CHAPTER THREE
Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.
—JOHN WESLEY
Photographs. Look at those pictures of times gone by and you are suddenly transported to that very spot, that very moment. When I look at pictures of myself from the early eighties (and there are few—I avoided cameras like a mouse hiding from a cat), there is the usual chuckle at the styles and haircuts of the day. But there’s also something else I see, something others might quickly skim over: my eyes.
There’s one in particular I noticed the other day, a picture taken during one of Jonas’s family gatherings, where everyone else is eating around the table while I lean up against the kitchen counter, finishing my plate. I’m not sure who took the picture, but they caught me in midbite, raising the fork to my mouth. I’m wearing a maroon outfit with a black belt. My hair is just beginning to show hints of gray. Caught unawares by the mystery photographer, I was unable to put on the usual smile and appearance of cheer, and my eyes unveil the true state of my spirit: no spark, lifeless, fatigued, wishing those days would end.
Imagine walking along through a beautiful field, admiring the wildlife and the flowers and a blue sky that almost lifts you off the ground. The smell of honeysuckle and the sound of birds singing. Then imagine suddenly falling into a pit so deep that the sky is nothing more than a pinpoint of light and the only sound you can hear is the rigid silence of the earth. Imagine being badly injured from the fall and barely able to crawl forward, but soon you see that even crawling is useless—the pit is too deep and all sides rise in walls, sheer cliffs. There is no way out. You lie down, giving in, prepared to die. Imagine lying there for six years.
But then imagine a sudden deliverance, waking to the morning light, the feel of grass under your bare feet and the smell of spring, the hint of freedom. From 1976 to 1982 I lay at the bottom of that pit, thinking the only thing that could save me was death. I wanted to die! But then, suddenly, I found a way out, discovered a way to the outside world. I was rescued.
The year was 1986, and I sat in a warm bubble bath in Texas, reflecting on my life. Somehow, happiness had returned to me after Angie’s death, six long years of abuse of power and trust by my pastor, the splitting of our church, and the division of our extended family. I’ll tell the story of those ten years from 1976 to 1986 at a later time, but for now it’s enough to say that I sat in the bath feeling completely at peace. My marriage felt restored, and Jonas and I experienced a newfound faith in God and church. Our family lived together in harmony. In the mornings, after the girls left for school, I would often retreat to the comfort of a hot bath. Sitting there on that particular morning, all alone and completely relaxed, I found myself in a mental conversation with God.
“Lord, this is really nice. I love this house. I love the last three years we’ve spent recuperating here. I feel like a good mom again. There’s peace in our family, and Jonas and I get along so well.
“But is this all there is? It seems there must be more to life than this—to be honest, I’m getting kind of bored.”
I stared at the ceiling, the bubbles fizzing around me as they popped, the warm water massaging my muscles. I thought about the mechanic shop that Jonas ran and his newfound desire to provide counseling for couples who were going through struggles like we went through. After all, good counseling got us through, and we both felt the hope that someday we might provide the same support for others.
“There must be more to life than just coasting by on peace and happiness. There must be a greater purpose.”
Looking back, I realize now that God used those years in Texas to begin showing us that our purpose would be to give financially to people and ministries in need. On one particular Sunday, Jonas and I sat in our church listening to a speaker talk about tithing. Jonas and I always gave 10 percent of what we made to the church—we both felt that was the right thing to do. But on that particular day the speaker said something we could both relate to: if you don’t feel that you are making what you’re worth, perhaps you should try giving 10 percent, not on what you are actually making, but on what you feel you should be making, and trust that God will help you reach that new income level.
Jonas and I laughed to each other as we talked about the sermon on the way home, but there was a serious side as well: we were always so tight on money, living paycheck to paycheck. Yet Jonas worked very hard and was the best mechanic and auto body repairman in the area: I knew he was worth much more than what we were bringing in.
“So what do you think you’re worth?” I asked Jonas. At that time he made around $250 per week.
“I think I’m worth at least $500 per week,” he said with a smile.
