People That Surround Us

The older I get the more I realize the people we surround ourselves with have a significant impact on our lives and beliefs. I want to take a moment and share with you some recent happenings and reflections my husband and I have experienced and are contemplating. We live in Texas. Texas is an awesome place to live. From having grown up in the midwest it is a different culture here in Texas. We love it here. It has always been my husband's dream to live in Texas. After being here for 3 years we realize that after you have children having a network of people around you for support is very important. Although we have made several great friends we do not have a support system that will allow us to make the kind of changes our family needs to make in order to provide for our daughters the life we want to be able to provide for them. We are having to make some very difficult decisions, but one thing I have made one of my mottos when it comes to raising children is it is not about me. Once I bring children into this world my obligation is to do what is right for them and not what I want to do. I will be held accountable to God for the decisions I make that affect my children for the rest of their life. So no matter what I want to do or what my husband wants to do we have to make our decisions based on what is best for our daughters. We have come to the conclusion that the people who surround us it what is going to make all the difference in their lives as well as ours.

Fall Memories

Fall always brings many memories for me. Being raised Amish I only went through 8th grade before graduation and then I was at home for 2 years. At the age of 16 I became a schoolteacher in the Amish school system. This was something I had always wanted to be as I was growing up. The Amish schools only had 2 rooms with 2 teachers so my first 4 years I taught 5th - 8th grade. The last 3 years of teaching my 4 grades were made up of different grades, but always included 7th & 8th grade. I absolutely loved teaching and I still miss it very much. So that is the first thing fall reminds me of when I see children heading back to school.

The second thing I think about is leaving home. September 29, 2008 marks 13 years since I left my parents' home and life as I had known life for the first 23 years of my life. It is always a bitter sweet time.

I really miss the closeness of family and community that we had, especially since I live in Texas now and when I moved here 3 years ago I did not know anyone. I now have 2 little girls who are growing up without grandparents or aunts and uncles and cousins in their lives. Especially around the holidays it always is difficult.

Sweet because I have truly found freedom in knowing I have been forgiven. That Jesus my Lord paid the ultimate sacrifice on the cross and He died in my place. It is quite amazing when you think about it. I had no chance of ever seeing heaven until God paid a price for my soul with the shed blood of His Son Jesus on the Cross of Calvary. I still remember the day when that revelation hit me. God loves His creation so much He would pay such a high price for us who are such great sinners. So although some days it is a very lonely time being so far away from friends and family, I am working on making new friends and I realize now I am a part of a very large family, the family of God. It is quite amazing!

All in all I love fall especially in Texas because it is when the heat actually becomes tolerable. 70s in the daytime and 50s at night. Wonderful!!

Fondest Memories

I am reflecting tonight on what I would call some of my fondest memories growing up Amish. I would have to say seeing my Mom come home with my one and only baby sister has to be one of the top memories. I was 10 years old when my sister was born and so far I only had brothers who loved to torture their sister. Today I am very proud of my sister. She is a great Mom getting prepared for baby #4.

When I was 7 & 8 years old one of my fondest memories is spending time in the sugar shack in way back in the woods watching as my great uncle cooked the sap that eventually became maple syrup. For a treat my great aunt taught us how to make maple cream, which is a very rich, creamy maple candy.

From the time I was about 10 or 11 years old we would go to Sea World in Aurora, OH once a year on a Saturday. We would do the chores before we left in the morning and then have some of the neighbors do the chores in the evening and we would stay until the last skiing event happened with fireworks. We always stayed for the fireworks!

Christmas was always a special time and there were things that became tradition at our house. My Mom would always buy us a book of Lifesavers and she would put together a cup of all kinds of different candies and put them at our place at the table along with our book of Lifesavers. We would always get something fun, but the one thing we always got for Christmas was new underwear and usually I would get a new dress or two and my brothers would get new pants and shirts. Something I really miss and remember especially was getting together with all of the aunts, uncles, and cousins at my grandparents home for Christmas Dinner. My grandparents had 69 grandchildren and 8 children with their spouses. My great aunt and uncle always came as well. They never had any children so they were like a second set of grandparents to all the children. We did the traditional turkey dinner and there would be multiple turkeys, hams, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, cole slaw, dinner rolls and lots and lots of desserts and candies.

