Crossing Over
Authors: Ruth Irene Garrett
CROSSING OVER
One Woman's Escape from Amish Life
Ruth Irene Garrett
with
Rick Farrant
To my mother in heaven, who never lost the faith
âR
ICK
F
ARRANT
To God, all honor and glory; to my mother, the bond of love we share I will carry in my heart forever
âR
UTH
I
RENE
G
ARRETT
One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ . . . Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
âE
PHESIANS
4:5â7, 31, 32
T
he Old Order Amish have many traditions in their Ordnung (church rules), among them no picture taking and no possessing photographs of people or family members.
Therefore, I have very few photographs or family albums with which to reflect on my past. I must rely on recollections and memories.
When a person remembers or reflects on his or her past, it should bring back beautiful and wonderful moments in time, as well as childhood dreams. While I have many pleasant memories of my time as a member of the Amish religion, I also have unpleasant and sad memories that I wish not to remember but cannot forget.
I understand what is needed to deal with the truth and the past, that being love. The love I share with my husband and my love for my Amish family have enabled me to be strong and tell my entire story as honestly and truthfully as possible. My cowriter, Rick Farrant, was there, too. He was professionally persistent and sometimes asked difficult questions, but he was nevertheless always aware of my desire to protect my family. The family I left. But also the family I love.
There are more than 235 Old Order Amish communities in twenty-three states and parts of Canadaâabout 150,000 people in 1,100 church districts. The Old Order is the strictest of the Amish groups and it, along with the more liberal Amish and Mennonites, arose from the sixteenth century Western Europe Anabaptist movement, influenced in large part by two former Roman Catholic priests turned reformersâMartin Luther and Menno Simons. Both challenged the power of the pope and Catholic Church doctrine.
Jacob Ammann, a Swiss Mennonite bishop, founded the Amish in 1693 when he became dissatisfied with the Mennonite Church, believing it did not carry shunning far enough and did not adequately separate itself from the rest of the world. Later, Ammann excommunicated himself from the Amish Church in a failed attempt to rejoin the Mennonites.
I come from an Old Order Amish group in Iowa, and our dress, our buggies, our way of life were quite different from those of another Amish group less than a hundred miles to the north. My story, then, is rooted in the ways of one particular Amish community and does not necessarily reflect the ways of all Amish.
That said, there is one unspoken rule among all Amish groups that for centuries has kept the Amish a mystery to the outside world. They avoid talking about their faith and traditions to the English, otherwise known as all people who are not Amish. They do not do taped or television interviews. They hide their faces from cameras and do not become too friendly with outsiders, lest they should be tempted to leave the Amish and become English.
This may sound absurd, but it is not when you have been told all your life that very few English can be trusted. At the same time, by limiting contact with the English, the Amish avoid having to answer any questions pertaining to what goes on behind closed doors.
If one leaves the Amish and talks about the inner workings of the Amish or the hardships he or she experienced while being Amish, the Amish will say that person is trying to retaliate and is blaming the Amish for his or her shortcomings.
I am doing neither; rather, I am trying to foster a better understanding among all Christians and non-Christians, that we may learn how to unite under God's mercy.
Leaving the Amish is perhaps the most serious offense one can commit. From the time you are born until the day you die, you are reminded by the leaders of the church that you are privileged to be Amish, that the world outside the Amish is evil and corrupt. One grows up thinking the Amish are the only ones with a real chance of going to heaven.
As long as I stayed in the church, worked hard, did my daily prayers, was humble, and always followed the Ordnung, I might have a chance of going to heaven. But leaving the Amish meant I was no longer of the church, I was in the ban, and I was cut off from God. To them, if I die this way, I have doomed my soul to hell and have no chance of salvation. Being in the ban also means one is shunned and can have little or no contact with other Amish.
With these threats of damnation, it is not hard to imagine why Old Order Amish live in fear and intimidation. It is not hard to understand why they do not talk freely.
