Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [81]
It was tricky, the way things played out in my mind. The Amish have always taught, always preached, that once the desire to return leaves, that’s when you are truly lost. Because that’s when your conscience has been seared with a hot iron and you won’t know right from wrong. You’re a walking dead man. Preachers have polished off many a sermon with tales of such people, people bereft of hope who yearned for the desire to return and could not grasp it. Tales of woe and loss and tears of regret and eternal damnation.
And in my head, I still held on to that spark, that remnant of desire to make it work. I seized on that remnant as proof that I could make it work. Simply because there was a shred of desire. Desire based on fear to be sure, but desire nonetheless. I could return. I would return. In the future, of course. At some distant date, maybe the next summer. That was still far enough away that I could consider it without freaking out. Inside me, the restlessness stirred, as it always had. Wherever I was, I wanted to return to where I’d been before. Not the real place, but the idyllic place in my mind. The place that could be, if only I could get it right. And do it right.
I mulled over the issue and mentioned guardedly to my friends that I was thinking of returning once again to the Amish church.
Their reactions were pretty unified, mostly a mixture of horror, disbelief, and astonishment. My “wild” buddies were incredulous. Why would someone do such a thing? I’d just torn away from Bloomfield. How could I even think of going back into that mess? It wouldn’t work. Even my Christian friends, the Wagler family, responded with polite disbelief. They were much nicer about it, but clearly skeptical nonetheless. From their perspective, why would someone ever want to return to the darkness of that cold and legalistic world?
And so, surrounded by doubters, I found myself alone again. Alone and confused. But I could not shake the idea. Why couldn’t I go somewhere else and try it? Some other community instead of Bloomfield? That way, I wouldn’t have to face all those people from the past. Especially those I had hurt so cruelly. Especially my parents. And Sarah.
I still thought of her sometimes. Mom wrote to me of her and how she was doing. In one letter Mom dramatically informed me that Sarah had had a date with someone else. Another guy. Now she was gone, Mom wrote. It was too late for me to ever get her back. Mom’s message was crafted to make me feel bad, but instead, I read her words and felt nothing.
The weeks rolled by, and I finally caved to the mental pressure. I decided to at least explore the idea of going back again to the Amish church. This time, I thought I might go to northern Indiana. There was a huge Amish community there, stretching from Ligonier in the southeast to Elkhart in the northwest, more than a hundred districts, total. Maybe even a couple hundred. Either way, it was a big place and a long-established settlement. I could try it there, I figured, without causing a lot of waves. They had seen about all there was to see when it came to wild youth. Besides, the place was so big, odds were nobody would even notice me or make a fuss.
I wasn’t looking forward to the effort it would take to go back: moving again, getting rid of my truck, and forcing myself back into the mold. But a more powerful force was compelling me, pushing me forward—the force of fear. Not that I talked about it much to anyone, but it was there, a fear planted deep within me. The raw fear of hell and eternal damnation was the only thing that could ever have made me consider returning to any form of Amish life.
We all long for inner peace. And I was simply following the only path I knew to try to reach it. Not that there were any guarantees. Only “hope.” No assurance of anything.
I had a contact in the northern Indiana area, which is probably why the idea occurred to me at all. That contact was Phillip Wagler, one of my first cousins, who was born and raised in Aylmer. I’d known him all my life. A quiet