Amish Love Saves All

by Rachel Stoltzfus

  “But—”

  “But what? What don’t you understand?”

  “What is this about ‘feeling crowded in’ or ‘being unable to breathe without asking for permission’? I never did that!”

  “Oh?” Becky’s eyes roved over the stand of trees as they approached. Breathing deeply, she allowed the serenity of the scene to calm her down. “So, when you kept telling her that she was ‘just a woman’ who couldn’t make decisions...no, wait, Andy. When you told her that she needed a gut man in her life to teach her boys how to be gut men, you weren’t pressuring her. When you approached her at today’s meeting, telling her to make your boys go sit with you, you weren’t pressuring her.”

  Andy ground his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. “But she is just a woman! She doesn’t know how bad the world can be!”

  “Yet an accident took Matt, her husband. Where do her parents live?”

  “They’re...passed on, I believe.”

  “And where do her siblings live?”

  “I dunno. Here?”

  “One brother and his family live here. The rest live in settlements in other states. And she makes sure all three of her kinder get to spend a lot of time with her brother, his wife and their kinder. So they do get that male influence.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

  Becky flopped onto the ground. “Oh, Andy. It seems there’s so much you don’t know. Like how to view women in today’s world, whether it’s Amish or not. Are you aware that, even in our community, women can work outside the home, if she and her husband agree to that? Amy Hershberger is widowed, so that decision was all hers. It was the choice between working and doing what she is able to do best, or having her and her kinder lose their home. Would you want that to happen?”

  “Nee!”

  “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t sound like that to me. She has to stay at home with her kinder. If she works as a server or in the quilt shop or even at the market, she has to get someone to watch them or take them with her to wherever she’s working. And I don’t think there are any bosses out there who would welcome a woman’s three young kinder in the job every day. She would get fired. So it does sound like you want her to fail. No, Andy, don’t answer. Think about what I just said.”

  Feeling confused and defeated, Andy flopped down next to Becky. Did he want Amy to fail? “I don’t think I do. No, I don’t.”

  “You sound sure of yourself. Andy, be honest. Making her quit work before she even agrees to marry you means she is at risk of becoming homeless. There is only so much community support here in Peace Valley. Other families here have to pay their bills and obligations and they can’t support her indefinitely. She knows that. So, she looked at all her options.

  “She knew that the interest and demand from English tourists was out there. They want to learn about the Amish and our lifestyle. Knowing Amy, she wasn’t going to start this without telling the elders what she had in mind. If they had told her ‘no,’ she would have had to settle on another form of earning money. I believe she’s still paying off a large hospital bill. Her farm belonged to her parents, so she doesn’t have to worry about that. Repairs, ya, and she has to worry about food and medical care for her and her kinder. Clothing, she can make, but she has to buy four pairs of shoes, fabric to make their clothes, and felt and straw hats for Matt and Joshua. That’s not cheap, Andy.

  “Nee, don’t say anything. I want you to think about what we discussed. Learn something from it. I’m not happy with what you’ve been doing to her. I love you, but I’m relieved that she finally had enough and broke off your courting relationship. For the success of any future courting relationships, you need to figure out why you see women as ‘less than men’ before you get involved with anyone else. Ever. I’m going back to the house.” Rising quickly, Becky walked home before she said anything she knew she’d regret.

  Andy remained behind, shook to his core. Questions roiled his mind. Did I really do that to her? Make her feel pressure? Why is thinking about our women as “just women” so bad? I’ve been single because I didn’t want to marry anyone unless it was Amy. I can’t see myself with anyone other than her, so I guess I’ll just stay single. He sighed, feeling lower than he’d felt in years. Maybe the elders were right. Maybe I should get involved in those peer classes.

  The following Wednesday, Andy walked reluctantly into the Yoder house behind Jethro. “Denki for inviting me.” At the offer of coffee, he nodded, thinking he’d need it to keep from dozing off.

