Amish

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Amish. I think it had a lot to do with the clothes--I loved the dresses and headcoverings (I still think the traditional caps are pretty). It also had to do with Little House on the Prairie and my ardent conviction that I had been born about 120 years past my time.

When I got older, high school and maybe a bit into college, I developed an interest in actual Anabaptist theology and wondered if the answer to my denominational confusion perhaps lay in the Mennonite church. I never pursued that, however, and eventually realized that this was just another form of the same romantic view of the Amish and "plain" lifestyle I'd had as a kid.

Even though I'm now happy not to be Amish, I was intrigued to stumble across this blog in the past week. What's as interesting as the author's Amish background is the narrative arc, rather unusual for a blog. You can't jump straight to the story of how she and her husband eventually left the Amish community,  no matter how impatient you are to find out why. (I suppose one could, but the post titles don't always make it obvious what she's going to talk about; and each time I've tried to skip to "the meaty stuff," I've felt mildly rebuked...!) Most entries recount some memory of her upbringing, roughly chronological but not rigidly so. While she occasionally does posts responding to direct questions about the Amish, I think that to truly appreciate the blog, it's best to start at the beginning and gradually work your way forward. Which is what I've been doing, a little bit at a time, over the past few evenings.

Anyway, I share the link because I figured some of my friends might be interested. Needless to say, it's a departure from the somewhat haphazard, distractible way I usually read the internet! It helps that she's a good writer. Though she clearly had reasons for leaving her childhood faith, she writes so warmly of her upbringing, without idealizing it.