Crossing Over (9 page)

Sixteen

The choice you have made causes pain in my heart deeper than the loss of my companion!!! . . . Love not the world! Its dazzling show conceals a snare of death.

—L
ETTER FROM
M
RS
. T
OBIAS
M
ILLER
(G
RANDMOTHER)

A
bout a year after arriving in Kentucky, we moved out of our little rented house in Uno—the one with the bathroom tacked on when outhouses went out of style—and into a somewhat larger, $375-a-month rental along Old Dixie Road near Horse Cave, just off Interstate 65 in Hidden River Valley.

We call it the Home Place and it is in a pastoral little strip of hollow (holler) with sparsely situated, modest homes and gently sloping meadows. It is an area of language oddities where tourists come to visit the labyrinth of caves that wind underground, where tobacco (tabacca) fields and warehouses dominate the landscape and the economy, where driving a rock-bottomed creek (crick) to get somewhere is common, and where ferries carry cars across the Cumberland and Green rivers because it's apparently cheaper than building bridges.

A person can still buy illegal, gut-busting, 120-proof moonshine in the hills of otherwise dry Hart County if they know where to look, and the Confederacy—a remnant of a war the Amish detest so much—is still very much alive.

North of Horse Cave is the site of the Battle of Munfordville, where 50 died and 307 were wounded when Confederates attacked a Union fort on September 14, 1862. A year earlier, Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan and eighty-four of his followers were sworn into the Confederacy in Munfordville. The marauding band of fighting men went on to acquire a small measure of Civil War fame as Morgan's Raiders.

The little town along the banks of the avocado-tinted Green River is also home to the Old Munford Inn, where Andrew Jackson stayed in 1829 en route to his inauguration as the seventh president of the United States.

Close by is the site of the Battle of Rowlett's Station on December 17, 1861.

Kentucky was among the states beset by divided loyalties, where people from the same families often fought on different sides of the war. The sting of those divisions—and of the Confederate loss—are as acute as if it happened yesterday, much the way Tony Horwitz describes the vestiges of the conflict in
Confederates in the Attic.

In a cemetery overlooking the deep hollows of the Munfordville battlefield, weathered gravestones in the shadow of a giant, knobby elm bear witness to the festering sentiments. Some are honored with American flags, some with Confederate. On one grave, both flags fly.

There is even evidence of the war several hundred yards from our home in Horse Cave. Cloaked in a grove of pine trees on the other side of Old Dixie Road is a monument to a fallen soldier of the Confederate States of America. The memorial is a composite of geodes and mortar with an American flag positioned at the top. It tells of an unknown warrior who fought under General Clay Anderson, Division 11th, Louisiana, and who perished September 9, 1862. It was erected in 1934 by one Sam Lively.

Still sadder is a monument erected south of Horse Cave near the Tennessee line in the parking lot of the Alpine Motel overlooking the Cumberland River Valley. In the lot's median—at the foot of a loosely piled bed of shale and a weathered gravestone—is a metal sign that reads:

“CAPTAIN JACK McCLAIN, COMPANY J, 1st KENTUCKY CAVALRY. Braver men never responded to boots and saddles than the 1st Kentucky Calvary. Jack McClain accidentally killed a good friend. In sorrow he took his own life September 21, 1866. Previously, McClain had requested, “When I die, I want to be buried on top of that highest hill overlooking Burkesville, as that is as near heaven as I will ever get.”

Even nonbattle tragedies involving southerners are memorialized here in the name of lingering patriotism.

Northerners aren't exactly in danger in these parts, but they aren't exactly loved, either. People in Kentucky have a saying that there are two kinds of northerners: Yankees and damn Yankees. Yankees are the ones who come to Kentucky and keep on going. Damn Yankees are the ones who stay.

You get the picture.

Visitors should know, too, that nearly everyone possesses a gun of some sort. Saturday nights in nearby Cave City, Kentuckians even auction guns—among other things—from a downtown storefront that promises “Bargains Galore” in red lettering on a street-side window.

For some people, the auction is the big event of the weekend, seemingly revered more for its social attributes than the lighting fixtures, plates, and jars of old marbles that pass the bidding table.

Ottie himself has a .40-caliber Ruger that he keeps for protection. A big, black, semiautomatic pistol with a kick that can easily jerk an unsteady pair of hands skyward and a power that is deadly.

One of the first things Ottie did upon our arrival in Kentucky was teach me how to fire it—in case I ever needed to fend off a mugger, robber, or burglar. And early on in my training, he pronounced me a natural. A sure shot if there ever was one.

