Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [95]
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 didn’t just pack up and leave the next day, or disappear, with no word to those around me. I didn’t 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, Sam’s words echoed in my head: Why not stay? Why not take on your father’s 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, shifting 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 Sam’s.
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 father’s 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. Sam’s 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 didn’t 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