MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I found it easily. As I was leaving the room, charger in hand, I noticed the beautiful potted palms over by the French doors and wondered if they needed watering or if that was something the housecleaners did. Moving to the kitchen, I plugged the camera into the charger, checked on my soup, and then filled up a big glass of water and carried it back to the study, figuring I was better safe than sorry.

  It wasn’t until I had already poured out half the glass that I realized the plants were fake. The water pooled at the base of the “trunk” then spilled over onto the floor. My face burning with embarrassment even though no one else had been here to see, I ran to get a towel and cleaned up the mess as best I could.

  After that, I just sat in the kitchen and ate my soup in silence, feeling utterly homesick. I longed for the place where I was loved, where I was surrounded by family. Where potted plants were made of real leaves and grew in actual dirt.

  When I was done, I still felt the need to do something active to work out my frustration, so I went into the garage and grabbed the skateboard that had been propped up against the wall since I’d pulled it from the neighbor’s trash yesterday morning. I didn’t know anything about skateboards, but I knew wheels and I knew movement, and I had a feeling I would be able to figure things out.

  Fifteen minutes later, I gave up. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t fix the thing. It was that I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it in the first place. It seemed fine to me. I even climbed onto it myself, gave a little push off, and went rolling across the garage. Fearing I might slip and put a nick or a dent into one of my dad’s beloved cars, I finally stepped back off of the skateboard and put it away. Maybe Brady had some experience with these things and could take a look at it later and give me a little insight. It surely hadn’t ended up in the trash for no reason.

  Back inside, I fiddled around with the camera, taking pictures of Frisco and trying to imagine those nine squares. The pictures looked terrible and his eyes were a demonic red in all of them. I read for a while, looked at all the images in the German pictorial where my mother had written something, and then scooped some ice cream into a dish. I turned on the TV for company but had a hard time finding something to watch that interested me, even among the hundreds of channels at my fingertips.

  I settled on a documentary about sled dog racing. While I ate my ice cream, Lark texted me.

  Hey. Wanna come to church with me tomorrow? It’s at 11.

  Lark had said she was a Christian, but I had no idea what kind of church she attended, and that alone interested me. I decided to go, and if Brady didn’t sleep in on Sundays, I thought maybe he could come too. Dad and Liz had a church of their own but attended only sporadically, partly because of his travel schedule and her weekend hours as a nurse. But also because, as my dad stated some time ago, he’d outgrown the need for church attendance, preferring a quieter, more private approach to faith. When I tried to counter that, he had cut me off, saying he didn’t think he needed to discuss his decision with anyone, especially me.

  Looking down at my phone, I tried to text Lark back to say that I would like to go and that I was going to ask Brady if he wanted to come, but I was making so many mistakes and getting so many words wrong that finally I just called her instead.

  “Don’t like texting?” she answered.

  “It takes too long. And it doesn’t seem necessary when I can just talk to you. I wanted to say yes, I’d like to go. Do you mind if I invite Brady along too?”

  “Sure, though it’s mostly geared for twentysomethings. You know, people our age.”

  People our age. I realized that was one for the list.

  The generations are all so divided, even in church.

  “Tyler?”

  “Ya, I’m here. Your church sounds like our singings.”

  “Your what?”

  “We have singings every other Sunday night for young people. Our twentysomethings. And teensomethings.”

  Lark laughed. “Well, we do more than just sing. The messages are relevant to our age and what matters to us. The people at this church care about orphans and poverty and the oppressed and the exploited. That’s why I like it. The leadership actually puts actions behind their words. You can’t just pray for the hungry when it’s in your power to do more. Know what I mean?”

  I definitely knew what she meant. No one in my district back home went without food or shelter or medicine or clothing when the need arose. We also helped those outside of the faith—sorting canned goods for a local hunger-relief mission, rebuilding homes after disasters, things like that.

  If I belonged in the non-Amish world, I would still need to be a part of a congregation of some kind. It made sense to attend Lark’s church and see what it was like to worship God without the Ausbund and the High German and the Pennsylvania Dutch.

  “I’ll ask Brady anyway.”

  “Do you want to drive? My mom will let me borrow her car if I must, but if you drive I won’t have to ask her.”

  “Sure. What time should I come for you?”

  “Around ten thirty. It’s not far but the parking lot fills up fast. And I want you to be able to get a good seat.”

  Now that was a new concept. “A good seat?”

  “So you can see the band and the worship leader and the pastor instead of having to watch them on the screens. It’s better when you can see the real people.”

  “I’ve always believed that,” I quipped, but she didn’t get that it was a joke.

  “Do you have a Bible? One that’s in English, I mean. If you don’t, it’s not that big of a deal. They put the verses on the screen, but I like bringing my Bible with me anyway.”

  “Me too,” I said, trying again with the humor. “The screen alone never feels like enough for me.”

  She still didn’t catch on. “So I’ll see you at ten thirty?”

  “Ten thirty.”

  We hung up.