My Mom is an amazing cake decorator and the first time I really remember her making a huge cake was for my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. She made a multiple layer cake and decorated it with gold. It was beautiful! She made all of our birthday cakes and cakes for many special occasions. Today she still makes wedding cakes for the Amish weddings in her area. Something that I will always cherish is that even though my Mom disagrees with the life decisions I have made she still agreed to make my wedding cake and she even brought it to the church which was an hour and a half away from where they lived and set it up in the reception area. That will always be a very special memory. Thanks, Mom.

I will share more memories next time.

Why Do I Do The Things I Do?

This is the question that has been on my mind this week. There are so many things we are taught in our lives by people who are supposed to be there to steer us right. From the parents we have to the teachers to the preachers to the friends and parents of friends and grandparents and other family members. So how do I ever determine who God created me to be? This is the question that has been weighing heavily on my mind of late. I have made it my mission that I am going to spend time alone with God for as long as it takes to answer that question. Apart from influence of church, apart from influence of those who are supposed to be there to teach us the truth. I have decided that I am going to become a student of the Word of God. I am going to rededicate every day of my life to study until I am convinced in whom I believe and until I have the confidence to never again be swayed by those who claim to have your best interest, especially spiritual interests at heart.
I am not convinced anymore that the way we do church in America today is what the early church looked like and what God meant when He said forsake not the assembling of yourselves together. I am on a mission to seek God's heart for His church today. He is coming back to receive a bride spotless and without wrinkle. How many of you want to be a part of that bride?

Legalism is a crutch and a replacement for faith, I am convinced of this fact. Having a list of do's and don'ts takes out any need for walking with God by faith and truly having a real father/child relationship. All I have to do is follow a set of instructions and then I should be OK. All I have to do is to look to the church to tell me what a Christian should look like. I am sorry this is no longer good enough for me. I have a feeling the church cares much more about what I look like and what I do then God does.
I believe God cares about my heart. He cares about my motives of why I do what I do. We sing He is my all in all, but what does that really mean?? I intend to make God, my Father my all in all in everything I do and I pray the Lord will help me to be a leader in bringing people back to the fundamentals of the gospel of Jesus Christ! Most of what is on my heart to do right now will go against the grain of the mainstream Christian today, but that is OK. I have been rejected and austersized before for giving my life over to the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says we should count it all joy when we are persecuted all the day long. Jesus is my joy! He paid the price for my mansion in heaven!! I owe my life to Him and I intend on being radical for Jesus and stop being religious.

A Noble Profession

As promised I will spend the next few moments reflecting on my days as an Amish schoolteacher. As some of you know and others may not know the Amish only allow their children to attend school through the 8th grade. They feel with the professions that are available to the Amish there is no need for an education beyond the 8th grade. So I was done with school at age 14. For the next 2 years I spent my time reading books when I should have been helping my Mom with the cleaning and dishes and gardening and lawncare and baking and laundry. Of course when she caught me reading when I had instructions for doing other things the consequences were never pleasant.

I am a spring baby so the summer after I turned 16 I decided to pursue a career in teaching. I was almost immediately called upon by several schools looking for teachers. I accepted a position at a brand new school as the 5th - 8th grade teacher. I would be teaching students who were just a year or so younger than I was. The Amish schools only have 2 teachers and each one has 4 grades and they can be divided any way the 2 teachers choose to divide them, but the most traditional way is 1st - 4th in one room and 5th - 8th in the other room. I absolutely loved school so I was very excited about this opportunity, but I was also scared to death at first. I did not know any of my students as this school was located in a different part of the community. It was located very close to my maternal grandparents whom I stayed with from time to time during my 3 year stint at Gates Hill School. My co-teacher was someone who had been teaching for several years already and her and I became great friends even after our 3 year stint of teaching together. I still try to go see her whenever I get the chance to go home. It was time for me to move on so I went to teach at another school closer to my home. I was there for 1 year as the 5th - 8th grade teacher again. From there I went to the school in the district next to my home district and I taught at Scout Ridge School for the final 3 years of my teaching career. While at my final position I taught 1st, 6th, 7th, & 8th one year, 1st, 2nd, 7th, & 8th another year, and 3rd, 4th, 7th, & 8th my final year. I ended up teaching every grade during my 7 year teaching career. I decided after 7 years I needed a break from teaching. I was going to take a year off and then I would consider going back to teaching. I did not expect the radical change God would bring into my life that year. I will write about this another time.

