Читать книгу Dying To Live - Robert MDiv Yoder - Страница 4

The sled riding accident was so typical of my childhood. I was constantly collecting cuts and bruises, breaking a bone, and on one occasion, ripping open a gash on my knee so deep that it exposed my knee cap.

One winter, it was a sledding accident. Our neighbors had a beautiful sled-riding hill. We used the terrace at the bottom of the hill as our ramp, launching from there and soaring through the air. On one winter day, the snow was just right, the sun was out, and the neighbor kids were having a great time together, riding down the track of snow and flying over the ramp.

That night was cold; and while we slept, the snow that had slightly melted in the sun during the day froze, making the downhill path something like an Olympic sledding track—sheer ice.

The next morning I was up bright and early. Eager to have the ride of my life, I trudged all alone to the very top of the hill. I put the sled down and away I went, not recognizing the danger that lay ahead. Once I started, there was no stopping.

I was going too fast, and my pleasure quickly turned to fear. I hung on, just hoping I would somehow get through this. Hitting the ramp, I went airborne as the sled started to turn sideways. The sled and I both landed, my wrist under the runner. Luckily, I came through that ride with only a broken arm.

Little did I realize that my life would soon be very much like that sled ride, hurtling downward and out of control.

On a bright, sunny spring day, the fresh smell of new life was bursting forth, grass turned brown by the harsh winter was now green, women were hanging out wash, and farmers were turning soil and getting ready to plant spring crops.

As I drove to my hometown of Walnut Creek, the memories were too real and tears started to flow. I could hardly see to drive. Yes, I wished I had my dad right there beside me so that I could ask him questions about the Bible and we could discuss the Word of God, which was so dear to him. I still miss him.

I miss the little town with the grain elevator where we used to bring the wagon filled with grain to grind into feed. Horrisberger Implement is gone, and now there is the Carlisle Inn. Fire destroyed Schlabach’s Store, and today there’s a library and a new museum. The little dairy treat where we’d stop after school for the best ice cream this side of the Mississippi has been replaced by a post office. Another little ice cream stop became what is now known as Der Dutchman Restaurant. Mom and Dad once owned a house on the town square, and my brother James lived there when he married; now a doctor’s office sits on that spot.

The school I attended for eight years still stands. I’d walk a mile to school, through the fields with our neighbors, the Masts. Junior Mast and I were the same age and in the same grade. We were together so much as little boys that we were almost like brothers.

The circus came to town one day and the tent went up on the school grounds. Both Junior and I knew we would not be allowed to see the show, but we managed to find an excuse to head to town that evening, probably saying we were going to buy an ice cream cone. Instead of going into the tent and risk someone seeing us, we peeked under the canvas and watched the circus acts. The clowns, the elephants, and the show girls in tight outfits were all very fascinating for two little Amish boys.

I grew up on a small, fifty-five acre farm, the youngest of four boys with one older sister and three younger sisters. Yes, there were eight of us.

On the farm, there were cows to milk, chickens, horses, and pigs to feed, wheat and oats to thresh, and corn to pick. I have many fond and wonderful memories of growing up on the farm. We worked hard, but we also rode bicycles (and anything with wheels), swung from our big spruce in the back yard, and kept an assortment of pets—goats, a fox, and crows that actually talked.

In the Amish community where I grew up, feelings of love and affection are not often expressed in words but in action, in deeds of kindness and friendship—like helping a neighbor in need or sharing recipes or inviting someone for a meal.

There was one day that Dad expressed his love for family, his love of the outdoors, and his desire to just have fun. It was an expression of love we children will probably never forget.

It was a blustery winter day, with blowing snow making the roads unfit to drive. We kids were in the mood to go sledding, but we needed a toboggan. We knew that Mom and Dad didn’t really have the money to buy a new toboggan, and besides, the stores were all closed.

But Dad was determined that we would have a day of fun in the snow. He took off in the car, drove to Millersburg, and somehow talked the owner of Jane and Sandy’s to open the doors so that Dad could buy our toboggan.

We had fun riding down the hill behind our barn, with Dad on the tractor pulling us back up to the top of the hill. But the memory that lingers in my mind to this day is the expression of love that Dad showed for his family. I have kept that toboggan as a memorial and as a symbol of the man I remember as my dad.