It sounds odd for a pacifist ex-Amish who had never before held a gun in my hand. But then, I was eager to experience everything in my new world. Moreover, I had already bought into his argument about the need to maintain one's liberties, even if it meant shooting someone, even if it meant going to war.

I was also quick to obtain my driver's license, realizing that mobility was an integral part of the English world, if not just a wonderful, efficiently fast creature comfort. In fact, it seemed to me that driving an automobile was a darn sight safer than steering a buggy. At least there wasn't an unpredictable horse in front of you that might take off in the wrong direction at a moment's notice.

We had purchased a new, smaller van after the other one burned, and I practiced driving it in the Haywood Acres subdivision owned by Ottie's father on the outskirts of Glasgow. It is the same subdivision where Faye lives, where the streets are named after Ottie Sr.'s grandchildren. Angela Court. Dana Court. Phillip Drive.

I'd circle the subdivision over and over while Ottie and his father watched from the red-brick patio out front. For at least an hour at a stretch, or until I tired of the routine. Whichever came first.

Six months later, I got my learner's permit, and six months after that my formal license. I was a natural at driving, too, although somewhere along the way I acquired a lead foot. Just like Ottie.

It was a land of discovery, this new place of mine. And a safe one to explore from our little den along a narrow stretch of blacktop that once served as the main highway—our white house with the four clipped soft maples in front, the porch on the side with two hummingbird feeders and a wooden sign above the door that says “Ottie & Irene Garrett,” and the assemblage of feeders along a fence that attracts goldfinches, cardinals, bluebirds, orioles, and sparrows by the dozens.

On the other side of the fence is my second sanctuary. My garden. It is an ambitious 50-by-75-foot plot tilled in the rich, red Kentucky earth, and each year it bears lettuce and radishes, peas and beans, corn and zucchini, tomatoes and pumpkins, all of them bordered by bright yellow marigolds and deep-red cockscomb.

It is here that I find solitude and an unmatched closeness with nature and God. Sometimes, Ottie goes out on the porch, props up his bad leg, and talks to me while I weed and harvest. More often, though, I am alone. With my thoughts. And prayers.

There is a perfect symmetry to the things in the garden, the reaping and sowing, the spring rains, the plants growing. If there can be one place where God has put his hand, it must be here, because in the garden, there is no turmoil or conflict. There is only hope, promise and, if all goes well, the sustenance of food at season's end.

The fresh fruits and vegetables are our main staples in the summer and fall.

Winters, we eat what I have canned.

Some people might assume my garden is abundant because I was once Amish and therefore a prodigious farmer. But truth be told, I have discovered a wonder of the modern world that helps the plants become robust.

Miracle-Gro.

No self-respecting Amish person would ever use the stuff for gardens. But then, that was no longer a concern of mine. If something works, why not?

Beyond the health benefits—to soul and body—the garden helps save money. And that's also important. Especially when you're living in a one-income family, and that income is Ottie's disability pension—and whatever business projects we can develop.

In the first year out of Kalona, Ottie contracted with a local Amish artist to use Ottie's photographs in painting scenes for yet another Amish calendar. Only the artist's name—and a company moniker (Country Roads Art) in my name—appeared on the calendars, thus keeping Ottie's involvement a secret.

But even that enterprise went the way of the others. The artist eventually threatened Ottie with a boycott and Ottie had to sell the business at a loss, or lose everything.

We were back to square one.

Ottie would—and still does—bring in a little money playing the horses. It is his only real vice besides food, and it is a small one at that. Five- and ten-dollar bets mostly, sometimes less.

I help him from time to time, especially when I can inspect the horses. I seem to have a knack for picking winners without the aid of complicated racing forms.

The first time we went to a track—in Lexington—I studied the field and took a fancy to a three-year-old coal-black filly named Wild Lucy Black. She was a frisky animal, full of spirit and spunk. Never mind that she was a 30-to-1 shot.

Ottie laughed when I suggested she was the one to bet, humored me, gave me five dollars, and sent me to the window. I came back a winner, and a $155 dollars richer.

I've always loved black horses. For as far back as I can remember.

Betting on horses is not the surest way to supplement one's income, and some people might wonder why I don't get a job to help support the household. But the reality is: I have one. More than one, actually. I do most of the chores around the house, help with Ottie's paperwork, and take care of my husband. Ottie, meanwhile, likes to say he uses his head to help the family.

“I can't go out and dig a ditch,” he says, “but I can use my mind.”

Sometimes, he'll even make light of the situation.

“She married an old, crippled man,” he once told a person. “Now, she's got to support him.”

Deep down, though, Ottie, a once-active outdoorsman who welded on off-shore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and cut trees in the Pacific Northwest, feels awful that he's not able to do more. It is a source of great internal stress. An all-too-frequent gnawing at his pride.