  Talking to Lark had lightened my mood, which both cheered and irked me. I wished I could punch in a few numbers and talk to Rachel the way I had just talked to Lark. I tossed the phone onto the couch beside me and let the TV lull me into a half stupor.

  Brady showed up at ten. He seemed to have had a good time with his friends, but he didn’t elaborate and I didn’t push him. I asked him if he’d like to come to Lark’s church with me in the morning.

  He kind of laughed. “I don’t think so. I have homework, and there are two football games I need to watch.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “But you go ahead.”

  I let his reasons for not wanting to come fall away. I hadn’t really expected him to join me, but I sensed I should continue the conversation. It had been a long time since I had gone to church with Brady, probably the summer I was fifteen. He would have only just turned six. That suddenly seemed like a million years ago. And even though I’d always tried to be an example of my faith when I was with him, it was clear to me that he hadn’t applied any of it to himself. In the Amish culture, there was always an awareness that the younger boys looked up to the older ones. Emulated them. Wanted to be a part of their group. In church, we sat in prescribed sections—males on one side, females on the other, children with their mothers—but it was a known fact that every little boy yearned for that right of passage when he would be allowed to enter the service not with his mother but with the big boys and sit with them instead.

  As such, we men were always taught to live as an example, ever mindful that younger eyes were watching. I had taken that responsibility seriously since I was sixteen or seventeen and had become part of the older crowd. Yet here I stood now, realizing with piercing clarity that the most important young eyes of all had been watching yet hadn’t been influenced by me in this way one bit. If anything, he had a blatant disrespect for everything I stood for.

  I prayed, asking God to open Brady’s eyes to a closer relationship with Him—and to show me what part I could play in that. I thought it might help to get him involved in a g
ood youth group out here, so when Brady stepped into the kitchen, I followed and asked if he’d ever been to Lark’s church before.

  “No.”

  “It sounds like a great place. You should try it sometime.”

  Brady opened the fridge and withdrew a can of Dr Pepper. “So you guys are, like, spending a lot of time together.”

  “What?”

  He popped open the can, took a sip of the soda, and then turned to me. “Whatever, man. She’s pretty. She’s available.”

  Words failed me for a couple seconds. “It’s not like that. Not at all.”

  Brady took another drink. “Okay. Like I said, it makes no difference to me.”

  “No, seriously. It’s not like that. I’m not…I have a girl back home.”

  He moved past me. “Whatever.” His tone was relaxed and nonchalant. As though he really didn’t care who I saw or who I might possibly hurt in the process.

  I gently reached for his arm. “There is no ‘whatever.’ I am not interested in Lark in that way. I simply want to see what her church is like. I thought you might want to see it too.”

  Brady looked down at my hand on his arm and he slowly lifted it out of my grasp. “It’s none of my business what you do, Tyler. You don’t owe me any explanations.”

  He started to walk away, but I could not let him go. Perhaps I should have prayed about it or thought about it or just waited to say something. But that’s not what I did.

  “Hey, I’m your brother,” I called after him. “I’m not just some person your parents hired to look after you while they’re gone. I came here because Dad said you wanted me to come.”

  Brady swung around. The nonchalance was gone. He was mad. “Well, I’m real sorry you feel that you’re wasting your time with me. I’m sure I can stay with a friend until my parents return. If you want to go on back to your Amish people and your Amish life and your Amish girlfriend, no one’s stopping you.”

  He turned from me and I followed him.

  “That’s not what I meant. I’m not wasting my time here. I just want to know what you’re so angry about.”

  “Who says I’m angry about anything?” he said as he continued on toward the stairs, Frisco following him.

  I went after them.

  “Who says? Well, let’s see. You’ve been distant with me since the first day I got here. You barely talk to me, you don’t want to do anything with me, you resent my asking you any questions. What else am I supposed to think? Did you tell Dad you wanted me to come?”

  There on the stairs, poised between the floors, Brady’s gaze met mine. He was two steps ahead, looking down on me as if I were a grubby beggar pleading for money.

  “I did,” he finally said. “My mistake.”

  With that, he turned and continued up the stairs to his room, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.

  TWENTY

  Sleep eluded me after I went to bed and turned out the light. I prayed for the better part of the hours I spent tossing and turning, asking God to show me what had come between my brother and me.

  I felt God’s peace and presence calming me and encouraging me, but the lightning bolt of clarity I pleaded for didn’t come. I awoke late, at least for me, and had no new insights on why Brady was acting the way he was.

  Frisco was scratching on the other side of Brady’s door when I walked out into the hallway. I opened the door as quietly as I could to let the dog out, but I couldn’t help but peek inside. My brother was soundly asleep, his face turned the other way. I closed the door softly and Frisco and I went downstairs.

  I hoped that Brady would get up before I left for church so that I could at least tell him good morning. But when it came time to leave, his bedroom door was still closed and there was no sound coming from behind it.

  Lark was in a happy mood when I came for her, and she talked the whole way, for which I was thankful. She also didn’t insist on driving, which meant I had the distraction of the road to keep me from dwelling too much on my predicament with my brother.

