What I hadn’t added was that my dad was a collector of muscle cars—something that would have been foreign to her indeed. Though I didn’t visit him often, when I did he would always ask if I wanted to take out his latest acquisition for a spin. If I had a license, I could be the one behind the wheel. Besides, if I really was going to become Amish someday, that meant I would never own a car of my own, and I wanted to know what it was I would be turning my back on.
Now, as the minister began the main sermon, I looked again at Rachel and it struck me that she was walking the path she’d been set on since the day she was born. From a young age, she’d been able to see herself living the life her parents lived and their parents before them and their parents before them. She’d been given an unbroken heritage that surely felt as solid as the earth beneath her feet.
My situation was more complicated than that. What I had was a mother who had left the Amish faith when she was just eighteen for reasons no one had ever been able to explain. I had an Englisch father who couldn’t get rid of me fast enough once she died, suddenly and unexpectedly, of a brain aneurism. I had a pair of loving Amish grandparents who had taken me in and raised me as one of their own, even though I’d known nothing at all prior to that about them or what they believed or what their lives were like.
My heritage was about as broken as they come. Sometimes, I felt broken too.
Yet there sat Rachel on her side of the room, her attention rapt as Anna and Tobias spoke their promises to the bishop, the congregation, and each other. As they did, Rachel never once looked away from what was happening in front of her. Watching her watch them, I felt a sudden surge of emotion—guilt, pain, grief—so intense I could barely breathe.
How could I do this to her? How could I keep putting her off, making her wait? I loved Rachel more than life itself, I knew that. But to love her for the rest of her life as her husband meant loving the church as well.
And that was something I just didn’t know if I could do.
What if, in the end, I simply couldn’t bring myself to join the Amish faith? What would happen to us then? As a baptized member of the church, Rachel didn’t have the freedom to walk away the way I did. If I left, my grandparents and other family members would be hurt and disappointed, of course, but we could always maintain a relationship. I would always be welcome in their home.
If Rachel left, she would probably be excommunicated. Not only would her loved ones be brokenhearted, but they would likely cut all ties with her, shunning her for the rest of her life—or at least until she repented and came back to the church. Bottom line, unless I joined the church too, she was caught in an either/or situation. She could have me, or she could have her Amish world, but she couldn’t have both.
What kind of person was I to force a choice like that on the woman I loved?
My heart pounded at the thought, but I tried to swallow back a feeling of despair and focus on the situation at hand. None of this had to be decided today, I told myself. There was still plenty of time to figure things out.
I somehow managed to make it through the rest of the service. Once it ended, I found a welcome distraction in helping Jake and the rest of the cousins move the benches to the barn, where the feasting tables had been set up. By the time we were finished, my mind was no longer on questions about the future but instead was tuned in to the heaping platters and bowls of food that graced the tables of the reception.
The abundant display revealed how much we had all missed the wedding feasts during the long summer months. Spread out before us were pickled beets, cucumbers, and eggs; giant bowls of salads; five kinds of bread and a dozen varieties of jams and preserves; ham and beef; four kinds of chow-chow; baked lima beans, baked cabbage, and baked corn casserole; mashed sweet potatoes, boiled new potatoes and green beans, and potato dumplings; spicy carrots; and four kinds of roasted squash.