They cry in the dark, so you can’t see their tears.
They hide in the light, so you can’t see their fears.
Forgive and forget, all the while
Love and pain become one and the same,
In the eyes of a wounded child.

—Pat Benatar, lyrics: Hell is for Children
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It happened in the late 1950s, a few years before I was born. I faintly remember them in my childhood world. The seven Mexican Mennonite children who were farmed out to various families in the Aylmer Amish community.

Mexican Mennonites were just that. Mennonites who had emigrated from Mexico. With few or no worldly possessions. With their own language, their own habits and customs. In southern Ontario, they were considered second class citizens. Ragged. Uncouth. Shifty. Mean. The hard-faced men with greasy side-swept hair slouched around in tight jeans and shoes with pointed toes. Most smoked. Many drank. The women, dressed in distinctive patterned flowing skirts, fluttered about, chattering in Plattdeutsch, a low German dialect.

Most of them were poor. Some were destitute. They roared about on the gravel roads in great finned cars, ancient rusting hulks.

We never had that much to do with them, except in the occasional course of normal commerce. No one trusted them. And so they existed in a dimension of their own, almost underground, struggling to survive in a strange land and a foreign culture.

And then, somewhere over in the area of Corinth, a few miles north and east of us, a certain Mexican Mennonite man with the last name of Fehr left his family one day. Just up and deserted his wife and eight children. I don’t know where he went. Maybe back to Mexico. Or maybe not.

But his choice of action was pretty much par for the course. Of what we thought of Mexican Mennonites.

His deserted, destitute wife struggled to feed the children. Ranging from toddlers to teenagers. On many a day, her cupboard was bare and there was no food. Her children looked on with hungry eyes. Desperate, she turned to her people for help. None was forthcoming.

And somehow, after the ragtag band of unsupervised children had terrorized their neighbors once too often, the people at the local Social Services office got involved. They decided to remove the children from their mother’s home. They determined that the Aylmer Amish were of similar faith and approached the leaders there to see if the children could be taken in. Meetings were held. And it was decided that five of the eight children would be farmed out to various families that would open their homes. The two oldest sons were allowed to remain at their mother’s home.

And so one day, as the little ragged children looked on in befuddled bewilderment, a long black car pulled up outside the shanty that was their home. Their mother herded them out and told them to get in. She had packed their few meager belongings and placed them in the trunk.

The long black car pulled away from what would be the last shared home the five frightened children would ever know. They shifted around and peered out the back window in alarm. Their mother stood there, receding in the distance, watching them leave. After she disappeared, the children murmured to each other. David was the youngest, probably around a year old. His sisters comforted him as best they could. The long black car rolled on.

And on and on, to them it seemed. Into strange and unknown territory. Then it slowed and turned into a drive leading to a farm. Pete Stoll’s place. There, David was taken from the car. He would stay here. As he was carried up to the house, his siblings watched him go.

On then, to the north and east. Next stop, Pete Yoder’s farm. The bishop. There, Pete and his wizened wife, Martha met them. The two girls, Betty and Mary, were told to get out. This was their new home.

Cornelius and Isaac, five and three years old, were unloaded at Noah and Nancy Gascho’s home. Some weeks later, Jacob, in his teens, was taken to the preacher Nicky Stoltzfus’ home at the east end of the Aylmer settlement.

And so they were taken from their mother, who could not feed or care for them, and distributed among a number of Amish homes in Aylmer.

I wasn’t there when it happened, so I didn’t see it. But it defies comprehension, the new life into which those children walked. Abruptly and unceremoniously, they were thrust into strange and frightening surroundings. In which everyone around them spewed incomprehensible gibberish. Terrified, stammering in their native Plattdeutsch, they were denied even the comfort of each other.

Within a year, another son was born to their mother. From a man not their father. She named him William. Whether from the kindly dictates of Social Services or on her own accord, the infant child ended up at the home of Levi Troyers.

Over at the Noah Gascho home, things were not going well. Cornelius and Isaac, tireless little live wires, soon frayed the elderly couple’s nerves to the breaking point. So their son-in-law and daughter, Joe and Laura Stoll, a young couple with children of their own, offered to take them in.

They may as well have been bastard children, all of them. Alone. Released by their mother. Abandoned by their father. Of them all, only little half-brother William was eventually adopted by Levi Troyer and his wife. The others all retained their last name. Fehr. An alien name, one that instantly branded them as outsiders and strangers who would not share in the inheritance of the families that had taken them in.