And in my “Field of Dreams,” I am compelled to do what I can to ease his pain.

Seventeen

A greeting of love and hope you can obtain eternal salvation. Oh, come home and make peace with God and the church. . . . The man that you have left with is an adulterer and is on the wide and broad way, but you can come back if God moves you.

—L
ETTER FROM
D
AD

R
ev. James Bettermann is a handsome man, one of those too-handsome-to-be-a-minister kinds of people.

And he has a mustache of all things. What the Amish would say about that.

But it was clear from the moment I first saw him, first met him, that he was a Christian of the first order; that he not only believed in God, he worshiped him.

It showed in the red and white sign just inside the entrance to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church:

“We are here as a church to win the lost for Christ and help them and each of us grow as his responsible disciples.”

It showed in the inclusive messages in the weekly church bulletin:

“We extend a warm and hearty welcome in the powerful and precious name of Jesus Christ to all who are worshiping with us today. . . . May our Lord bless your worship with us today and may he go with you as you leave to witness and serve.''

And it showed in Rev. Bettermann's compassion when he hugged parishioners, and in his easygoing, love-all-people manner of speaking.

He'll tell you he's that way because he wants the Christian experience to be “as real and as concrete as possible. When you show love, when it's expressed, it's more concrete, especially if it's done without ulterior motives.

“I want people to know that God cares about them—and that the pastor cares about them.''

It wasn't always this way for him. In the sixties and seventies, he'll tell you, he ingested enough chemicals to last a lifetime. He was part of a drug scene that ultimately would lay waste to many a great mind and many a precious hope. His was a soul desperately searching for meaning—until he found God.

“I woke up one day,” he says, “and realized God hadn't quit on me because I was wild. And then I knew I couldn't quit on him.

“The words in the Bible aren't stories to me. They are real, and I believe in them. That's the A to Z motivation for me.”

We arrived at Rev. Bettermann's doorstep through Faye, who belonged to the church and taught Sunday school there. Though we had continued to pray in private, having a public anchor for worship was something we desperately needed.

In the back of my mind, I also hoped that the church would one day lift the Amish ban. It was a silly concern when you get right down to it. The Amish would never honor such a move, and it would therefore be little more than a symbolic gesture. But I also hoped that perhaps, with the ban lifted by the Lutherans, it might be easier to visit my mother—if and when such an opportunity arose.

Rev. Bettermann knew little about the Old Order Amish when Ottie and I first began attending his church in Bowling Green. My head covering, he thought, was a bit odd. And I was as shy as they come, slipping in and out of church with barely a whisper.

But over time, as we increasingly sought him out to talk about our ordeal and my upbringing, he came to know the Old Order Amish traditions, and I came to realize there were more than just the two segments professed by the Amish—the Amish and the evil world. There was a third faction. Christians of the world. And they, to my surprise, preached about nonbelievers.

We began going to public Wednesday night Bible study classes conducted by Rev. Bettermann, and we also met privately with him. I was apprehensive at first, expecting all of my Amish learning about the English to bear true. But instead, I discovered a man who preached just as passionately about God, who followed the Bible in all its glory and wisdom, and who was more interested in the word than the denomination.

It helped, of course, that Faye was a member of the church, that Ottie had been baptized Lutheran, and that I had joined the church choir. But more important was that we acted like Christians in all that we did. With the Amish, it was the Amish first. With the Lutherans, it was God first. Faith to the Lutherans was a relationship with God, not with an institution.

After being somewhat adrift in a sea of abandonment since the ban, I began to feel a sense of belonging again, and Rev. Bettermann came to be a trusted friend whose views on religion coincided with those I had clutched dearly for so long.

“Christianity,” he'd say, “is about what's in your heart. I'll concur that the Amish are terribly religious. But I struggle to see how they're Christian, because they are so legalistic, they are so works-oriented. We may use the same terminologies, but they don't mean the same things.

“Unconditional forgiveness, for example. There isn't anything in the Amish system that gives me any picture of unconditional forgiveness. Everything is tied to behavior, and that moves it dangerously close to being outside the Christian realm.”

One of the first discussions we had with Rev. Bettermann was the concept of grace—that it is a free gift from God, no strings attached, and that God loves and forgives us unconditionally.

We also talked about how divorce was not an unforgivable sin. About how my marriage to Ottie was okay in the eyes of God and would not banish me to hell.

It took me awhile to truly believe he wasn't just saying such things to make me feel good. That he wasn't simply telling me what I wanted to hear.

But once I was convinced, I couldn't wait to ask him the question I'd held in for months.