I am not sure my family will ever understand why I decided to tell my story. It is not meant to hurt them. It is told with the belief that God loves all of his children and wants all of them to be saved, not just a few. Any denomination that believes otherwise has already missed the point.
I look at my father and I see a man who is unyielding in his convictions and stern in his punishment. I see a man who is a product of his father's beliefs and Amish traditional teachings. My mother, on the other hand, is as kind and loving as my father is strict. My brothers are good, strong men whom I love. For my sister, I wish I could tell her that she is loved and will always be loved by me.
I love my mother and father, and I appreciate everything they have done for me. They have taught me many good values. Still, I so wish they would try to understand that I wish to be where I am.
I have not forsaken God; rather, I have embraced my beliefs in God and Jesus more than ever. The church I now attend is an extension of my faith in God and I have taken my faith far beyond anything the Amish would ever dare to do. I did this with the help of my husband, Ottie, Rev. James Bettermann, and the entire congregation of the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. I have formed a new foundation for my faith in God and his plan of salvation by graceâa new understanding, a new beginning, a new life through truth, patience, and love.
This book tells about my experiences growing up Amish, my husband, my hopes, and my dreams. I feel compelled to tell my story, hoping it will help anyone with similar struggles of their own. If I have hurt anyone in so doing, I ask for their forgiveness and prayers.
âR
UTH
I
RENE
G
ARRETT
February 5, 2000
I
had barely made it inside the door of the old, two-story white farmhouse when my mother fell into me, put her head on my shoulder, and began sobbing. “Everything's all right,” I whispered, wrapping my arms tightly around her. “It's all right.”
We hadn't seen each other in more than three years.
I had returned to my childhood home in Kalona, Iowa, to see about my mother's health. I'd heard she had open sores on her legs, and a quack doctor had ordered a bizarre diet as a cure: chicken, fish, wheat biscuits, popcorn made with canola oil, no sugar, no fruits. I also was intent on proving to herâand to my fatherâthat I was okay after leaving home, going into the world, and becoming a bride.
We'd exchanged dozens of letters in which she and the rest of my family had pleaded for my return and I had promised I was in no danger. But none of my words had made a difference. They were convinced I had abandoned God and sold my soul to the devilâthat I was under some kind of spell that had prevented me from returning. They had implored in words blind with grief and dramatically scripted to touch my insecurities. And always there was the desire that I forgive them for anything they might have done to encourage me to leave. “How empty your place in the family is!” my mother wrote in a letter two years after I'd left. “I'm alone in the house so I can let the tears roll and not offend. It would be much lighter and easier to get ready for this family gathering if you would be here to help like you used to be.
“Oh Irene! It gets so lonesome without you and it's hard to go on; the waiting is so painful. I try to go on for the rest of the family's sake. I'm very, very sorry that something like this happened and hope I can be forgiven. I do not have much in earthly possessions, so our children are very dear to me and that is why it hurts so deeply. . . . May the Lord grant you wisdom to see the truth in all matters.”
They often invoked the name of God. In a manipulative way, it seemed.
The Bible doesn't say anything about conditional love or guidance. It says that if people follow God, they will have his blessing. And no matter what I might have done, I had not turned my back on him, as my parents would frequently suggest. If anything, I had more fully embraced his comfort, forgiveness, and strength. That is what was allowing me to love my family still.
My heart raced, my face flushed, and my hands turned cold as I tried to calm my mother. But I remained strong, even though it had been a difficult twenty-four hours leading to the reunion. There had been the persistent headaches, the bouts of nausea.
The day before, I'd left Kentucky on my first commercial plane flight ever and flown to Chicago, where I was met by an aunt and uncle who'd driven from Indiana. Together, we had made the six-hour drive to Kalona, eighteen miles southwest of Iowa City. We checked into the forty-nine-dollar-a-night Pull'r Inn Motel, two miles from the Gable Avenue farm where I'd grown up. I saw the eighty-acre property amidst the gentle swells of the eastern Iowa landscape as we traveled into town along pink-topped Highway 1. Everything was as it had been. The gray and silver silo, the silver windmill, the long, sloping barn roof, the white martin house on the pole.