Dad developed a heart condition at a young age, a result of a bout with rheumatic fever. Even though his heart was not in very good shape, he did the farming with the help of us boys, worked away as a painter, plus fulfilled the duties of the ministry—all the time, knowing that he could die at any moment. Raising eight children is not an easy task for healthy people, yet Mom and Dad did it, even under the shadow of his poor health.

I remember one time in particular that Dad had a stroke during the night. Mom came upstairs and woke us, telling us to come downstairs; something was wrong with Dad. He was sitting up in bed and looked at us but couldn’t say anything, which was very scary to me. Mom told us to kneel by the bed and pray. Eli Mast, our neighbor, came over, the doctor arrived, and by late morning Dad’s speech was coming back. He seemed to recover and things went back to normal, but every so often he would have a spell that laid him up for a while.

A bachelor lived in a small house in our woods. When the house was moved to another location, Dad decided to build a cabin where the house had been. He wanted a place where he could be all by himself to study and meditate on the word of God. Dad spent many hours at that cabin in communion with God. People far and wide heard Dad’s messages expounding the plan of salvation and new birth through Jesus Christ.

Dad was known among the business people he dealt with, preachers and leaders in the church, and the everyday working man. Even though people didn’t always agree with him, they usually respected him. To this day, if you mention the name “Orpha Jake” among the Amish and Conservative community in Holmes County, people will remember the man who was my dad.

I remember a home missionary who was a frequent guest at our house; he always wore a Salvation Army-style hat that read “Moyer Home Missions”. There was an Amish homeless man called “Slow Johnny” who had some peculiar ways, but he knew he could always get a bed and a meal at the Yoder house. There were many other visitors at our house, and sometimes preachers stayed and discussed doctrine and theology from the Word of God until the wee hours of the morn. This was all very interesting for me as a young boy, and I would sit on the stair steps in rapt attention, trying to comprehend what it all meant.

Dad wasn’t known for a great mind like Einstein or Newton or great wealth like Rockefeller or Warren Buffet. No, Dad was known for the faith that was born in him through the saving power of Jesus Christ. I once wrote this, in reflecting on Dad’s life and faith.

My Dad

He wasn’t well known

As some men are

Like presidents and movie stars

What really mattered

To him you know,

Was God, the Bible

And the love you show

Many were the trials

He had to face

It was God not men

Who showed him grace

Dad’s faith grew because of his desire to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, not only the resurrection of the body, but the resurrection that brought a new life with Christ here and now on this earth. His faith moved him to preach the plan of salvation and the new birth, messages that came from the love Jesus had planted in his heart.

Dad’s faith compelled him to stand against the tide of the ritualistic culture that he grew up with in the Amish church and helped him live out his conviction to pray from his heart instead of reading the customary prayers from a book. His faith caused him to lose friendships, but he gained new ones. His faith moved him to help people in need and open his home to strangers. His faith gave him an enduring hope not only in this life, but in the life that is to come.

Dad didn’t believe in eternal security, the doctrine that says that once you are saved, you are always saved. He didn’t believe that once you accepted Christ as your Savior, you received the keys to heaven and then you did good works to earn your rewards. No, it took faith in Jesus Christ to save you from your sins and to keep you saved by the power of Jesus Christ living in you.

As I grew up and watched my brothers and sisters getting married and having homes of their own, I felt an ache inside me. I wanted to have a wife and a family and a home of my own. I wanted children to play with and a wife who loved me. I even had plans for the house I was going to build. I saw it all as such a pretty picture. Little did I know how long it would be before that dream could become reality.

At our church, we were not permitted to date until we were eighteen. At a youth convention at our local high school, I got up enough nerve to ask a girl out. We started dating and eventually I fell in love. I wanted to get married, but she wasn’t ready to make that step and one night she told me she had decided we shouldn’t see each other anymore.

I was devastated and tried to analyze what went wrong. I guessed she just didn’t love me the way I loved her. I remember even contemplating running my car off the road and killing myself.

My life had more stress besides the broken heart. The brick plant where I worked required hard labor, and we were putting in extra hours. Then every evening I attended our church’s revival meetings. It was all too much for an eighteen-year-old boy. Walking off the job one day, I decided to get away from it all. I needed the warm rays of the sun and the sand of Siesta Key beach to heal my depressed mind.

