Culture and the Family of God - RuthAnn's Story.

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” - Ephesians 2:19 (ESV)

Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire society." As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, and art. I had no idea for the first 27 years of my life how deeply culture affects a person. I also had no idea that the culture I was raised in was so thorough in separating its members from the rest of the world that ‘leaving’ the community would throw me into such a deep, deep culture shock that it would take me 10+ years to heal enough to write about it and begin to find my identity in Christ.

I was born into a family of ‘Old Order Mennonites,’ also known as ‘Horse and Buggy Mennonites.’ The ‘Old Order’ Mennonite community is a deeply religious culture. There are many rules and practices that keep members from experiencing a culture other than the one created by the church leadership. They have a deep commitment to community and a marvelous work ethic that inspires those in communities around them!

At the age of 19, I became a member of the church. By 20, I was married, and by age 21, we had begun our family. As a family and as individuals, we were very average Mennonites! We bought our property, my husband worked hard to provide for us and to make mortgage payments, while I began my culturally acceptable, lifelong career in homemaking and raising a family. The culture and the lifestyle were our security, and the acceptance and belonging to the tight-knit community, our salvation. We valued our community and our peers and their approval. We did what was required of us to stay in good standing with the only culture we knew how to function within.

Until one day... I met a lady who talked about God as if she knew Him personally. I was so intrigued. Seeds were planted, and a burning within my soul began! God brought families from a local ‘non-denominational’ church across our paths, and slowly, with their influence, my husband and I began seeking the presence of God more than we sought the acceptance of our Mennonite community. We were eventually excommunicated from our Mennonite church and community, and we continued to seek God’s will for our lives (and by this time, for the lives of our 2 daughters). We became members of a local non-denominational church. Our children started attending the church school, and we had 2 more children (eventually ending up with 7 children).

The Culture Shock

The culture shock is what I want to talk about! It felt like what I imagine it feels like to move to a different continent. There was language I had never been exposed to. I did know English quite well (although PA Dutch was our primary language), but the language of a culture raised with media, TV, movies, and radio was new to me. There were so many references in everyday life that I didn't get. Our new church potlucks exposed us to a whole new menu of dishes. Not to mention that our mode of transportation was drastically different! Homemaking looked so different in the new culture we were trying to fit into. For the first time in my 27 years, I learned that some folks (most folks) buy their pie crusts ready-made from the grocery store and dry all their laundry in the dryer. In fact, not one of my friends in my new community had a laundry line.

Slowly, the insecurities started to set in. I was no longer accepted in my old community, and I was struggling to fit in with my new community. I started trying to ‘get rid’ of my old-fashioned Mennonite ways and trying to fit into my new community. And boy, did I struggle to become modern! There were, of course, some things that I took to right away—driving a car and wearing pants being a few. Wearing jewelry, wearing my hair down, and wearing paint on my nails were some things that I just couldn't get used to. And although I loved the convenience of buying all our food at the grocery store like those in our new community (instead of growing and raising it), I couldn’t get used to the taste and lack of nutrition in store-bought foods.

Belonging to a Greater Family

Slowly and gently, God started a work in my heart. I was working so hard to leave the culture of my childhood. I wanted no part of that culture—the culture that meant shame, hurt, and abandonment. I wanted to fit into the culture of the modern world, the culture where I believed true freedom was! The freedom to cut my hair or not cut my hair, the freedom to visit any public place I desired, the freedom to choose my own mode of transportation. But neither of these cultures—neither the one I was trying to fit into nor the one I was trying to leave—brought me any peace!

I wandered for a few years, trying to accept the fact that I wouldn't ever fit comfortably into either culture. As I accepted this truth—the truth that I wouldn’t fit into a culture—I started leaning into God. He’s the one who brought me this far; He understood what it felt like to ‘not belong.’ And in my leaning in, a wonderful thing started to happen. God started pouring His healing presence over my searching soul! The healing balm of the Lord started seeping into my soul, and He began opening my eyes to the beauty in both cultures. I started feeling a deep sense of belonging.

I belonged to the family of God! I might as well have been raised on a different continent for all that I didn't have in common with some of my new friends, but I had the most important thing of all in common with them. We shared a Heavenly Father! To this day, I marvel at the beauty of some of the relationships I have now because the only common denominator in our lives is Jesus.

In my healing journey, I have also come to develop a deep appreciation for the culture of my childhood and early adult years. I have skills that I otherwise wouldn't have had I not been raised in the Mennonite culture. I am no longer ashamed of where I come from because it wasn’t a mistake. God lovingly planted me into that culture, where I had a deeply functional family to grow up in. I learned gardening and homemaking from my mom and grandma to a level that most in the modern world would love to achieve. Milking a cow by hand is as second nature to me as riding a bike, and preserving the harvest doesn’t intimidate me in the least.

I belong to God’s family. I'm not meant to feel at home in any culture here on this earth. If a culture becomes our guide to morals and accepts us completely, then it has become our god. It matters not how conservative a culture is. If you are seeking the acceptance of your community and culture over the will of God for your life, then your community/culture has become your god.

God had to remove me completely from the culture of my childhood to show me that I belong to His family. He had to remove the comfortable acceptance and the ability to fit in to show me that His acceptance was the only one that mattered. God hasn't wasted even a day of my life, using every single experience for His glory. I, in turn, don't want to waste even a single day not serving Him.

About RuthAnn: RuthAnn and her family live in Northeast Iowa, She and her husband Elvin have been married for 25 years, and have 7 children, 2 sons-in-law, and 1 grandson. Five of the children still live at home. RuthAnn and her husband have been homesteading on their 21-acre homestead since 2001. They seek to preserve the self-sufficient lifestyle of their Mennonite Heritage for the next generation by involving their children in every aspect of the homestead, from raising and harvesting the meat they consume to gardening and preserving to fill the family's larder, processing the dairy from the family milk cow plus the many other skills that develop the character, integrity, and relationships of a family that desires to bring glory and honor to their Heavenly Father. Follow her on Instagram @ruthannzimm