Twist of Faith Read online

  I thought for a moment. What would be a clear sign that I should tell them?

  “Okay, God, if it’s important for me to tell my brothers and sisters about the sale, have Sam Beiler call me and tell me he thinks I should tell them.”

  That was something I couldn’t imagine happening, but within twenty-four hours he called.

  “Anne? This is Sam. Hi. I’ve been thinking, and I know this hasn’t been our approach so far, but I think that you should consider telling the siblings about the sale.”

  A few days later I found myself waiting in a small diner close to our head office. My coffee was hot, but outside the restaurant the December air was freezing cold. I had decided to meet with them one-on-one to tell them about my decision to sell the company to Sam. The first one would be there any minute.

  By the beginning of 1978, Pastor arrived in Texas, and my initial happiness at his arrival quickly turned to pain, mental anguish, and the guilt that only comes from keeping secrets. Once again I found myself drawn into a web of lies, secret rendezvous, sneaking here and there. Guilt. An overwhelming sense of confusion—if Pastor asked me to run away with him, would I? Could I leave Jonas and the children? I constantly thought about what I would need to pack if the opportunity presented itself.

  This went on for three more years, nearly five years total from the months following Angie’s death to the summer of 1981. But then, as soft as a gentle breeze, something began changing in me, something that yearned for the old days of simplicity. I wanted out of the pain and confusion. I finally realized that the pain I experienced by being with Pastor had to be worse than the pain I might feel if I left him. I began considering it in my mind, even talking to him about it.

  “I’m not happy,” I told him one day in a restaurant somewhere. “I’m not happy with the way I’m living.”

  “But you’re happy when you’re with me, right?” he would ask.

  Most of the time, I thought to myself. But not a genuine happiness, just a superficial kind of momentary happiness that comes and goes with my passing moods.

  There was another realization, though, that hurt me to the core and finally led me on the road to my freedom. I began realizing that Pastor was meeting other women, the same way he met with me. I started seeing his car parked at friends’ houses or at places we would often meet. I began to realize that he lied to me all the time, manipulated me to no end.

  At times I would see his car parked somewhere with one or the other of my sisters’ cars. My breath would catch in my throat. Surely not, I thought to myself. Surely not. A feeling of overwhelming despair would rise in me. When I approached him about it, he would deny everything, but I started to see through his lies. I started to see the truth. He had been maintaining a relationship with both of my sisters the whole time, constantly driving a wedge deeper and deeper between us so that we would never find out, would never talk to each other about it, would never find freedom.

  Finally the desire to be free of him became greater than my desire to be with him. I just wanted to be a happy wife and mother again. Then came the weekend I will never forget, the final push I needed to cut loose from Pastor. I remember one Saturday night suddenly feeling this urge to see my sister Fi, just to give her a hug. I so badly wanted to be close to her, the same way we were while growing up together. I thought back over the previous five years, how Pastor would make sure we couldn’t spend time together.

  I prayed to God, asking him to make it possible to sit beside Fi at church on Sunday morning. I thought that one small step would go a long way in healing our broken relationship. Sure enough, when Jonas, the girls, and I walked into church the next morning, there sat Fi with four empty seats beside her! I couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat there with no one planted in the chair next to her. My heart kind of skipped a beat and I led the family down and took those four seats.

  As I sat beside Fi, I felt comforted. She gave me her warmest smile and seemed glad that I chose to sit beside her. Then she put her arm around my shoulders and just gave me a squeeze. A simple act of kindness, but one that drove me to tears. I couldn’t stop crying and tried to hide it from Fi, but she just held me tighter.

  After church we talked for a little while, and I felt refreshingly alive. Then another surprise.

  “Why don’t you come over for coffee in the morning?” Fi asked.

  I just nodded and could feel the tears of happiness rising again, but inside of me an excitement began to stir. I knew from years of random encounters that Monday morning was the time she spent with Pastor. If she was asking me to her house on a Monday morning . . . could that mean she had left him? I couldn’t imagine.

  The next morning I drove to her house fighting off the doubt and returning pessimism. So many times Becky and I or Fi and I planned to have coffee together, only for me to arrive and find they weren’t home—later I would usually learn they had suddenly been called to the church by Pastor to help out with something. You cannot imagine my surprise when I came up the road and saw Fi’s car in the driveway.

  When she answered the door, the first words out of my mouth were full of shock.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be with Pastor this morning?” I asked, completely unable to rein in my curiosity.

  That represented the first time we ever spoke of our encounters with him to one another. For five years the subject remained taboo, but suddenly the power of that secret was crumbling. Just mentioning the secret made me feel stronger, and I wondered if I might have the strength to start a new life free of him.

  “I left him,” she said simply. Suddenly an intense hope rose up in me—could I do that too? Could I regain a normal life? Could I be happy again?