I have faint memories of some of their faces. Of Jacob, the oldest, and William, the youngest, I have none. But all the others I can see in my mind.

The boys were natural tinkerers, mechanics. Loved to tear apart and reassemble lawn mowers and such. Cornelius, or Corny, as he was called, had skilled creative hands. He hung out with my older brothers.

Isaac was a bit of a clown, always acting up. And always in some sort of trouble, it seemed. The clamor of his voice still echoes in the recesses of my memory.

David, always keen, always alert, a lean quiet loner with straight-hanging hair, was constantly absorbed in his own mysterious projects.

Betty, raven-haired, and Mary, a blonde, were about the age of my older sisters.

They were all measured and judged from the context of the worldview of those around them. And inevitably found wanting.

From the start, things did not go so well. Jacob, the oldest foster child, was unhappy with his new lifestyle. He quietly and persistently attempted to escape from preacher Nicky’s home. Each time he ran away, he was located and convinced or forced to return. And Betty, too, when she could no longer take it at uncle Pete’s home, launched desperate, sporadic flights into the fields, sobbing and calling for her mother.

For them all, life was hard. It had to be. And it showed on their faces. They were loud, fractious, uncouth. And the boys were mean. In school, they lagged far behind their peers. For the older ones, their prior education had been sparse at best. Thrown in with others of their age in these strange new surroundings, they were hopelessly lost. And could never catch up. It was simply impossible. Consequently, they were branded as dull, dense, hard of learning. Always slightly different. Separate. Looked down upon. Mocked. Scorned. Rejected by their peers.

And I’ve heard the murmurings, too, from those years. Of the harsh discipline they endured. Constant nagging. The strident incessant admonitions. And harsh corporal punishment. The brutal rod was not spared.

Mary, a quiet shy girl, sometimes did not speak for days. On her first day at the Aylmer Amish school, she was unable to communicate because she did not speak English. Somehow, the teacher found this a sufficient reason to whip her. That afternoon, after she returned to her “home” at uncle Pete’s, she was whipped again.

It’s no wonder she clammed up and wouldn’t talk, then or later, after she had learned the language.

I’m not saying the Fehr children were not loved. I am saying they must have felt unloved. In a foreign culture that tried to forge and mold them into something they were not. A culture that focused almost exclusively on the externals. And crushed the spirit, ignoring the internal regions of the heart.

It seems, even today, after so many years, that common sense was somehow omitted from the equation. In the decision to separate the siblings and raise them in different families. How is it possible for the most well-intentioned foster family to provide even a fraction of the love in the poorest mother’s heart?

But it was what it was. The Fehr children struggled into adulthood. I’m a bit sketchy on the facts, but some, if not most of them, actually joined the Aylmer Amish church. As was expected. This is what you do. And do as you are told.

But it could not stand. Stark simplistic rules and expectations rarely can or do.

Jacob left. He hung around the area for a few years, laboring at odd jobs here and there. Sometimes he showed up at the Aylmer Sales Barn and chatted with James Stoll, who must have had a market stand.

And Betty left too. She moved out of Aylmer in the early 1970s to Milroy, Indiana with the Eli C. Miller family. She very much enjoyed these new surroundings. But after some time, she moved to Holmes County to be near her brother, Cornelius, who had settled there.

And Isaac left too, and David. Where they went and what they did, I do not know. Probably they shifted about and survived as best they knew and could. Occasionally they drifted back into the Amish settlement and stayed for a few uneasy weeks or months. Always, they left again. David, it is said, served in the US military and was discharged honorably.

In the early 1970s, Mary moved to Marshfield, Missouri with Pete and Martha Yoder, her foster parents. Eventually she married Jacob Byler and they had a family.

Levi Troyers moved from Aylmer before my time and took William with them.

I have not seen any of the Fehrs since the early 1970s. And they were all removed from my mind, about as far as possible, until recent years. As they began to pass away, and the news trickled though the grapevine. Sparse, tense messages, replete with the heavy underlying knowledge that one more chance to right past wrongs has now slipped away forever.

In 1996, Jacob died in Georgia, at age 50. Where he is buried I do not know.

