by Anne Beiler
Finally, after many late-night discussions in bed and long days of thinking over our options, Jonas and I made the decision: we would move back to Pennsylvania. Now we just had to tell our girls.
Jonas and I decided to tell the girls about moving north over dinner. LaWonna, fifteen, and LaVale, ten, sat across from us: LaWonna’s eyes and hair were a deep brown, and in those days she carried around with her the typical teenage confusion of still depending on us but wanting complete independence; LaVale’s hair was lighter and her eyes green, and at ten she still retained more little-girl traits than her older sister. But she always had a lively spark in her eye that reminded me her teenage years were right around the corner.
Jonas spoke first.
“Girls, your mother and I have something to tell you.”
A slight pause, and both girls looked at us, their eyes full of concern.
“We’ve decided to move back to Pennsylvania.”
The four of us sat there in the Texas heat, completely silent. It took only a moment for the shock to pass.
“I’m not moving to Pennsylvania,” LaWonna said with determination in her voice while rolling her chair away from the kitchen table. “I can’t believe you would even think of it. You just want me to leave all my friends?” She ran upstairs, crying, and slammed the bedroom door behind her. At first LaVale just sat there staring at her plate, but then she too rose and slowly walked up the stairs, more likely to try to console her sister than as any kind of protest. LaVale’s mission in life has always been to preserve peace in the family, something she has been doing since before she was born when just the promise of her birth helped ease the pain of Angie’s passing. Jonas and I sat there, a little surprised by the forcefulness of LaWonna’s response. I didn’t think she would take the news so hard.
For the next few days, life became rather difficult around the house as the thought of moving north settled like a gray cloud over all of us. What were we supposed to do? Our family had finally reached a place of peace, only for the idea of moving to begin splitting us again. Finally Jonas called a family meeting and made an announcement that surprised us all.
“We are not going to move to Pennsylvania until we all feel that it’s okay, that it’s the right thing to do. So that’s it. You girls just tell us when you’re ready to move.” And that was that: Jonas and I waited. Well, it’s not entirely true to say that the only thing we did was wait: we also prayed, every day, that if it truly was God’s will for us to move north, the girls would have a change of heart.
We spent Christmas of ’86 in Pennsylvania with our family and enjoyed ourselves. The twenty-four-hour drive home felt longer that year, although I’m not sure why—perhaps I waited for one of the girls to drop the revelation that finally the time had come to move. But there was no such conversation, just miles and miles of wondering. Eventually we settled back into normal life, and 1987 got off to a good start. I mentally prepared for another good year in Texas.
One day, while I washed dishes in the kitchen, LaWonna came up behind me and stood by the table. She started talking to me, just standing there and going on about different things, which seemed kind of strange. Then, I guess after she gathered enough courage, she kind of blurted out something like, “Mom, I know you’re not going to believe this, but I really think God wants us to move to Pennsylvania.”
I turned and stared at her, completely shocked. Her face held one of the most sheepish looks I’ve ever seen.
“Are you just saying that, LaWonna?”
“No, I really want to move to Pennsylvania.”
LaWonna’s decision to obey God affected our lives immensely. Her courage allowed our entire family to begin a new adventure. Without it, we could all still be living in Texas, Jonas working long hours in a body shop. I might be happily raising grandchildren, never knowing what might have been. There would be more defining moments over the coming months and years that dramatically altered the path my life was on and in the end would bring about Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels.
There’s a photo of our street the day before we left. How I miss that street, those familiar houses, the peaceful feeling of hope, desperately hoping that the worst times had vanished behind us forever! Our house is in the far left-hand side of the picture. In front of our driveway Jonas and Aaron (my sister Becky’s husband) put the finishing touches on their creation: the “Brown Cow” (a two-tone brown passenger van) holding one of our motorcycles on a custom-made hitch and towing a trailer carrying a vehicle owned by one of our three families. The front light is on, dusk is settling in, and the street is quiet as most of the neighborhood children are inside preparing for bed.
The morning after that photograph was taken, an eighteen-wheeler parked outside of our home. The morning sun had only just begun to shine, but already the summer heat shimmered up off the pavement in lazy waves. The six of us walked out the front door and down the sidewalk to the truck: me, my two sisters, and our husbands were together and ready to load up for our move home. In the end, all three of our families decided that returning to Pennsylvania was the right thing to do, and what better way to make the long move home than together.
Our friend drove trucks for a living and said he would drive our stuff from Texas to Pennsylvania. He dropped out of the truck and came around to greet us. We all felt very happy to see him, but also excited and nervous about the move.
As we loaded the truck, he went inside to take a nap in preparation for the long drive north. We began the long task of moving box after box after box, sofas and televisions and tables and chairs, all the belongings of three entire families.
