An Amish Winter Trip Gone Wrong (Part 8): The Cost of Saying Yes

Author Haley Straw returns today with the final part – 8 of 8 – of a new winter-themed series, drawing on one of her more challenging experiences as an Amish taxi driver. Part 1 is here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, and part 5 here, part 6 here, and part 7 here if you missed them. A special thanks to Haley for sharing this story with us.

The van heater hummed while snow blew sideways across the windshield as we pulled away from the Amish farmyard.

By the time we left that community, I felt like I had been awake for a week. The sensation of dizziness, slowness of thought, and emotional overwhelm washed over me. I had never been drunk before, but I found myself wondering if this was what it felt like.

Allen carried the weight of getting us home. I stayed awake longer than I should have, not because I was strong, but because I knew he needed someone beside him.

After that many hours on the road, just having another set of eyes awake in the passenger seat makes a difference. We were a team, even when we were both running on fumes.

Somewhere along those back roads, his frustration finally broke loose. He let out a string of words that don’t usually make it into polite company.

“Why did we agree to this? Why do we do this?”

He wasn’t wrong to ask.

We had risked a lot. The van rattled and shook from packed snow forced up into the engine. At one point the alternator stopped putting out volts. Later, we learned half the fan blades had snapped off.

When we reached the first open gas station, Allen crawled underneath in the cold, feeling around in the dark until he found the problem. Then he broke off the remaining cracked blades so we could limp home without the vibration tearing something else apart.

Winter roads have a way of finding every weak spot a vehicle has — and sometimes the weak spots in a person too.

The storm followed us the entire way. Snowdrifts gave way to ice, and the roads grew slicker the farther we drove. On one lonely country road, we slid straight through a stop sign and nearly hit another vehicle. If Allen hadn’t turned the wheel when he did, the story might have ended very differently.

We weren’t the only ones struggling. The GPS kept warning of stalled vehicles ahead. Everyone was trying to get somewhere in conditions that didn’t care where you needed to be.

Eventually exhaustion overtook me. I stretched out across the bench seat and finally slept — lightly and fitfully, but enough to give my body a little rest.

When we first agreed to take that trip, I had reservations. My gut told me we would run into trouble, but that we would come through it safely. That is exactly what happened.

The emergency itself was not life or death. Their original driver had canceled because of the storm. The families still wanted to make their Christmas trip.

For Amish families, leaving home like that doesn’t happen often. These trips are a rare break from the routine of daily life, and they had been looking forward to them.

And we said yes.

Among the Amish there is a common saying: save a mile to save a dollar. They stretch things where they can. Drivers end up doing our own version of that too — squeeze in one more trip, make one more run before the weather turns worse, earn a little more before the year ends.

No one intended harm. But good intentions don’t erase risk.

We damaged our van. We lost sleep. We put ourselves — and our passengers — in situations that could have ended very differently. And just when I thought we had paid the price for that decision, we remembered something else.

In a few short days, we would have to drive back to Wisconsin and pick them up.

Sometimes saying yes feels generous. Sometimes it simply feels like the right thing to do in the moment. What you don’t always see right away is the cost that comes later.

Somewhere along that drive we realized something we probably should have understood earlier — the hardest part of the trip wasn’t behind us yet.

The Amish have a saying: “Trouble teaches lessons comfort never could.”

This was only part one of the Christmas journey.

The rest was still waiting for us.

Anyone who has driven long winter roads knows that sometimes the trip home teaches the biggest lessons. Have you ever had a journey that turned into more of a story than you expected?

Haley Straw is a barefoot Amish taxi driver with a storyteller’s heart and a knack for gathering the kinds of tales the Amish share on long, quiet night drives. She tells these stories the way she experienced them —with raw honesty, a healthy dose of fear, and the hard-won wisdom that comes from surviving the storm. This winter series is drawn from her book Amish Christmas Mishaps. You can find her books, free Amish-inspired goodies, and more at haleystraw.com.

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