David, ill from a brain tumor and complications from decades of alcoholism, quietly returned to the Aylmer area where he had lived his childhood days. There he died a few years ago. His body was cremated and returned to Millersburg, Ohio, and he was buried there.

Betty Strait, the divorced mother of two sons, struggled with heart problems most of her life. On December 10, 2008, she went to work as usual. She never returned home. A heart attack struck and she passed silently and quickly. She is buried in Millersburg, Ohio.

Most recently, in November of 2009, Isaac died in Holmes County, where he had been staying with his brother Cornelius. He too is buried in Millersburg.

William and three of the brothers who never were farmed out, Larry, John, and Bill all still live in Canada.

Of them all, only Cornelius remained Amish. Today, he is a respected member of the Old Order Amish church in the Winesburg, Ohio area.

Mary and Jacob Byler today reside in Lexington, Ohio. Mary is the mother of five and grandmother to fourteen children. She has struggled over the years to put to rest the traumatic days of her broken childhood. She has seen much and suffered much.

At Isaac’s funeral, Mary spoke of that day when the long black car came and took them from their home. Into exile and separation and a life of fear and anguish.

It was impossible for her to describe the wounds, the hurts. But she spoke. She tried.

But still, who knows where they would have ended up, had the Amish not intervened? Life might have been even worse. If there were ever children born with the deck stacked against them, it was the Fehrs.

I’ve wondered sometimes, over the years. About how it all came down. Whose idea it was, to agree to take those seven children from their home and farm them out like that. To different families. I figure it was probably Pete Stoll. He was a good hearted man, who always had a soft spot for the less fortunate. Not even a stray dog, they say, would go hungry if Pete Stoll could help it.

There are people alive today who would know all those details. In Aylmer. But I doubt that those people would talk to me.

The Fehr children had it tough and hard. They knew it. They felt it. They lived it. Things most of us could not endure or even fathom. And things those around them should have known and could have made better.

But they didn’t. Or wouldn’t. And so the Fehr children survived as best they could with what they had to face. From life as it came at them.

For all these years, they have been alone. Unheard. Forgotten by most of those who knew them as children in Aylmer so long ago.

Alone. Absorbing the blows. Toughing it out.

They had some things to say, all of them. Of how it was. And how it went. Their quiet hesitant voices have always been ignored.

And now, some of their voices have fallen silent. They will not be heard again.

At the time, all those years ago when the decisions were made to remove the children from their home, everyone involved did the best they knew with the hard choices confronting them. Including the Aylmer Amish families that took them in. Of that I have no doubt.

But sometimes, in the judgment of history, that is not enough.

Sometimes the generation that follows, those who come later and were not involved or even born, those who look back with a heart of human compassion, they are called to pronounce a verdict on the past:

“Even with the best of intentions, it was wrong, so very wrong, how the Fehr children were treated. Something like that should never happen again. And all those, including their peers who mocked them, who can still clean the slate and make things right with the remaining survivors, they should do so now before it is too late.”

There are times when hard and bitter truths must be spoken. And need to be heard. However difficult it might be to speak those truths. Or however painful to hear them.

This is such a time.

And Esau said: Behold, I am at the point to die:
and what profit shall this birthright do to me?

Genesis 25:30
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They never told us why.

Everything was preached from a solid foundation of what had always been. Amish this. Amish that. You live this way because that’s the way it is. You live this way because it’s where you were born. You live this way, you walk this path because it’s the only way, the only path we’ve ever known.

It was our birthright. And we were special. The special people. The chosen ones who preserved and honored the only true way. With some prodding, there might be a reluctant admission that yes, others not of our particular faith might make it to heaven. But only because they didn’t know any better and were not born Amish. But those who were born in the faith had better stay.

Better stay, or surely face a terrible Judgment Day in the afterlife.

That’s what we heard. What we were told. By our parents. And in the sermons we heard in church. From our earliest memories.

But other than that, they never explained why. Why we were special. Why we alone knew the only true path. Why we were born special. Only that we did and we were.

It sure made for some messed up minds. And messed up lives. Not for the drones, the dense ones who accepted without question what they were told. But for anyone with a speck of spirit, it got a little crazy.

Think about it. You are in a little box. A comfortable box, but a pretty confining one, when it comes right down to it. You wonder what’s outside. Peek out a bit, now and then, and peer around. But deep down, you know that if you step outside that box, you are speeding down the highway to hell. And could arrive at any instant. Boom, just like that.