Without telling Mom and Dad or anyone else, I decided to book my first plane ride. I visited a travel agent in Dover and asked if she could book me on a flight to Sarasota, Florida, that very same day. Driving to Cleveland and boarding an airplane was an entirely new experience for me.

As we flew through severe thunderstorms all the way from Cleveland to Atlanta, I felt like Jonah in the whale, running away from all my problems. The plane dipped and rocked so much that the stewardess had to kneel in the aisle while serving drinks. I ordered a little bottle of whiskey to calm my nerves.

We finally landed at Atlanta, only to learn that our plane to Sarasota was broken down and we had to wait for another plane. Finally arriving at the small Bradenton airport at 4 a.m., I slept at the terminal until morning and then took a shuttle to Pinecraft where my aunt and uncle lived. I called Mom right away and told her where I was.

The warm sun and sand of Florida worked its healing magic. I did not kill myself and I would not die of a broken heart. No, I would just guard my heart from ever being broken again.

I dated a few Conservative Mennonite girls, but none of the relationships lasted. Something always seemed to break us apart.

Between the ages of ten to fifteen, I began to doubt whether there really was a God. Even if there was, I reasoned, I didn’t really need Him in my life because I had a brain and physical abilities and I could run my own life. I thought church was just a religion and that it didn’t really mean anything.

But in church one Sunday night, the Spirit of conviction was on me as the preacher was preaching; and when the invitation was given, I went forward and accepted Christ as my Savior.

I was sixteen. I would try to live a Christian life, but there were many failures and many ups and downs.

In 1970, Mom and Dad had public auction on September 5, sold the farm, and moved to town. They kept the cabin in the woods, and it wasn’t far from our house in town.

Soon after we moved from the farm, I bought a quarter horse. It wasn’t long before some of the girls in town were interested in riding and talked their parents into buying them horses. We soon started our own horse club, and there I was, the only guy with a bunch of girls. The girls were not Conservative girls; and as you can imagine, Dad was not thrilled about the whole thing. We even used the cabin for our club meetings, and Mom and Dad probably felt we were desecrating the retreat that had been created for a special spiritual purpose.

I was becoming more and more dissatisfied with the church’s emphasis on rules and regulations and with preachers trying to keep the young people from adapting to worldly ways. Finally, everything came to a head and I was excommunicated from my parents’ church. After that, I started attending a local Mennonite church where the pastor was someone I knew and respected.

On the week of Nov 17, 1971, Mom and Dad, Eli and Anna Mast, and Yost Millers went to Grove City, Minnesota, for a minister ordination service. My dad preached on Saturday evening on Isaiah 52:7.

How beautiful on the mountains

are the feet of those who bring good news,

who proclaim peace,

who bring good tidings,

who proclaim salvation,

who say to Zion,

“Your God reigns!”

This would be my dad’s last message here on this earth. That night at the home of Alvin Helmuth, Dad suffered a severe stroke. He passed away early Monday morning, November 22, 1971, at University Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was twenty-two years old.

As I look back on Dad’s life, it’s his faith in God his Creator and Jesus Christ his Savior that I remember most. After all these years, I still miss him because of what that faith and love has come to mean to me in my own life.

I remember we children sometimes talked about which one of us Dad liked most. There were some heated arguments about which child was the favored one. Usually I kept silent during these discussions, since I knew I was a disappointment to my dad. One day Dad was so disgusted with me that he told me he didn’t think I would ever amount to anything.

We had left the Amish church when I was ten years old and were attending Bethel Fellowship, an Amish-Mennonite church that permitted cars, electricity, and phones. My dad was a minister at this church.

One year, a number of people in the congregation put big, blue gospel signs about four feet square on their barns or shops. Dad put one of those signs on the front of our chicken house. Its big letters read, “PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD.” Everyone saw it when they drove into our driveway.

I was around fourteen at the time, and I was embarrassed by that sign. To me, it was something that just didn’t fit in and made us stand out in the community. One day when Dad was not at home, I tore down the sign. You can imagine the disappointment on my dad’s face when he found out I was the guilty person.

There was a time I felt in my heart that Dad didn’t really love me, yet his love followed me throughout life and reached me even after his death. I would discover that only after much heartache and walking very close to the precipice of hell.