay. I would not take up my fatheras mantle.

Sam had sensed the change in me that winter. I had shared with him honestly the path I was considering, and he could feel it coming. He knew that I would not stay. I saw the hurt in his eyes and the deep sense of disappointment and loss. And I saw, too, that he could not quite deal with it.

In those final weeks and days, an awkward tension sprouted between us. I wanted so much for him to see and understand my newfound freedom. To recognize that what I had was real. I wanted him to bless my life and to bless me. He deeply longed for me to stay and be the person he knew I could be in the Amish church, to fulfill his vision and his dream for me. To be the person he knew I could be.

And he may have been right. I might have been that person.

But there was one problem. That was not the person I wanted to be. Samas vision and his dreams were not mine. I wanted to speak to him, to tell him the truth, but I could not break through the final wall of pain and silence that separated us.

Quietly then, I made my plans. I called my friends in Daviess. My brother Nathan had recently moved to Pennsylvania. So I called the Wagler family, Dean and his brothers, and asked if someone could come up and get me. Of course they would. They didnat ask a lot of questions. One of the brothers would be dispatched. We settled on a date.

In calmness, then, I wrapped up my affairs in Goshen. I quit my job at the factory, sold my horse and buggy, and packed up my stuff. To my curious neighbors, I said only that I was moving south. Not back to Ligonier and the mad bishop, but way south, to Daviess, the land of my fathers. They smiled kindly, as if they understood. It probably made more sense to them than the fact that I, a stranger with no family in the area, had tried to settle among them.

Only to the widow Barbara was I honest. I told her my plans, and where I was going, that I was leaving the Amish and joining a Mennonite church in Daviess. She was sad, but only because I was leaving and because I wouldnat come around anymore to read The Budget and drink her coffee. Of all my friends in northern Indiana, she would miss me the most. I stopped by as often as I could during those last few days.

And then the day arrived. I got up early and walked down the road to say good-bye to Barbara, my surrogate mother. In the final moments, she wept quietly, grasped my arm, then hugged me tight. For a minute or so, she could not speak. But then she smiled through her tears.

aGo,a she said. aGo in peace, and go with G.o.d. Stop in and see me when you are in the area.a aI will,a I promised. And we stood there in heavy silence. There was nothing more to say. We knew, both of us, that this might be the last time we saw each other. She was elderly, in her seventies, and might not survive many more years. We both knew full well that I would most likely never come around again.

Deanas younger brother, Nate, arrived a short time later, and we quickly loaded my few belongings in his van. I walked through the house one last time, checking for any misplaced items, locked the door, placed the key under the mat outside, got into the van, and we were off.

We pulled onto the road and pa.s.sed the widow Barbaraas house. I saw her wrinkled face clearly, watching through the gla.s.s. She waved. I waved back.

I never said good-bye to Sam. Things between us were tense, really tense, by then. Our hearts were hardened toward each other. And so even this departure, so different from all the others in my past, was tinged with sadness and regret.

But my face was set to the south, to a new beginning. My heart was calm. My soul content. Behind us, the Amish settlement of northern Indiana receded in the distance as, in time, it would recede into the mists of the memories of my past.

I was leaving the Amish. Again. There was no plan, long term, except perhaps in some vague, undefined sense. But I was quietly confident it would all work out. Tomorrow. Next week. Next year. In five years. And beyond.

For the first time, I was not running in frantic despair into some wild and dangerous horizon. For the first time, I was leaving with a clear mind, quietly focused on faith, not fear. For the first time, I was leaving behind all the baggage, all the tortured, broken dreams, all the pain of so much loss and heartbreak.

For the first time, I was focused on an unknown future. Whatever it held, it would be okay. I would be okay. This I knew in my heart. I felt it deeply. Calmly.

And this time I knew there would be no return.

Epilogue.

More than two decades have pa.s.sed since the morning of my final departure from Goshen, Indiana, and the last vestiges of my Amish past. I could not have known that day of the many and tremendously varied experiences that awaited me. Itas been a great, grand journey, unique in so many ways. Exhilarating at times, and frightening at others. Here and there the road has been rough, but always vastly exciting and mostly fulfilling.

I have never looked back. Except to reminisce, remember, and reflect. On how it was. And how it went.

The good things. And the bad.

Despite harboring some resentment at the Amish in general for a number of years, I have come to terms with the aftermath of that hard and desperate journey and the bitter turmoil of nearly a decade of wasted years. Would I wish such a journey, at such steep cost, on anyone, ever? Of course not. But had I not traveled that long and troubled road, I would not be the man I am today.

Sadly, after I made the choice to leave, my good friend Sam chose to turn his face from me in sorrow. Soon after my departure, I attempted to reach out to him once or twice, but my olive branch was ignored, rejected by his silence. After that, I gave up and let it go. We have not seen each other, or spoken face-to-face, in more than twenty years. But he was and is still one of the most important people I have ever encountered. When the chips were down, he did not hesitate but waded into the darkness to lead a lost soul to the Light.

He will always be my friend. Perhaps one day weall meet again as brothers.

In the years that have pa.s.sed since I last saw him, I have tried to do to others as he did to me. Meet people where they are. As they are. To reflect Christas love, without judgment, in the messy details of everyday life.

And itas not as if my own life hasnat been messy at times during those years. It has been, now and then, sometimes brutally so. Mostly as a result of my own choices.

But G.o.d is who he is. Forever. Unchanging. And always there, even when he doesnat seem to be. This I have learned. And this I know. Ultimately, I rest in that knowledge.

And if my readers glean only one thing from my story, I hope thatas it. That G.o.d is there, even when he seems far away.

Today, I reside in a quiet place. A place of calmness and rest and of acceptance of who I am. A place of grat.i.tude for the miracle of life in each new day.

And even though they no longer claim me as one of their own, I deeply respect the people connected to me by blood or backgrounda"the Amish. Their culture and their faith. With all their flaws. And all their strengths. They are still a part of me and will always be. Even so, I would never dream of returning.

Ever.

I have no regrets for the road I chose. And I rarely wonder how life would have been on the road not taken.

About the Author.

Ira Wagler was born in the small Old Order Amish community of Aylmer, Ontario, Canada. At seventeen, frustrated by the rules and restrictions of Amish life, Ira got up at 2:00 a.m., packed his duffel bag, left a note under his pillow, and walked away. Over the course of the next five years, Ira would return home and leave again numerous times, torn between the ingrained message that abandoning oneas Amish heritage results in eternal d.a.m.nation, and the freedom and possibilities offered by the English world.

At age twenty-six, Ira left the Amish for good. He is currently general manager of Graber Supply, LLC, and Pole Building Company in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.