Right there we decided to start giving $50 a week instead of $25 and to trust that God would send in the money we needed.
Two weeks later we were still giving the higher amount but knew we wouldn’t be able to for much longer. In those days it was common practice for Jonas to receive short-term bank loans to cover the money he needed at his business for parts, just until he received payment. In order to cover the increased giving, we had to dip into these advance payments. At that time we spent about $25 per week on groceries, and the increased giving definitely affected us. Then a man came to Jonas’s body shop looking for some help. He also ran a body shop and needed another employee. He needed the work done fast and was willing to take Jonas on full-time while still allowing Jonas to do his own work on the side.
“If you decide to come work for me,” the man said, “I’ll pay you $500 a week.”
Amazing! Yet sitting there in the tub, I was still too close to that event to see the larger significance it held. As the steam rose around me, I whispered quietly to God, “I’m willing to do whatever, I mean whatever, you want me to do. I don’t know what it is, but I’m willing. You’ve given me so much, restored so much of my life that I thought would never heal. Let me give back, if possible.”
I didn’t get an answer right there in the bathtub, but during the next few weeks something began stirring inside of Jonas and me, a feeling of restlessness, as if the time had come to move on. Then came a trip up north, back to where we both grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and during the long drive I couldn’t help but feel our path must be leading us back there again. After the trip, we returned to Texas and I remember sitting down at the kitchen table with Jonas. I told him I had the strangest notion during the drive that maybe we should move home to Pennsylvania. Jonas looked at me with a smile and said he felt the same thing.
Just the thought of returning to Lancaster filled me with so many conflicting emotions. On the one hand I felt almost giddy with excitement at the thought of going home to those old familiar hills and fields, favorite haunts, old friends, and especially family. Yet Lancaster County still held so many other, more painful, associations: Angie’s death only ten years earlier, the dividing of our church which once seemed so close. What would people think of me? My hometown is a small, tightly knit community, and by then it seemed that everyone knew everything about my life. God restored so much, but could he bring back all of our old friends with whom we parted ways so painfully? Still, I remembered the commitment I made to God, that I would do whatever he asked us to do, and both Jonas and I felt God was asking us to move home.
Finally, after many late-night discussions in bed and long days of thinking over our options, Jonas and I made the decision: we would move back to Pennsylvania. Now we just had to tell our girls.
Jonas and I decided to tell the girls about moving north over dinner. LaWonna, fifteen, and LaVale, ten, sat across from us: LaWonna’s eyes and hair were a deep brown, and in those days she carried around with her the typical teenage confusion of still depending on us but wanting complete independence; LaVale’s hair was lighter and her eyes green, and at ten she still retained more little-girl traits than her older sister. But she always had a lively spark in her eye that reminded me her teenage years were right around the corner.
Jonas spoke first.
“Girls, your mother and I have something to tell you.”
A slight pause, and both girls looked at us, their eyes full of concern.
“We’ve decided to move back to Pennsylvania.”
The four of us sat there in the Texas heat, completely silent. It took only a moment for the shock to pass.
“I’m not moving to Pennsylvania,” LaWonna said with determination in her voice while rolling her chair away from the kitchen table. “I can’t believe you would even think of it. You just want me to leave all my friends?” She ran upstairs, crying, and slammed the bedroom door behind her. At first LaVale just sat there staring at her plate, but then she too rose and slowly walked up the stairs, more likely to try to console her sister than as any kind of protest. LaVale’s mission in life has always been to preserve peace in the family, something she has been doing since before she was born when just the promise of her birth helped ease the pain of Angie’s passing. Jonas and I sat there, a little surprised by the forcefulness of LaWonna’s response. I didn’t think she would take the news so hard.
For the next few days, life became rather difficult around the house as the thought of moving north settled like a gray cloud over all of us. What were we supposed to do? Our family had finally reached a place of peace, only for the idea of moving to begin splitting us again. Finally Jonas called a family meeting and made an announcement that surprised us all.