  “We’re going to get started with prayer first, then start discussing our planned topic for today. Go ahead and join the other men.” Eli waved in the direction of the large living room.

  Andy hid his shock at some of the faces he saw and recognized. He was also surprised at how many people were there. Glancing over into the women’s section, his eyes swept over the number of women in attendance. As he spotted Amy, his gaze stopped.

  Amy, seeing Andy going to the men’s section, allowed her true feelings to come out in her expression—her eyes narrowed in anger and the corners of her mouth tightened.

  Andy, seeing this, sighed. Dropping his gaze to the ground, he walked slowly to an empty spot on one of the benches. He prepared for a boring hour and a half.

  “So, now that we’ve prayed for understanding, let’s get started. Many of you are here because you struggle with the idea of women being equal to men. I’m not going to get biblical about this, mainly because I don’t have the required understanding of the Bible.” A wave of laughter followed Eli’s words. “Instead, we’re going to look at what our wives, daughters and mothers actually already do, beyond taking care of kinder, keeping the house, cooking and gardening. I’m going to point to several of the women and ask them to give us a list. Linda will write down responses on this easel.” Eli pointed to several women in succession. As he did, they listed everything they did beyond “traditional women’s chores.”

  “Accounting, working in the Quilt Place, feeding and watering our livestock, negotiating loan payments with the bank... Leora, anything else?”

  Amy responded. “Advertising my farm tour, budgeting for the household and my business, hiring farm workers to keep the farm going, finding an English worker to create a new corn maze every year, directing helpers every weekend so tours go smoothly. I think that’s it.”

  Most people present shook their heads in admiration of everything Amy was able to accomplish.

  “Manage my mother’s quilting store, advertise in the Amish Quarterly, set up weekly schedules and write out paychecks that Mamm signs. Help with the peer group and meetings here,” Naomi said.

  “Work in the diner just outside Peace Valley so I can help Mamm with expenses,” said Beth Zook. Her voice was low and shaky.

  Every woman or girl that Eli pointed his pencil at came back with a list of chores or tasks they did that were not considered to be “traditional.” Some managed the livestock for their fathers; others were responsible for hiring helpers during planting and harvesting; one wife singlehandedly ran the dairy for the farm she and her husband owned—he was busy full-time with the crops and couldn’t turn his attention to the cows.

  “Okay, I think we’ve all gotten an eye-opening view into what our women do. Ya, some work outside the home like Lizzie, Leora, Annie and Naomi. Sometimes, it’s out of sheer necessity. Other times, it’s because the women and their husbands have realized that they have a gift for business or for connecting with the public.

  “This isn’t to say that the traditional Amish businesses that are run from home are wrong or outmoded. They aren’t. If that’s what works for families here, then that’s what those families should do. Amy, I’m going to use your situation as an example, if you don’t mind.” At Amy’s nod, Eli continued. “Amy was widowed two years ago. Her oldest child is seven and the youngest is five. Any traditional job she could find to support her family and farm would not be sufficient. She would have to find childcare because her mamm and daed have died
. She has one brother here; the rest of her siblings live out of state. What about quilting or baking? I’m sure Amy considered them.”

  “Ya, I did. I don’t bake well enough to sell what I’d need to keep our household running. I’ve never been interested in quilting. It’s too much sitting still for me.”

  “That means that her farm tour, which is pretty popular, is the best option for her. She’s able to buy food and supplies, pay her late husband’s outstanding medical bills and maintain repairs to the house. She buys shoes, fabric, notions and hats for her and her kinder. Amy, do your earnings get you through the month or year?”

  Amy sighed. “I’m getting there. With a lot of support from people here, prayer and hard work, my earnings are going up. Eventually, I would like to hire a few teens to manage each of the stations and I could manage them. Right now, that’s just not in my budget. I do get through the month, but just barely.”

  Hearing this, Andy swallowed a rush of shame. He really hadn’t cared to consider her situation.

