I *Wanted* to be Amish

I am a "weird" girl. I guess I have always been strange. My brother would always chide me, "Mom dresses you funny" and I really didn't care, because I liked the way my mom dressed me. :-P

And then when mom pulled me out of public school to home school me, my weirdness only got weirder. ;-)

I guess my fascination with the Amish began when my mom, as part of my "history" lessons sat me on the couch and would read hours upon hours of Laura Ingalls Wilder to me.

She and I began to dream of "yesteryear" and how much more "fun" it would be to live in a cabin, sew our own clothes, and be content with the "simpler" things of life.

Then mom introduced me to Kirsten of the American Doll series, and that only fed my love for that time period in American History.

I would pretend to go to "school" in a one room school house while doing my lessons. My sister, an artist, had old quill pens and ink bottles, and I would write "journals" with them.
My mother invested in sewing lessons for me, and I sewed a pioneer dress, and sun bonnet to play my fantasies out.

Then my mom found the Mandie series. Historical, Mystery Fiction. Ah, I was in heaven!

I wished with a "passion" we could go back to the "good old days"

One year, we visited my grandmother who lived about two hours from Lancaster Pennsylvania. She asked us if we wanted to go spend about four days there and see the "Amish". I was about 13 at the time, and I asked "What's the Amish"

Mom explained to me that they were people living out the "simple" life like Laura Ingalls did. They didn't have electricity, they drove horse and buggies, grew their own food.

I couldn't believe it! Really and Truly there were people "alive today" that lived like that! Of course I wanted to go!

Those four days were more fascinating and "happy" than anytime I went to Disney World. We bought tons of books about the Amish. We toured an Amish "farm", we followed Amish Buggies around, and even took an authentic buggy ride!
We learned there were different "sects" of Amish, and that each had their own "rules" to follow.

One rule that seemed to be prevalent in MOST Amish/Mennonite communities was that the women always covered their head with a little hat. I thought it was kind of quaint...but I didn't know that they did it because they thought that the Bible said to do that. (I Corinthians 11)

When my mother showed me this scripture passage, I wondered why we didn't. We were Christians weren't we? Why didn't we wear that little hat?

We went home, and I devoured all the books that we had bought in Pennsylvania. It only fed my thirst for that type of life "more". I discovered that Mennonites had publishing companies such as Rod and Staff, and Christian Light.

They even had tapes, explaining biblicaly why they did all the stuff that they did. As I read this and devoured this, I became dissatisfied with my own "spiritual" life. Compared to the Amish it seemed "vain" and "empty".

I started to wear only dresses, and I tried making little head coverings to wear, but my dad wouldn't let me out of the house with it on, lol!

I started to grow my hair and never cut it. I had read in one of their tracts to even have bangs was "cutting of the hair" and I wasn't satisfied with the hairline that God had given me. Although I had a protruding forehead, and a high hairline.

I began to read my Bible more, and praying more. I discovered other things to fuel my "religious conservatism" Magazines, pen pals, books, sermons on tapes, etc.

At times, my mom thought it was "cute" when I wanted to be Amish, but as it drug on into my early teen years, she probably thought she created a monster! ;-)

Thankfully, that "Amish" phase passed. I now no longer believe modern convinces are a sin, and I no longer think that I have to be a certain "way" to be acceptable to God. But some of those "Amish Philosophies" lingered *LONG* after I ditched the prospects of ever becoming Amish. ;-)

And I'll continue on in my story at a later date:

But... in the meantime, I STRONGLY recommend that you read Beverly Lewis who is a Christian fictional writer who writes fiction about the Amish. After all my research of the Amish, and reading respected sources of the Amish, Beverly Lewis truly gets into the minds and ways of the Amish, without "romanticizing" things. And also gracefully shows the errors in their thinking about God. My favorite series that she wrote was Abram's Daughters. That really clued me in! ♥