“Can you lift the ban?” I asked.

“Yes, I can,” he said. “It won't be recognized by the Amish, but, yes, I can.”

And so, on June 8, 1997, a year to the day after I left the Amish, Rev. Bettermann made plans to lift the ban.

I awoke early that morning, filled with a sense of excitement and anticipation. As much as I had tried to hide my feelings—in the stoic way of the Amish—I had broken down on several occasions. It was embarrassing, this weakness of mine, but I couldn't seem to stop it. Pain has a way of bubbling forth, no matter one's resolve, and my pain was deeper than I had allowed.

Ottie would hold and comfort me during these times of despair, making it both more tolerable and more intense. Because the more sympathy he showed, the harder I wept.

Sometimes, to spare him the agony of my grief, I would hold in the tears until I ran an errand or until he went to sleep.

It wasn't that I wanted to return to the Amish, or that I was unhappy. I merely missed my family.

Knowing that, Ottie would often offer to call neighbors of my parents in Iowa so I could talk to my mother, although each time I declined. I didn't let on why, but I can say now that I didn't want to bother other people and, strange as it sounds, I worried my father would think it was a misuse of the phone.

Ottie was then—and is now—my rock, but on this special day of absolution I would have to forge ahead without him. He was laid up in bed with a serious case of gout.

I drove the thirty-five miles to Bowling Green, alone in the physical sense but joined in spirit by my faith in my husband, pastor, and Savior. And when I got to the church, seeing Rev. Bettermann and the congregation I had come to love further enveloped me with conviction.

The defining moment came at the close of the 10:30
A.M
. sermon, which was based on 2 Corinthians 4:18: “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.''

Rev. Bettermann led me to the altar and told the congregation what he was about to do. The room was packed. Three to four hundred people maybe. The modernistic blue, green, purple, and white-stained glass on either side of the altar glowing bright in the morning sun.

“She has not only been rejected by her family, but told she is eternally damned by Christ,” he told the parishioners. “We want to extend to her our love and our friendship and our acceptance. And we want to lift the ban.”

“Yes,” several people said in unison. “Amen.”

“Those who agree that this should be done should show your support by raising your hands,” he said.

Nary a person abstained.

Rev. Bettermann would later say that as he carried out the ceremony, he suddenly was moved in a way he hadn't imagined possible.

“It was more emotional than I'd thought it would be,” he said. “I didn't think about it ahead of time, but then I got caught up in the moment.”

So did I.

I was nervous and comforted at the same time, drawing strength from God and the loving eyes and voices of the congregation before me.

When Rev. Bettermann uttered the final words—“. . . the ban has been lifted and we accept Irene into our fellowship”—some of the parishioners wept, all of them applauded, and many came forward to hug me.

“If there's anything we can ever do for you,” many of them said, “let us know.”

How wonderful it was to be embraced by so many people, strangers some of them but friends in Christ all of them.

Four days later, Rev. Bettermann sent a letter to my uncle and former bishop, Elmer T. Miller, notifying him of the church's action:

Dear Mr. Miller:

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This letter is sent to inform you that this past Sunday, June 8, 1997, we received into our fellowship Irene Miller Garrett.

It is our understanding that she has been placed under the ban by your church for reasons with which you are most familiar. As a Christian fellowship, our congregation voted to rescind said ban and to accept Irene as a member in good standing.

I am aware that our action may not meet with your approval, but I believe what has been done is both pleasing to the heavenly Father and a blessing to Irene. Out of courtesy and concern, I share this with you on behalf of the people of Holy Trinity.

Sincerely,
Rev. J.A. Bettermann

My uncle never responded to the letter, not that we expected him to. But at the very least, the lifting of the ban had served a purpose for me. It had given me a temporary peace of mind. It had confirmed what I'd known all along about God.

And when I left the church that day, the landscape around me at once seemed more striking and vivid. The blue in the sky was bluer, the songs of the birds more robust, and the leaves on trees sharper, more clearly defined.

Another meaningful thing also happened that day. I wore my full head covering for the last time. Of all things Amish, the head covering was one of the hardest to part with—as difficult, certainly, as shedding Amish guilt. I had worn it every day—every night—of my life. It had become as much a part of me as my own skin and was at the core of my spirituality.

But on that day, I quietly, unceremoniously, retired the head covering to a box in my closet, where it now rests with my other Amish clothes.

Sometimes, people will ask about my Amish attire and I'll pull out the old stuff for an impromptu show-and-tell. I'll even let people try them on if they're interested.

But that's not the only reason I keep them. Ottie says I should have them to show our children so they'll know about my heritage and, in turn, theirs too.

I look forward to the day when I can do that.