  Eli let Amy’s words sink in for a few seconds, and then he continued. “Why is it so hard for us men to see our women as capable of making decisions and running businesses and farms? Naomi, please tell us how it was when you first started managing the Quilt Place.”

  Naomi smiled and shook her head. “Challenging. It would have been worse if Mamm hadn’t exposed me from the beginning to the running of the shop. She did so much all by herself. But, when she decided to take her hours to half time, she needed someone to manage. So, I learned about managing the books, keeping the time sheets, making the deposits at the bank, writing checks for employees and to pay for supplies. I thank Gott that Mamm was there to teach me and supervise while I learned.”

  “Do you mind telling everyone why your mamm decided to step back?”

  Looking at her mamm, then at her daed, Naomi sighed. “Okay. Daed had a very hard time with how Mamm owns the shop. He wanted her to sell it. But she knows that farming isn’t predictable. A year can start out gut, and then one or two weather events can destroy the crops. That’s happened to Daed, as well as other farmers here. She wanted the shop’s earnings to be available in bad farming years so she and Daed could keep up with payment obligations, or if we had another emergency, we would have money available to handle it.”

  Naomi grew emotional at this point. “Before he got involved in our peer group, Daed believed that women should not work outside the home, much less own a store. He tried to intimidate Mamm into selling, and the elders got word of it. They came to talk to him and made it clear that if he didn’t stop intimidating Mamm, he’d be banned. I was already involved in the peer group, so I convinced him to try it out.”

  Many of the men who were there for the first time had come under promise of bad consequences if they didn’t stop trying to keep their wives or fiancées from doing what they needed or wanted to do to earn money. Hearing Naomi’s soft, emotional words, most of them felt ashamed.

  “Denki, Naomi. Lizzie, how is Wayne doing?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lizzie sighed. “He has gut days and bad. Right now, the bad days outnumber the gut ones. We go to see him one day a week, and he’s trying to understand why it’s not bad for us to be ‘out there,’ working around other people. I was able to make quilts at home, and then sell them on consignment in Annie’s store. That helped us while Wayne was laid up with his arm injury. It also helped that every carpenter here stepped up and helped fill all his orders—and they’re continuing to do so!”

  “Lizzie, if you don’t mind, would you reveal just why Wayne is in the Mennonite-Amish mental health hospital?”

  “Ya, because I think it’s a lesson to everyone here, whether they are man or woman. My gut husband experienced years of child abuse at the hands of his daed. He witnessed his daed beating his mamm. His mamm escaped, leaving all the youngest kinder with their daed, probably because she sensed he was about to kill her. Once she left, his daed’s only outlet for his anger and abuse was...the kinder. “That’s what he grew up knowing, so I don’t blame him for what he believes. He is working hard to change that, but it will be a while before he can safely come home. The psychiatrist and psychologist have told Leora and me that he suffers from something called PTSD. It means post-traumatic stress disorder. He can be fine one minute, and the next, something will happen around him and it’s as if he’s back in a moment where he’s being abused or hearing his mamm being beaten.

  “Ladies, he did beat me. The elders came to talk to him, and for a while he really tried. But, the last time he went backward he was in the market, and he overheard shameless gossip about why Leora and I were not living in our home. And all his fears and those old ghosts came back. That’s when he began planning how he would kill us. He completely lost his grip on reality then. I’m not making any excuses for him. He was wrong, and now he’s paying for that.” Lizzie sat down, her heart pounding.

  The room was so quiet that a mouse could have twittered and it would have sounded loud. Linda Yoder stood and approached the front of the room. “Lizzie, denki for telling us such a hard story. I do have one question that everyone here should know the answer to, so they can put Wayne’s situation into perspective. Why was his daed so abusive of his mamm?”

  Again, the silence descended into the room. Andy felt it and his gaze centered on Lizzie, who stood once again.

