Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [93]
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 couldn’t believe it. This could not be happening. Not to me. But it was.
And so, alone in my room that day on my cousin’s 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 couldn’t. 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 wouldn’t be just him; others would look askance as well. Quiet and reserved, the Amish are not given to emotional testimonies about salvation.
I couldn’t wait, though, to tell Sam the next time we met. It would be okay. He would understand. And when I told him, he didn’t seem too surprised. He smiled quietly, and tears suddenly filled his eyes. “Welcome, brother,” 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 wasn’t. And not that there weren’t 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 it’s not that it disappeared magically, because it didn’t. It lurked out there on the edges of my consciousness like a ghost. It was still frightening sometimes, but it didn’t get to me. I knew and held on to the truth. I was now a child of God. 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. That’s 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 me—a lot. And I confronted Sam over and over again. Why? Why would I stay?
Always, he had the same response. “You are your father’s son,” he said. “Gifted, 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. Leadership qualities. So why not you?”
I had no comeback for that. And after my conversion experience, that suddenly didn’t 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 that’s going too far. I didn’t 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, Sam’s friends, had an empty house on a small lot with an old dilapidated barn. They wanted someone to live there and maintain it. On Sam’s recommendation, they offered it to me for low rent. So I moved to a new district.
In the larger