During my teaching I absolutely loved to teach and it is obvious God has given me a gift for teaching. There were many challenges, especially when it came to dealing with certain parents, but overall I would say it was a very fulfilling experience. One I look back on with many fond memories. I still think about my many students and I pray for them. I pray that they will first and foremost come to a saving knowledge of our Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ and then I pray their lives would be blessed and that their dreams would come true. I pray that above all they will find truth and freedom. The Bible says "we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free." Praise God for truth and for freedom!!
I have fond memories of dodge ball games when the weather would not allow us to go outside and play. We would play ping pong, dodge ball, card games, & board games during the winter months. At times we would go outside at recess and play in the snow, but most of the time we would play indoors. In the fall and the spring there would be games of volleyball, softball, prisoner's base, kick the can, and many other running games as well.

Our subjects for the younger ones are Reading, Phonics, Math, English, Writing, and German Phonics. For the older ones there was Reading, Vocabulary, Math, English, Writing, Spelling, Geography, German Phonics, Writing, Spelling & Reading. Most of the curriculum was made especially for the Amish schools with the exception of the Geography and in 8th grade the History books.

There is one other memory that I am glad it is only a memory. The outhouses! There were no indoor bathrooms at our schools. There were only outhouses. We also had a furnace that had to be stoked and logs on the fire at all times and the teachers had to take care of that or else everyone would be cold and find it impossible to study. That is a brief overview of my years as a schoolteacher............BK

The Outsiders

Did any of you see the show on ABC Primetime last Tuesday called "The Outsiders"? I am not sure what you thought about the show, but when I got done watching it I felt extremely sad and I felt this for so many reasons. First about the extreme blindness of the elders and their quiet resolve to the belief they have no other choice than to be Amish. The acceptance of the elders that their young people rebel against the rules of the church during a certain period before making the commitment to the church. After all they did things like this before they committed to the church when they were young so that makes it OK for the young people of today the same. He even had a car when he was young. When you look at the ways the young people from about age 15 or 16 until they actually decide to return and join and become a member of the church rebel, it is not just minor things. There is under age drinking, fornication, and in the case of Danny Troyer even hate crimes. Hate crimes and he said, "We just wanted to have some fun." "FUN?!" What has happened in a young man's life that would cause him to call burning someone's property fun? One thing about the show I believe it was more accurate than most documentaries that have been done about the Amish and I give ABC a lot of credit for this. So many times if they actually talk to the Amish about something, they are presented with the ideal world of what the Amish are and how they live. Most of the time this varies quite drastically from the truth, because they never share the whole story. The reason I think I was so sad is because these young people are seeking freedom, but the problem is they have no idea what they are seeking freedom from. They want to be free to be their own person, they want to be free to be able to have a dream, so many of them have no idea why music, something they love so much can be so wrong, they want to free to listen to their music, watch TV, go to sports events such as football games, baseball games, or rodeos. They want to be free to go to the movies. Now most of us reading this would take every last one of these things for granted, but all of this is forbidden according to the Amish rules and way of thinking. They want to be free to have a life to be able to use their God-given talents and see their dreams fulfilled. So why then when they leave do they turn to drinking and partying and fornication and even destruction of property? I believe because by the time they have reached age 15 and 16 they have heard nothing but things they cannot do and they don't care anymore and this is the way it manifests itself. This is what young people among the Amish have done for years and years even back to the days of our parents and grandparents. So even those who really want to do right in the sight of God just don't care anymore and there is so much that doesn't make sense anyway so why bother even trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong. The really sad thing for me was to see Lena's idea of freedom. She thinks being able to have her boyfriend, partying, and going wild is freedom. They go from one form of bondage to another form of bondage, but they don't understand that yet. (One of the reasons for my book - My Quilt of Many Stories) I want to be able to encourage all people who come from strict religions where there are rules even the preachers and the priests can't explain where they come from in the Bible. It is the way it has always been so it must be right and besides we don't question the rules we just continue to believe them. It is what has been passed down from our elders and if it was good enough for them it is good enough for us. I want people to realize Jesus came so we could have a relationship with our Father in heaven. It is only through Jesus Christ that we will ever be able to come to the Father, but that relationship with our Father is for now while we are here on this earth not just for when we get to heaven, which by Amish standards you can only hope to get to anyway. Why then are we surprised when young people want to rebel against the rules that tell them they can't have things like music and they can't go places like amusement parks and sports events and there are only certain professions you can be a part of. You cannot have a profession that would require high school or college because they are not allowed to attend high school and obviously college would then be out of the question. Basically by the time I was 18 and definitely by the time I was 20, I felt it was hopeless. There was no way I was going to be able to be good enough to get to heaven and then.................you will just have to keep coming back to find out what happens. :) Unless something else comes along that catches my attention I will be writing about my time as a school teacher in the Amish schools next time I visit with you all.