“We are not going to move to Pennsylvania until we all feel that it’s okay, that it’s the right thing to do. So that’s it. You girls just tell us when you’re ready to move.” And that was that: Jonas and I waited. Well, it’s not entirely true to say that the only thing we did was wait: we also prayed, every day, that if it truly was God’s will for us to move north, the girls would have a change of heart.
We spent Christmas of ’86 in Pennsylvania with our family and enjoyed ourselves. The twenty-four-hour drive home felt longer that year, although I’m not sure why—perhaps I waited for one of the girls to drop the revelation that finally the time had come to move. But there was no such conversation, just miles and miles of wondering. Eventually we settled back into normal life, and 1987 got off to a good start. I mentally prepared for another good year in Texas.
One day, while I washed dishes in the kitchen, LaWonna came up behind me and stood by the table. She started talking to me, just standing there and going on about different things, which seemed kind of strange. Then, I guess after she gathered enough courage, she kind of blurted out something like, “Mom, I know you’re not going to believe this, but I really think God wants us to move to Pennsylvania.”
I turned and stared at her, completely shocked. Her face held one of the most sheepish looks I’ve ever seen.
“Are you just saying that, LaWonna?”
“No, I really want to move to Pennsylvania.”
LaWonna’s decision to obey God affected our lives immensely. Her courage allowed our entire family to begin a new adventure. Without it, we could all still be living in Texas, Jonas working long hours in a body shop. I might be happily raising grandchildren, never knowing what might have been. There would be more defining moments over the coming months and years that dramatically altered the path my life was on and in the end would bring about Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels.
There’s a photo of our street the day before we left. How I miss that street, those familiar houses, the peaceful feeling of hope, desperately hoping that the worst times had vanished behind us forever! Our house is in the far left-hand side of the picture. In front of our driveway Jonas and Aaron (my sister Becky’s husband) put the finishing touches on their creation: the “Brown Cow” (a two-tone brown passenger van) holding one of our motorcycles on a custom-made hitch and towing a trailer carrying a vehicle owned by one of our three families. The front light is on, dusk is settling in, and the street is quiet as most of the neighborhood children are inside preparing for bed.
The morning after that photograph was taken, an eighteen-wheeler parked outside of our home. The morning sun had only just begun to shine, but already the summer heat shimmered up off the pavement in lazy waves. The six of us walked out the front door and down the sidewalk to the truck: me, my two sisters, and our husbands were together and ready to load up for our move home. In the end, all three of our families decided that returning to Pennsylvania was the right thing to do, and what better way to make the long move home than together.
Our friend drove trucks for a living and said he would drive our stuff from Texas to Pennsylvania. He dropped out of the truck and came around to greet us. We all felt very happy to see him, but also excited and nervous about the move.
As we loaded the truck, he went inside to take a nap in preparation for the long drive north. We began the long task of moving box after box after box, sofas and televisions and tables and chairs, all the belongings of three entire families.
We all decided that Jonas and I should pack our stuff first, toward the front of the truck, since we didn’t have a plan for where to stay once we arrived. There we were, packing up my favorite house, leaving friends we loved, and moving over sixteen hundred miles, to a place that on one hand felt so familiar, and on the other hand so unknown. Aaron and my sister Becky had a place to live; Mike and Fi planned on staying with Mom in her basement for a little while until they found something; we had nowhere to go! Literally, we did not know where we were going to put our furniture! We went ahead, knowing that something would open up for us. Through all of the excitement, a small part of me still wondered, What have we done? Is this the right thing?
Eventually we finished packing the truck. One of the men jumped up on the tailgate and slammed the door, latching it tight. And that was that: the house sat empty, everything we owned in what then seemed a pretty small space. First the six of us stood there, an eerie silence coming from the house. Then we walked quietly inside for a short rest before the long drive and a final cup of coffee.
“I can’t believe we’re leaving,” one of my sisters said, her voice part enthusiasm, part apprehension.