It’s a brutal thing. A severe mental strain. And it’s the reason that in every community (except Lancaster County), when Amish kids run wild, they usually run hard and mean.

It’s because once that line is crossed, there are no others. And nothing you can do, absent returning, can make any difference. Believe otherwise, like the Mennonites and the Beachys, who drive cars and prate about being saved, and the devil’s got you right where he wants you. That’s what we were taught and what we believed.

In Lancaster, somehow, it’s different. The youth don’t have that wild driven look in their eyes. Not even the “wild” ones. Not sure why that is. Maybe because overall, the community here has a more relaxed attitude about such things. That’s my conclusion, at least, from where I am.

And it seems to work here. A large majority of the youth that drive cars while running around ultimately settle down and join the church. Marry. Raise families.

But still, if you dig around a bit, it’s not ideal.

In a recent conversation with a young local Amish man, we discussed the Amish culture, lifestyle, heritage. He was quite progressive in his thinking. Many of his close friends had left in the last few years, he told me. And he had to make a choice. Join them or stay.

He stayed. Not because his friends were necessarily wrong. And certainly not because they weren’t Christians, believers. He decided to stay because of all the positive things the Amish have and hold. Family. Culture. Tradition.

What he was really saying was that he valued his “birthright” too much to let it go.

And I respect that. Told him so. But then:

“What about your children?” I asked. “What if they choose not to stay?”

He hedged. “I would hope they would. I try to show them, teach them by example.”

I had no doubt. But I persisted. “I’m sure you do,” I said. “But what if one of your sons decided not to stay? Could you bless that? Or would you use guilt to try to change his mind?”

I don’t think anyone had ever asked him quite that question before. He hedged again. Repeated himself. “I would hope my son would choose to stay.”

“And there you have it,” I said. “When it boils right down to it, what you’re telling me is that the Amish church is based on a foundation of fear. How can that possibly be a good thing? It’s unsustainable.”

But I left it then. Didn’t push it. We meandered on to other subjects. He was a good guy. Maybe he hadn’t thought things through quite to the end, but who among us has?

In another recent conversation with a reader, I was asked about my own experience. How I made it to where I am today. As a believer. A Christian. It got me to thinking, and resulted in this post (in case anyone wonders where I came up with this week’s subject).

My writings have never been overtly religious. And I abhor didacticism with a passion. Where each story ends with a sweet little prepackaged lesson. Figure it out for your- self, the deeper meanings. And the lessons, sweet or bitter. There are plenty of preachers out there. I’m not one of them. But the reader’s question got me to thinking. I have never told the story of how I became a Christian, not on this site. And at some point, my readers deserve to know where I’m coming from.

I think we’ve reached that point. So here goes. But be forewarned. If such things make you uncomfortable or queasy, turn off the radio, as Rush would say. Stop reading. Now. Because I don’t want to hear your griping.

The reader’s question got me to thinking. Remembering. Reliving. Triggered a rush of vivid scenes in my mind. Of how I made it. How I survived.

I almost didn’t.

Between the ages of seventeen and twenty, I left home three times. Each time I returned, determined that now this was it, that this time I would stay. It wasn’t fear alone that brought me back, but a host of things. Family. Relationships. Friends. The comfortable world I knew from birth. And fear.

After the third time I decided this was it. No more. The time was right. To settle down. Join the church. Live a quiet life of peaceful simplicity.

So I did. Joined the church, that is. Began dating a girl. My friends were getting married. So I figured that was the logical next step. The relationship got serious.

But always, something wasn’t right. I fretted, restless. And at twenty-four, I realized I could not do it. Could not make it work. Depressed, I brooded. The mental strain was almost unbearable. Waves of turmoil and doubt engulfed me. That period of my life was probably the closest I ever came to actually losing my mind.

About then, my horse died. Collapsed and keeled over, for no apparent reason. From some rare brain disease. At least that’s what the vet claimed. It seemed like a sign.

My father, sensing my traumatized state, offered to buy me another horse. So I would stay. I turned from him in gloom and silence.

And so I boarded the bus in Bloomfield and left. Again. For the fourth time. Leaving in my wake a shattered landscape strewn with the wreckage of broken relationships. I moved to Daviess. The land of my fathers. Restless, I traveled. Went west and worked on the wheat harvest. To Florida then for the winter. Back west to help with spring seeding in the same fields I had harvested a few months before.