We all decided that Jonas and I should pack our stuff first, toward the front of the truck, since we didn’t have a plan for where to stay once we arrived. There we were, packing up my favorite house, leaving friends we loved, and moving over sixteen hundred miles, to a place that on one hand felt so familiar, and on the other hand so unknown. Aaron and my sister Becky had a place to live; Mike and Fi planned on staying with Mom in her basement for a little while until they found something; we had nowhere to go! Literally, we did not know where we were going to put our furniture! We went ahead, knowing that something would open up for us. Through all of the excitement, a small part of me still wondered, What have we done? Is this the right thing?
Eventually we finished packing the truck. One of the men jumped up on the tailgate and slammed the door, latching it tight. And that was that: the house sat empty, everything we owned in what then seemed a pretty small space. First the six of us stood there, an eerie silence coming from the house. Then we walked quietly inside for a short rest before the long drive and a final cup of coffee.
“I can’t believe we’re leaving,” one of my sisters said, her voice part enthusiasm, part apprehension.
“I know,” I said, shaking my head and thinking to myself, I love this place; I love this house. Why are we doing this? Why did I take that bubble bath? Why did I tell God I would do anything he wanted? I was feeling like LaWonna when she first found out about our plan to move north, and part of me wanted to yell at God, “I’m not moving anywhere!” and open the back of the truck and just start unpacking.
The coffee was extra hot, just how I like it, and we all drank slowly, savoring our last moments in Texas—we all knew we would need the caffeine for the long drive ahead. Our kids ran around, full of excitement, ready to get the caravan moving, ready for the adventure. Just then our friend came walking up to us. Strange, I thought to myself. What’s wrong? As he got closer, I saw that he was crying and visibly shaken.
He looked at Jonas and me with one of the most serious looks I’ve ever seen.
“You may not believe what God just told me, but this is what he said: he will restore every broken relationship, he will give back to you more than you ever had before, he has a plan for you that you don’t know about yet, but he will show it to you.”
Then he stopped and looked down, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe what he wa
s about to say.
“I just see so much for you guys. And it’s not just spiritual blessing. It’s, well, you think this house is beautiful? And don’t get me wrong, it is. But I see God giving you things you wouldn’t believe: I see houses, I see land, I see cars, I see, I just see all that stuff.
“God is going to give it all to you. And you’re going to start some sort of a business. I don’t know exactly what kind, but that’s the key. And it’s going to happen within the first year of your arrival in Pennsylvania.”
When he began telling us about what God had told him, we just sat and listened, feeling the weight of the moment. But when he added that part at the end about land and cars and houses, it struck me as so impossible that the only natural response was to laugh: not a laugh of happiness or even amusement, but one of total disbelief.
“Thanks a lot,” I said with a voice full of doubt. “Yeah, thanks. I believe that one.”
Everything we owned was in that truck! Couldn’t he understand that? I was thirty-nine years old without life insurance policies or a plan for retirement. In the way of cash, after taking out the money we would need for gas and meals on our journey, we had an astronomical $25 left! $25! Yet there stood our friend talking about houses and land! Didn’t he know we had nowhere to stay? We couldn’t even sell our house and in the end gave it back to the bank. And cars? Didn’t he see the old brown Toyota Celica station wagon parked in front of his tractor trailer?
So where would all this money come from? Jonas was a mechanic, an amazing mechanic, but the amount he could make working on cars seemed rather limited. How could a mechanic’s business bring about all this stuff he talked about? We wanted to counsel people, but not for money. In fact, we dreamed about providing that for free to those who needed it. But providing free counseling doesn’t fatten up the checking account.
I couldn’t help but poke fun at our friend’s prophecy.
“Yeah, okay, whatever you say.”
But my response brought about a grave change in the look on his face. He shook his head with disappointment.
“Okay, fine,” he said with resignation in his voice. “There was more, but I’m not telling you any of it.”
“Fine by me,” I said, the laughter still in my voice.
I brushed his words aside and for a while forgot them completely, but the day was just around the corner when I would think of that prophecy and shake my head in amazement.
The next few pages in my photo album are full of those traveling moments: children asleep, surrounded by suitcases and makeshift beds; profile shots of tired drivers hypnotized by mile after endless mile of roads and trees and sky; rest-stop pictures and tired mornings eating in the same restaurants.
Just making our way out of Texas took an eternity. Then we drove through Arkansas and into Tennessee. Long hours, some of which were loud and fun as we all chattered over the two-way radios installed in a few of the vehicles. But more than a few of those long hours passed full of quiet contemplation, Jonas driving while I stared out the window, watching the grass, the trees, the miles flash by. We had come so far, not just on that trip, but in life, and I couldn’t help but wonder where we were headed.
As we came into Nashville, the sky darkened. We all talked over the radios, shouting to each other with each bright flash of lightning, counting the seconds separating the bolts from our cars. The girls rode in the car ahead of us. Suddenly the storm’s intensity increased.
