Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [74]
It is a terrible thing to be formally rejected by the only people, the only culture, you have ever known. Rejected as a heathen. Lower even than the common English. The English didn’t know better, so they could not be judged, at least not absolutely. But the excommunicated do know better and thus are responsible for their sins, their choices, and their actions. And because of their knowledge and actions, they are formally cast out and proclaimed tools of the devil, henceforth to be ostracized.
All this would happen to me soon enough. The full treatment. I would be formally excommunicated, that much was assured. They’d send out a warning letter, maybe two, urging me to return and make peace with God and the Amish church before it was too late. If I ignored the letters, there would be serious consequences. It would come down the way it always did. One Sunday after church, all members would be instructed to remain seated, and Bishop Henry would proceed with the process of casting me out.
It’s not that I wanted it to happen, the excommunication. But I knew it was inevitable. Things were messy. There was nothing I could do, not that I could see, anyway. And so I pushed back the thought and ignored it, focusing on the other pressing issues that demanded my energy—like surviving.
I don’t remember when the first letter arrived from home, probably within a few weeks. It was from Mom. She wrote chattily of the news, the weather, her garden, and how all the children came home the other night for supper. They missed me, she wrote. Her sadness seeped from every line. I was heavy in their thoughts and, although not stated, in their hearts. I knew they were reeling from my departure, but I told myself they would work through it in time. They always had before.
I had some sense of how deeply I had hurt them. I thought of it sometimes at night, when sleep would not come. I thought of my family and of all the broken promises I’d made to them, to the church, and not least, to Sarah.
I thought of her sometimes. Mostly fragmented slivers of guilt, slicing through the shadows of my mind. But I had no regrets, other than about the way it all came down—the way I’d done things. That was bad. The heavy choking guilt closed in sometimes, but despite it all, nothing could have induced me to return. Not to Bloomfield, and not to Sarah.
* * *
Eli introduced me to his “adoptive” family, the people who provided some stability in his life at that time. They were my distant cousins, and they were Waglers. Ours was a very common surname in Daviess, which probably has more Waglers than any other locale in the world. These Waglers, this family, consisted of five brothers and three sisters, all living with their mother in one vast, sprawling house. Their father had passed away a year or so before from cancer. They were polite and genuinely friendly, and they welcomed me into the bustle and clatter of their lives.
These Waglers were big-time farmers. They owned a local grain-bin business and raised meat turkeys by the tens of thousands. The five brothers bustled about, each performing assigned duties like well-oiled machines.
I was invited to drop around every Sunday for lunch. They accepted me as I was. They sensed my troubled mind but never pried. I suspect Eli had filled them in on my less-than-honorable flight from Bloomfield and the mess I had left behind, but they never let on.
They were personable and fun to be around. They were Mennonites from Amish stock, but they’d never been Amish. And they were Christians. They attended church every Sunday and prayer meetings most Wednesday nights. They always invited me to go along. Sometimes I went, to be polite. After all, they fed me on Sundays. The least I could do was attend church with them once in a while. And church was all right, because no one bothered me with awkward or embarrassing questions.
I watched them, this clamoring, joyous family. They had recently lost their father, and