To a point, I unwound from the tension of recent events. But I was not at peace. And once again, something pulled me back. To the fold of the Amish church. This time I was double determined. I would make it. But not in Bloomfield. I moved to the northern Indiana Amish settlement. Lived in the Topeka area for awhile, then Goshen. Worked in a trailer factory. This time it would work. I would make it work.

It didn’t, of course. And I couldn’t. I recoiled from the vapid provincial banality that surrounded me. There was simply no way I could stay. And this time I knew it was the final time. That I was lost. And that if I left again, there could be no hope of salvation. Ever. I sank into quiet desperate despair.

Like Esau, I was exhausted, famished, approaching death. And my “birthright” could not sustain or save me.

And somewhere from these depths, I finally did what I should have done long before. I cried out to God. Not that I figured He’d hear me. I wasn’t sure He even existed. But I prayed. For the desire to do right. I didn’t even have that much. I had no hope what- soever that my prayer would even be heard, much less answered.

But it was. Both.

In less than a month, he walked into my life. A young Amish man who had joined from the outside. He had not a speck of Amish blood in him. He’d married a beautiful Amish girl; they had a family. A couple of energetic young sons. He sported a long black beard. Was more Amish than the Amish. But we connected. Big time. He understood my frustrations. My despair. And my fears. I spoke to him as I had never confided in anyone before. I trusted him.

And gradually, gently, the man calmed my spirit, gave me hope. Led me to realize that my rough and rowdy past could be forgiven. That all the pain, all the wounds could be healed. My own. And all that which I had inflicted on so many others in the past.

By showing me Christ’s love, my friend led me to Him. For the first time, I grasped that Christ had died for me. Suffered. Bled. And that I could be His. Through faith. I was amazed at how simple it really was.

And so I was reborn. Spiritually. A huge load was lifted from me. Replaced with a deep quiet sense of joy and internal peace beyond anything I had ever known.

It wasn’t a really emotional thing. And I don’t get that emotional about it now. Guess it’s that old reserved Amish blood in me. Live your beliefs, speak if someone asks, but don’t babble nonstop about them. Anyone can claim anything.

But the experience was intense and it was real.

With my spiritual birth came an entirely new freedom. It did not take me long to realize that much of what I had been taught, implicitly or overtly, had been flat out wrong. The cultural box might provide some protection, but it could never bring salvation.

And once I really truly grasped that fact, I left the Amish church for good.

I have never looked back. Except to reminisce, remember, reflect. On how it was. Including the good things. Things you have read on my blog, if you’ve been with me for any length of time.

I have no desire to return to that lifestyle. Ever. I respect those who do, however, and those who have chosen to stay. Like the young Lancaster County father who hopes his sons will follow in his footsteps.

Sadly, after I made the choice to leave, my friend took it pretty hard. He had high expectations for me. That I would cherish my heritage, the same one he had adopted as his own. That I would follow my father’s footsteps as a defender of the faith. And so much more. He saw it was not to be, that all his expectations were dashed, never to be fulfilled.

He chose to turn his face from me in sorrow and anger. I have not spoken to him in more than twenty years. But he was and remains one of the most important people I’ve ever encountered. When the chips were down, he did not hesitate, but waded into the darkness to lead a lost soul to the Light.

He will always be my friend. Perhaps one day we’ll meet again as brothers.

In the years that have passed since I last saw him, I have tried to do to others as he did to me. Meet people where they are. As they are. To reflect Christ’s love in the messy details of everyday life. And it’s not like my own life hasn’t been messy since then. It has been, brutally so at times. Mostly as a result of my own choices.

But God is who He is. Forever. Unchanging. And always there, even when He doesn’t seem to be. This I have learned. And this I know. Ultimately, I rest in that knowledge.

And if there is only one thing my readers glean from my writings, I hope that’s it. That God is there, even when He seems far away.

Some (not all) from my background would, if pressed, conclude that I, like Esau, have squandered my birthright for a mess of pottage. Because I walked away from it all. All the traditions. The structure. The blessings. The cultural identity. And left it all behind. And, from their perspective, for what?

But they are wrong. It is not true. For all Christians of every denomination, including the Amish, there is a far more important birthright.

We are joint heirs with Christ in our Father’s kingdom.