Rain came down in sheets to the point where we couldn’t even see the car in which LaWonna and LaVale rode. The wind shook our car back and forth. The lightning flashed. After a few minutes of attempting to drive through the torrent, Jonas pulled over to the side of the road and stopped as I attempted to reach the girls on the radio.
“LaWonna? LaVale?” I had to shout just to raise my voice over the pounding sound of the rain on the roof of our car.
But all that came back through the receiver was an intense crackling.
“Fi? Becky?”
Still no answer, but all we could do was sit there in the storm and wait for it to pass. Jonas held my hand—he could tell that worry stood on the verge of panic as I thought about my girls out there in the storm. I wanted to get out of the car and run through the rain until I found them.
Then, in what seemed an instant, everything went sunny and quiet.
“Look!” Jonas said in a voice that sounded like a shout in the newfound silence.
In front of us the storm raged on, the trees bending one way. Then Jonas told me to look through the back window. The trees behind us bent in the opposite direction. We were in the middle of the storm. I still couldn’t see the girls anywhere, but the feeling of peace was so intense right in that spot that I already felt the panic fading away.
The back of the storm overtook us, and again came the feeling of fear, the feeling of being submerged. Gradually the rain died away and we took to the road once more. Soon the radios worked and all of us connected, our voices full of relief to find everyone okay. But I couldn’t shake the memory of sitting in the middle of that thunderstorm. Peace in the storm, I thought to myself. So that’s what it feels like.
One other event, a simple conversation actually, jumps out in my mind when I think about that journey north, and it happened shortly after we passed through the storm. Our caravan reassembled with Jonas and me still driving the brown van, just the two of us. As we approached the Tennessee border, we began talking more about our dream of providing counseling to couples. We weren’t affiliated with any particular church, and my experience with Pastor still sat close in our rearview mirror, leaving a septic taste in my mouth when it came to church and pastors in general. Without a church or a pastor to come to us and say, “Will you be our counselors?” we weren’t sure how to get involved. Yet we knew we could offer so much—our marriage had gone to hell and back, and we wanted to give that hope of recovery to others.
As we talked and became more excited at what we thought we could offer, Jonas started talking about building a center where families could come for all kinds of free counseling.
“What kind of counseling center are you talking about?” I asked.
“Well, a little bit like Dr. Dobbins has at EMERGE Ministries. A nice building with a lot of offices and meeting rooms.”
At first I didn’t say anything, but my eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Whoa,” I finally said, then slapped him on the knee with a laugh and continued. “So, honey, where do think you’re going to get the money to do this?”
“Oh,” he said, “I’m not worried about it. If God wants me to do it, then he’ll provide the money.”
“Well, let me say one thing clearly,” I said. “If you want to build a big building and start a counseling center, I am never, never going to ask anyone for a dime. If God wants us to do this, then he will have to do something very big for us.”
Turn the page to another photo, this one taken from the passenger seat of an old Buick on the highway, the road stretching out in an endless line before us. I can see Aaron and Becky’s gray truck loaded down, nearly dragging on the road, and the back of a trailer holding chairs, a table, and two motorcycles. The Celica races ahead, still carrying the words written in soap on the passenger-side window: “We messed with Texas . . . Penn or Bust!” In real life we cruised at 65 miles per hour, racing north, but in the photo all of the vehicles are frozen in time, waiting to drive under an overpass holding a huge green sign: “Welcome to Pennsylvania.”
Turn the page and find another sign frozen in time, this one tied between Mother’s garage roof and a tree, stretching over her driveway. Multicolored balloons the shape of giant hot dogs dangle down as we drive under it. Black and red lettering carefully written on brown paper spells out a message that still pushes tears into my eyes:
“WELL-COME on HOME!”
There we sat—it didn’t seem quite real. All of my brothers and sisters greeted us with their husbands and wives and children. The only on
e missing was my brother Chub, who decided not to make the move north with the rest of us—this was one of the most disappointing parts of our decision to return to Pennsylvania.
Still, I thought to myself, this is it. This is home now.
We unloaded Mike and Fi’s things at Mom’s house and eventually headed over to Aaron and Becky’s to help them move into their home. As we unpacked the trailers and moved the boxes, my brother Jake pulled me aside.
“Where are you guys staying?” he asked me.
“We’re not sure yet,” I said.
“Well, you know I’ve got that mobile home that needs some fixing up. If you and Jonas don’t mind doing some of the work around the place, you can stay there for free.”
I talked to Jonas, and we decided to accept Jake’s offer. We had a home.
The next few weeks passed quickly. Jonas did some mechanic work for friends and family and began counseling people in the community. It didn’t take long for people to find out that we were offering free counseling for couples. I kept busy by running the girls here and there and everywhere, enrolling them in schools and taking them to their cousins’ houses. But when it came to finding part-time work, I came up empty-handed.
I had worked as a waitress for numerous restaurants before we moved to Texas and naively thought that surely someone would remember what a good waitress I was and take me back. I went back to the restaurants I’d worked for but to no avail. They had already hired their summer help.