“I know,” I said, shaking my head and thinking to myself, I love this place; I love this house. Why are we doing this? Why did I take that bubble bath? Why did I tell God I would do anything he wanted? I was feeling like LaWonna when she first found out about our plan to move north, and part of me wanted to yell at God, “I’m not moving anywhere!” and open the back of the truck and just start unpacking.
The coffee was extra hot, just how I like it, and we all drank slowly, savoring our last moments in Texas—we all knew we would need the caffeine for the long drive ahead. Our kids ran around, full of excitement, ready to get the caravan moving, ready for the adventure. Just then our friend came walking up to us. Strange, I thought to myself. What’s wrong? As he got closer, I saw that he was crying and visibly shaken.
He looked at Jonas and me with one of the most serious looks I’ve ever seen.
“You may not believe what God just told me, but this is what he said: he will restore every broken relationship, he will give back to you more than you ever had before, he has a plan for you that you don’t know about yet, but he will show it to you.”
Then he stopped and looked down, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say.
“I just see so much for you guys. And it’s not just spiritual blessing. It’s, well, you think this house is beautiful? And don’t get me wrong, it is. But I see God giving you things you wouldn’t believe: I see houses, I see land, I see cars, I see, I just see all that stuff.
“God is going to give it all to you. And you’re going to start some sort of a business. I don’t know exactly what kind, but that’s the key. And it’s going to happen within the first year of your arrival in Pennsylvania.”
When he began telling us about what God had told him, we just sat and listened, feeling the weight of the moment. But when he added that part at the end about land and cars and houses, it struck me as so impossible that the only natural response was to laugh: not a laugh of happiness or even amusement, but one of total disbelief.
“Thanks a lot,” I said with a voice full of doubt. “Yeah, thanks. I believe that one.”
Everything we owned was in that truck! Couldn’t he understand that? I was thirty-nine years old without life insurance policies or a plan for retirement. In the way of cash, after taking out the money we would need for gas and meals on our journey, we had an astronomical $25 left! $25! Yet there stood our friend talking about houses and land! Didn’t he know we had nowhere to stay? We couldn’t even sell our house and in the end gave it back to the bank. And cars? Didn’t he see the old brown Toyota Celica station wagon parked in front of his tractor trailer?
So where would all this money come from? Jonas was a mechanic, an amazing mechanic, but the amount he could make working on cars seemed rather limited. How could a mechanic’s business bring about all this stuff he talked about? We wanted to counsel people, but not for money. In fact, we dreamed about providing that for free to those who needed it. But providing free counseling doesn’t fatten up the checking account.
I couldn’t help but poke fun at our friend’s prophecy.
“Yeah, okay, whatever you say.”
But my response brought about a grave change in the look on his face. He shook his head with disappointment.
“Okay, fine,” he said with resignation in his voice. “There was more, but I’m not telling you any of it.”
“Fine by me,” I said, the laughter still in my voice.
I brushed his words aside and for a while forgot them completely, but the day was just around the corner when I would think of that prophecy and shake my head in amazement.
The next few pages in my photo album are full of those traveling moments: children asleep, surrounded by suitcases and makeshift beds; profile shots of tired drivers hypnotized by mile after endless mile of roads and trees and sky; rest-stop pictures and tired mornings eating in the same restaurants.
Just making our way out of Texas took an eternity. Then we drove through Arkansas and into Tennessee. Long hours, some of which were loud and fun as we all chattered over the two-way radios installed in a few of the vehicles. But more than a few of those long hours passed full of quiet contemplation, Jonas driving while I stared out the window, watching the grass, the trees, the miles flash by. We had come so far, not just on that trip, but in life, and I couldn’t help but wonder where we were headed.
As we came into Nashville, the sky darkened. We all talked over the radios, shouting to each other with each bright flash of lightning, counting the seconds separating the bolts from our cars. The girls rode in the car ahead of us. Suddenly the storm’s intensity increased.
Rain came down in sheets to the point where we couldn’t even see the car in which LaWonna and LaVale rode. The wind shook our car back and forth. The lightning flashed. After a few minutes of attempting to drive through the torrent, Jonas pulled over to the side of the road and stopped as I attempted to reach the girls on the radio.