My biggest concern was that people would discover I was in town before I got a chance to see my family. That would have been disastrous. My father would have summoned a gaggle of ministers, and they would have confronted me, surrounded me with feelings of guilt, and hounded me into submission. Because that's what they do to fallen members of their flock. They badger them. Intimidate them. Shame them. And demand obedience. I would have been mortified.
Signing into the nondescript motel at the juncture of Highways 1 and 22 provided the first challenge to protecting my identity. I wondered if I should use my real name or an alias. Then, either from exhaustion or a commitment to honesty, I wrote the name I had assumed after leaving home. Irene Garrett. My real name. My married name.
Later that evening, I met up with a woman friend who helped shield me. When the former fire chief looked inquisitively at me as we dined in a pizza restaurant, my friend made a point of making no introduction. She didn't spill the secret to our waitress, either.
By the time I got back to the motel, I was still undetected. But I was more than frazzled, and I didn't get to sleep until after midnightâafter doing a good deal of praying and writing in a notebook I had brought along: “It's almost like I've entered communist territory, where I have to sneak in and out before too many people know I'm there. Before they have all . . . the authorities gang up on me. Almost like a fugitive. . . . Going to visit your parents should be easy and something you anticipate, but it's the hardest thing I've done in my life.” I was twenty-six years old.
The morning dawned quicklyâand not without incident. I dressed conservatively out of respect for my parentsâincluding wearing a small head coveringâjoined up with my aunt and uncle, and we went to the Kalonial Townhouse Restaurant for breakfast, where one can order a local favorite of liverwurst, fried mush, and coffee for $4.75 or an Iowa chop for $7.25. No sooner did we arrive at the popular gathering place than a group of people I recognized walked in. One of them, I could tell, was a former neighbor. I could see them peeking at me and hear them talking among themselves, and one said, “Well, I think that's one of Alvin T's daughters.''
Moments later, one of them came by our table and asked, “Aren't you teaching school?''
“No,'' I said, “that's my sister you're talking about.”
“Well, are you the one . . .” I finished the sentence for him: “. . . that ran off to Kentucky? Yeah, that's me.”
He laughed and we chatted, but now the secret was out. And it wasn't long before a waitress, who'd been inspecting me from the chrome-hooded buffet, blurted: “Oh, Irene, is that you?” In orderly fashion, three more waitresses, all of whom had once been acquaintances of mine, eventually made their way to our table. One of them asked if my parents knew I was in town. “No,” I said. But soon they would know. In about half an hour.
We got to the farm at 9:00
A.M
. I had spent the drive fighting the urge to cry or tighten up. Being in control was so important to me I'd almost lost it. Somehow, I managed to keep my wits. The farm looked deserted as we pulled in, much like it had looked two and a half years earlier when I'd tried to visit. That time, the family had gone fishing for the day. This time, I braced myself for another disappointment.
My aunt went to the front door and knocked and, as we stood nervously next to the green, wooden front-porch swing, I heard a chair leg scrape the floor inside. Someone was home. My mother.
It took me ten minutes to get her calmed to the point where I could lead her to the beige sofa in the living room. Then I held her hand and waited for the questions I knew would come. Questions that were so real to her, and so ludicrous to me.
She began without warm-up: “Is he treating you all right?”
“It couldn't be better,” I replied.
“Well, I just hear all these bad things,'' she said, looking thinner than when I'd last seen her. “These horrible things. Just last Thursday, I heard another rumor.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“That he's got guns mounted in the house. That he can shoot you if you try to leave him.”
“All this stuff you hear is not true,” I said. “It's not true.”
But there was more. She'd heard that I once had a bracelet on my arm that allowed my husband to track me, and that I still had a microchip in my wrist that branded me with the mark of the beastâ666.
“What about this microchip?” she asked. “Do you have one of those?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, don't you ever get one of those, because you know what the Bible says about that.”
It is never easy leaving the Amish. Especially if you've left to marry an outsider.