  Her church looked more like an auditorium for a play than a place to meet with God, but as I settled into the strange environment, I began to see that the people around me definitely were happy to be there and eager to worship. Everyone sat wherever they wanted and laughed and talked before the service began, as if they were at a social event. But when the service started, the social atmosphere grew more worshipful. The music was loud, which I didn’t mind, but it seemed to be aimed at sounding good to the listener instead of pleasing to God. At least that’s how it came across to me. The songs were also incredibly short, with lights to change the mood for each one and animated projections of the lyrics on the giant screens on either side of the stage. I couldn’t sing any of the songs, and I had a hard time concentrating on God with such contemporary-sounding phrases that often seemed like words we were speaking to each other about God instead of to God.

  But the pastor’s message, taken from Psalm 103, was thoughtful and inspiring. After the message, another pastor came on stage and the screens began to detail how many ministry and growth opportunities were available. Homeless outreach, life groups, couples night, financial freedom classes, recovery support groups, midweek Bible studies, an upcoming trip to Haiti, and more. I thought of my list.

  Opportunities for service and involvement abound.

  The question was whether everything else was as loud and frenetic as the worship hour had been. By the end of the service, in fact, I felt an odd fatigue. I longed for just a quiet moment without any kind of directed appeal to my senses, just to refocus on God and God alone.

  But there was no quiet moment. As we walked back out to the main foyer, conversations and laughter erupted all around us. Lark saw some people she knew from her life group, the meaning of which I hadn’t quite figured out yet, and we stopped so that she could introduce me to them.

  I was glad she didn’t say, “This is Tyler Anderson. He’s Amish.” She just told them I was someone visiting family in Newport Beach and that I lived in Pennsylvania. Her friends were kind and seemed genuinely interested in me. They even invited me to their midweek get-together that coming Wednesday night. As we walked back to the car, Lark asked me what I thought of the service.

  “It was…” I searched for the right word. “It was busy.”

  “Busy?” she asked, laughing. That was apparently not the word she was expecting.

  “There was so much happening. So much for the eye and ear to take in. I’m not used to that.”

  “Well, what is your worship service like?”

  “Not so busy,” I said. And she laughed again.

  “For starters, we sing a cappella, and each hymn lasts about twenty minutes.”

  “Get out!”

  I nodded. “It calms the heart and quiets the mind. Brings you to a far more worshipful place.” I went on to explain what the rest of our services were like, with Scriptures and prayers and three sermons.

  “Three sermons? No way!”

  I smiled. “Yep. And we don’t have fancy church buildings. We take turns meeting in our homes—living rooms or basements or barns. Then, when the service is over, we share a light meal together.”

  “That part sounds really nice.”

  “It is,” I said, surprising myself with how much I believed that to be true.

  We reached the car, but Lark suggested we wait for a few minutes for the lot to clear some. The day was warm and beautiful. We leaned against the Honda as a steady stream of other vehicles inched past us.

  “Does that mean you didn’t like the service?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that. It was just so different from how I have always worshipped. It seems to me that life here in Southern California is so very busy. Complex. The one place you might opt for simplicity is in your worship.”

  “I haven’t ever thought of it that way before.” She was quiet for a moment. “I suppose there are churches out here that are like that. You know, less busy and all. But I don�
��t think I would be happy at it. I love the artistic approach at my church. I’m afraid I’d get bored at a service where there was so little happening. I guess it’s all about what brings you closer to God.”

  It seemed strange to me that a hectic approach to worship would draw someone closer to the Lord, but I didn’t say this. What seemed hectic to me was obviously meaningful to Lark and everyone else who attended her church.

  In my search to figure out where I belonged, I knew I had stumbled on a major discovery. I would probably always want to worship God in the most simple of ways. But did that make me Amish?

  Did my preference for an uncomplicated life make me Amish?

  Did my view on nonresistance make me Amish?

  Did my love for Rachel make me Amish?

  If those things didn’t make me Amish, and I found that I instead belonged in the non-Amish world, where in its vastness was my place in it? I didn’t think it was in Southern California, where the pace of life didn’t appeal to me. And yet that’s where my family was. Where else could I possibly go?

  With this as my only viable option, it was clear to me that I didn’t belong to either world. I was still a man without a place.

  And even if I thought my place might be here, Brady certainly did not agree.

  “Tyler?”

  I turned to Lark. “What?”

  “You were a million miles away. Did you hear what I just said?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “I said do you want to grab something to eat?”

  I was in desperate need of advice and completely disconnected from the people I trusted most to give it to me. Daadi, Mammi, Jake, and Rachel. It wasn’t that I wanted to share yet another meal with Lark, but she was the only friend I had at the moment.

  We went to a burger joint, and I was thrilled to order a hamburger with grilled onions, a side of French fries, and a chocolate shake. No chopsticks, no seaweed, no raw fish. The place was crowded inside, so we sat on the covered patio at a stone table with kidney-bean shaped benches made of pebble rock and cement.

  In between bites of my hamburger I told Lark about what I was experiencing with Brady.