“LaWonna? LaVale?” I had to shout just to raise my voice over the pounding sound of the rain on the roof of our car.
But all that came back through the receiver was an intense crackling.
“Fi? Becky?”
Still no answer, but all we could do was sit there in the storm and wait for it to pass. Jonas held my hand—he could tell that worry stood on the verge of panic as I thought about my girls out there in the storm. I wanted to get out of the car and run through the rain until I found them.
Then, in what seemed an instant, everything went sunny and quiet.
“Look!” Jonas said in a voice that sounded like a shout in the newfound silence.
In front of us the storm raged on, the trees bending one way. Then Jonas told me to look through the back window. The trees behind us bent in the opposite direction. We were in the middle of the storm. I still couldn’t see the girls anywhere, but the feeling of peace was so intense right in that spot that I already felt the panic fading away.
The back of the storm overtook us, and again came the feeling of fear, the feeling of being submerged. Gradually the rain died away and we took to the road once more. Soon the radios worked and all of us connected, our voices full of relief to find everyone okay. But I couldn’t shake the memory of sitting in the middle of that thunderstorm. Peace in the storm, I thought to myself. So that’s what it feels like.
One other event, a simple conversation actually, jumps out in my mind when I think about that journey north, and it happened shortly after we passed through the storm. Our caravan reassembled with Jonas and me still driving the brown van, just the two of us. As we approached the Tennessee border, we began talking more about our dream of providing counseling to couples. We weren’t affiliated with any particular church, and my experience with Pastor still sat close in our rearview mirror, leaving a septic taste in my mouth when it came to church and pastors in general. Without a church or a pastor to come to us and say, “Will you be our counselors?” we weren’t sure how to get involved. Yet we knew we could offer so much—our marriage had gone to hell and back, and we wanted to give that hope of recovery to others.
As we talked and became more excited at what we thought we could offer, Jonas started talking about building a center where families could come for all kinds of free counseling.
“What kind of counseling center are you talking about?” I asked.
“Well, a little bit like Dr. Dobbins has at EMERGE Ministries. A nice building with a lot of offices and meeting rooms.”
At first I didn’t say anything, but my eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Whoa,” I finally said, then slapped him on the knee with a laugh and continued. “So, honey, where do think you’re going to get the money to do this?”
“Oh,” he said, “I’m not worried about it. If God wants me to do it, then he’ll provide the money.”
“Well, let me say one thing clearly,” I said. “If you want to build a big building and start a counseling center, I am never, never going to ask anyone for a dime. If God wants us to do this, then he will have to do something very big for us.”
Turn the page to another photo, this one taken from the passenger seat of an old Buick on the highway, the road stretching out in an endless line before us. I can see Aaron and Becky’s gray truck loaded down, nearly dragging on the road, and the back of a trailer holding chairs, a table, and two motorcycles. The Celica races ahead, still carrying the words written in soap on the passenger-side window: “We messed with Texas . . . Penn or Bust!” In real life we cruised at 65 miles per hour, racing north, but in the photo all of the vehicles are frozen in time, waiting to drive under an overpass holding a huge green sign: “Welcome to Pennsylvania.”
Turn the page and find another sign frozen in time, this one tied between Mother’s garage roof and a tree, stretching over her driveway. Multicolored balloons the shape of giant hot dogs dangle down as we drive under it. Black and red lettering carefully written on brown paper spells out a message that still pushes tears into my eyes:
“WELL-COME on HOME!”
There we sat—it didn’t seem quite real. All of my brothers and sisters greeted us with their husbands and wives and children. The only one missing was my brother Chub, who decided not to make the move north with the rest of us—this was one of the most disappointing parts of our decision to return to Pennsylvania.
Still, I thought to myself, this is it. This is home now.
We unloaded Mike and Fi’s things at Mom’s house and eventually headed over to Aaron and Becky’s to help them move into their home. As we unpacked the trailers and moved the boxes, my brother Jake pulled me aside.