Bigger & Better

So after less than 2 years on my great uncle's farm my father wanted to move on to bigger and better. We moved to a very large dairy farm where for the next 8 years with the exception of one year when we lived with my grandparents we worked for an Englishman who owned 2 farms. On one of the farms we just crop farmed and on the other one we also had a large herd of dairy cows. So as a young girl I would have to get up and go out to the barn to feed animals and sometimes help milk the cows before running to change and head off for the 15 - 20 minute walk to school. School was from 8:45 AM until 3:15 PM. When I got home I would have to change and then head out to the barn to start the chores all over again. Sometimes my Mom would ask me to stay in the house and help with dinner preparations. Either way there was never time for play! Thank God we never had homework unless we had missed school and needed to catch up. Winter time there were extra chores like bringing wood from the wood pile to the house as this is what we used for heat. In the summer time there were extra things we had to do like mow the grass, weed the garden, help put the hay up, and canning. I did say bigger and BETTER, right? The most important and best thing about moving to the bigger farm was INDOOR PLUMBING!! Although we had an outhouse on our new farm we did also have indoor plumbing which meant we could have a shower! At the previous place we had to haul the water inside, heat the water in a huge cooker, and then take a bath in the metal bathtub in the basement. No wonder some Amish people only take a bath once a week, and in the winter time there are some who only bathe once every 2 weeks for church and take sponge baths in between........gross! Huh?! Don't think I'm kidding, because I am not! This did not just happen 25 years ago when I was a young girl, it still happens today!

Humble Beginnings

I was the second child born to my parents and then grew up the oldest child. Their first child, a son died at 15 months old before I was born. I was followed by 3 more sons and 1 more daughter. My parents had what many Amish people of that generation thought, a small family. My father worked in construction until I was 7 years old and then we moved to a farm owned by my great uncle and great aunt. On this farm we did everything the way they did it in the pioneer days. Milked the cows by hand, skimmed the cream off before sending the other milk off to be made into cheese at the local cheese factory. We then churned the cream to make our own butter. Water was brought into the house from a pump outside the back door and yes, you guessed it, the bathroom was located about 50 - 100 paces from the back door of the house. Yes, it gets very cold in northeastern Ohio in the winter time and yes, we did have to use the outdoor bathroom (otherwise known as an outhouse) when it was 5 below zero outside. We raised our own chickens not just for the eggs they gave us, but also for the chicken we would eat. We also raised our own pork and of course there was always a cow or two that provided us with all the beef we needed for our growing family. 3 boys can eat a lot of food when they are in the process of growing from a few feet to over six feet in about 10 or 12 years. Mowing grass in the summer time was always a tiring chore. Keep in mind we did not live in the suburbs of any metro area so the yard was not the little 10 mow job many people have today. We lived in the country where the closest grocery store was between 5 & 10 miles away. That means a really huge yard to be mowed all with a push mower and no there was no power except for the power in your own 2 arms. So for a 4th grade girl it could sometimes take 2 days to mow all of the grass.
OK, enough for this time. More reflections coming soon!! Please feel free to share your comments or experiences or questions.

I am excited about the creation of my blog. I hope it will be both informative for you as well as intriguing. I am looking forward to sharing my reflections of my heritage growing up Amish in northeastern Ohio, as well as answering questions you may have about the Amish. In addition feel free to post your own reflections about your time or experience with the Amish.
Sincerely, Barbara Kay