  “I understand this only secondhand from Wayne. His daed came from a very conservative Amish sect and believed that no woman should get the opportunity to earn money, even by working from home. His wife was desperate to earn what she needed to escape, so with the few extra dollars she had, she bought baking supplies. Other wives in the community sold her goods for her and then took the money to her. She was able to hide it from Wayne’s daed. Also, he believed that women should not speak up unless spoken to. He was raising his daughters in the same way. Wayne told me that he knew their daed abused his sisters as well. And that they are abused to this day by—” Lizzie couldn’t continue. She collapsed onto the bench and Leora wrapped her arm around her shoulders.

  Linda grabbed a box of facial tissues and gave them to Leora. “I’m sorry for bringing up something so painful, Lizzie, but it’s important that everyone here know just how far sexism can be taken.” She turned toward the entire group, men and women. “Because that’s what women are facing, is sexism. That simply means that men and society believe that women should take care of ‘women’s chores’ only. That they aren’t good enough, smart enough or strong enough to own, run or manage a business. Ladies, since you were all fourteen years old, you helped your mothers or your fathers to run their own home-based businesses, right? And you learned what you needed by being exposed to what your parents did. That was gut training for your own lives as married women, ya?“I want us to take a break now. We have coffee, lemonade and cookies ready for everyone. Men, think about what the women have said here. We’ll come back in ten minutes for the last half of our session.”

  The group broke up, moving to the kitchen for the mentioned snacks. Andy toyed with sneaking out, but seeing Bishop Kurtz’s eyes trained on him, he sighed, gave up on his idea and grabbed a fresh cup of coffee. Sitting on the bench again, he thought. Realizing it was too noisy, he decided to go outside. “Bishop, I’ll be in the back yard. I need to think for a few minutes.”

  “I think I’ll join you.”

  Andy sighed yet again. Plopping himself onto the back porch swing, he sipped the hot coffee. I can see where Amy had to make the decisions she needed to make. I made some bad mistakes there. Ya, Lizzie needed to find a gut job so she could keep the household running. I see that. But this thing about ‘if women want to work outside the home, they should be allowed’? I don’t know. . . He turned his head at Deacon King’s call. Slipping back into the kitchen, he poured another cup of coffee.

  Eli approached the front of the room. “Men, I want you to think about where your beliefs come from. Your parents? Conservative Amish communities? Or
even English communities? Because the English struggle with this, too. Right now, there is a conservative strain in government. I agree with much of that, but not the parts that say a woman shouldn’t earn a salary equal to a man’s. Using Annie’s words, she wanted to have the protection of the store supporting them if Caleb, like other farmers, had a bad farming year. He can’t control the weather. It took him some time, but Caleb now supports his wife’s store, knowing that it’s a protection for their family as well as a way for Annie to have her own creative outlet.

  “Another new member here is Beth Zook. She came by herself for this meeting. She is struggling with her own beau, but I won’t get into the particulars. She and her mamm work in the diner just outside Peace Valley. Her daed died, so it’s up to her and her mamm to earn what they need, as cook and server, to keep their home from being taken by the bank. They have no choice. They have to work. Quilting or baking wouldn’t meet their financial needs. Beth, may I reveal just a little more information?”

  Beth nodded slowly.

  “Thank you. Beth’s beau is pressuring her to quit her job. He tells her she shouldn’t need to do any work at all. Now, his daed and mamm came from a very conservative Amish sect out of state. We know where John gets his beliefs. We are working to get him to join our group and see why his beliefs and demands of Beth won’t work. And I don’t want anyone gossiping about Beth’s situation. If I hear of anyone doing so, I’ll inform Bishop Kurtz.”

  Linda stepped up again. “Today’s discussion question is, “Is it right for men to tell women whether they can work, or where they can work?” Break up into groups of four, please, and discuss that question. One person should be group recorder and write down everyone’s beliefs. We’ll discuss them in...twenty-five minutes.”