“Where are you guys staying?” he asked me.
“We’re not sure yet,” I said.
“Well, you know I’ve got that mobile home that needs some fixing up. If you and Jonas don’t mind doing some of the work around the place, you can stay there for free.”
I talked to Jonas, and we decided to accept Jake’s offer. We had a home.
The next few weeks passed quickly. Jonas did some mechanic work for friends and family and began counseling people in the community. It didn’t take long for people to find out that we were offering free counseling for couples. I kept busy by running the girls here and there and everywhere, enrolling them in schools and taking them to their cousins’ houses. But when it came to finding part-time work, I came up empty-handed.
I had worked as a waitress for numerous restaurants before we moved to Texas and naively thought that surely someone would remember what a good waitress I was and take me back. I went back to the restaurants I’d worked for but to no avail. They had already hired their summer help.
Coming away from one of them, I turned to Jonas.
“I just don’t know what’s wrong,” I said in desperation. “All these people know me and know I’m a good waitress. Why don’t they hire me?” I felt I had exhausted all of my options and gave in to tears. Then a friend of mine found out I was looking for work and offered me a temporary position at their stand in Green Castle Farmers’ Market making $100 a weekend. Jonas also worked a little for his dad, and between the two of us we were making around $1,000 per month. In our “spare” time we worked on Jake’s mobile home (in which we lived)—Jonas did the plumbing and some electrical stuff while I worked on things like cleaning and painting. Life was busier than ever, but we all felt happy to be around family again.
Then came another blessing out of the blue, another fateful moment putting me even more firmly on the path to starting Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels.
Late one Thursday night, Jonas and I sat in the small mobile home we were fixing up for my brother Jake, when one of his kids knocked at the door.
“You’ve got a call, Auntie Anne,” one of my nieces told me.
We didn’t have a phone line to the trailer, so if someone wanted to reach us, they would call Jake’s house and then we would go in and take the call.
I walked the short distance to Jake’s house and picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi. I know you don’t know who I am, but I heard you’re back in town and looking for work. I started a market down in Burtonsville, Maryland, and need some help on Fridays and Saturdays. Are you interested?”
“Sure,” I said, a little disappointed that it wasn’t a waitressing job. “I have nothing better to do. When do you need me to start?”
“How about tomorrow morning?”
“Sure.”
That was that. I worked for him that weekend at the Burtonsville Farmers’ Market, and it went great. The job was all about customer service and cleaning, which suited me perfectly. But there was one other important point—our main product was soft pretzels.
Anyway, I worked hard that weekend and enjoyed myself. But there were still a few restaurants I was waiting to hear back from regarding being a waitress. I would have been more comfortable waiting on tables, and I thought I could probably make better money through tips. Plus, the five-hour round-trip drive to Burtonsville seemed like a waste of time.
On Tuesday the stand owner paid me another unexpected visit.
“Anne, you did a great job this weekend.”
“Thanks, I really enjoyed myself.”
“Good. Good. Anne, I’d like you to manage the stand for me.”
Silence.
Me, a manager? I nearly laughed in his face. I had no managerial experience, no idea what to even do with the money at the end of the day. Payroll? Employees? Inventory? I had never done any of it. Yet somewhere deep inside of me, I felt intrigued by the challenge and knew I could do it.
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve never done that type of thing before. I don’t have any experience.”
“That’s okay, Anne. You’re a hard worker. I saw you flying around that place on Saturday. I can teach you everything you need to know. I really think you’re the right person for the job. I know you can do this.”
After talking a little longer with him, my mind was made up.
“Okay. If you think I can manage your store, then I’ll give it a try.”
The next day I got two calls back from restaurant owners who said they would hire me. I turned them down simply because I didn’t want to let my new employer down—secretly, I desperately wanted to accept their offers, and if they would have called a day earlier, well, who knows how things would have turned out. In any case, I began my short stint as manager—little did I know that only a few short months stood between me and owning my very first business.