  Fi’s encouragement over the next four months finally gave me the strength to do what I so badly wanted to do. So one morning I called Pastor and told him I needed to meet him at a restaurant for breakfast. While driving there I kept saying the words over and over again in my mind. “I don’t want to see you anymore.” But inside I still felt intense doubt regarding my ability to actually say those words to his face. I pulled into the parking space and looked up. He waved at me from inside. I got out of the car and walked to the door.

  December 2004. I sat in the diner waiting for the first meeting to begin. The lights weren’t very bright, and I think it was one of those cold, cloudy winter days, so there wasn’t much light coming in through the windows. I sat over a steaming cup of coffee, just reflecting on what I would say and wondering how my brothers and sisters would handle the news that I was selling the company.

  That whole Christmas season nearly overcame me with its happiness, excitement for a new start, and also some sadness at the thought of selling Auntie Anne’s after so many years. I couldn’t help but think back over all of the things I had been through as a person, the obstacles we overcame as a company, the struggles and successes we experienced as a family. We had come so far in those twenty-five years, from being a totally broken family unit to being whole again, working together for nearly twenty years, spending holidays together, and going on family trips. Times were good again, and we functioned as a family should, mourning together in sad times and rejoicing together when good moments came along. The last thing I wanted was for the sale of Auntie Anne’s to send us back into the dark ages again.

  I was very nervous about telling them—the only thing we ever discussed with them regarding the sale of the company was that we were considering selling the company to my daughters or implementing an employee stock option plan. But as I met with each of them that day, I felt their support.

  Most of them showed surprise at the timing as well as some disappointment that the company wouldn’t be staying within the family. Yet most of them were also pleased the company wouldn’t be sold to an outsider who most likely would have uprooted Auntie Anne’s and attempted to integrate it into a larger corporation. One of them wished I would have discussed the possibility of selling the company to them. But at the end of each meeting,
they all made one common point: they respected my decision to sell the company to Sam and were glad I told them.

  As I got back into my car that afternoon, I felt weary from explaining myself over and over again, but also extremely relieved that the whole thing was over. As I drove home and the car began warming up, a sort of relaxation set in that only comes after a long-dreaded event has passed. Little did I know that the shock of the announcement would soon wear off and disappointment would set in. How could I know? My greatest concern at that time became telling my employees, an announcement I planned to make on January 4, just a few short weeks away.

  I walked into the restaurant in June 1981. Fi’s encouragement had finally brought me to the place where I felt ready to leave Pastor. Finally inside, two conflicting feelings blasted me in the face: on one hand, I felt a physical relief at entering the coolness of the building (it was June in Texas, after all, and the weather was hot), but on the other hand, I felt the heat of anger rising up inside of me as soon as I saw him sitting at his table so nonchalantly.

  I allowed him to steal so much from me, and during the last few weeks I’d begun realizing just how much of my life had been lost because of to his abuse of power during my time of vulnerability. I walked up to his table and sat down abruptly. I was on a roll and feeling determined, and the anger rising up inside of me gave me a special kind of courage. I had to tell him right away, get straight to the point.

  “I’m not going to see you again,” I said, speaking through a haze. The whole moment seemed like a dream, a moment I had relived so many times that when it actually took place, I couldn’t believe my senses.

  At first he tried to smooth-talk me, coming across as very forgiving and easygoing. He was a parent talking to an upset child, playing along for the moment, trying to get to the root of the problem in order to smooth things over. But that wasn’t it. I wasn’t momentarily upset with him—I was making a permanent decision, a life change, and nothing he could say would sweet-talk me into deciding any other way.

  Finally he lost his patience.

  “You can’t make it without me,” he said, almost sneering.

  “We’ll see,” I said calmly. Inside I got angrier and angrier, but somehow I kept my cool.

  I think he could tell that none of his approaches was working, and he simply said, “I’ll run away with you. Come away with me. We’ll leave everyone else and just go away, just the two of us.”

  I knew he was lying. He had strung me along for years with that promise. During the years after Angie’s death, I’d felt so depressed that all I wanted to do was get away, and it was this constant promise of his to take me away from everything that was often the reason I stayed with him. When he told me there in that restaurant that he would run away with me, I did something I never even thought about doing, something I didn’t even expect. I laughed in his face.

  “No. I’m finished,” I said.

  I got up to leave.

  “Let me tell you one more thing, then, if that’s how you feel,” he said slowly and with determination. I paused for a moment and looked at him just before turning away. He stared me right in the face and said something I have never forgotten.

  “I will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

  I walked out to my car and drove away.

  During the next few weeks and months, things were difficult. I still faced temptation, almost daily, to go back to him, to confide in him again. He called a few times, but after answering and hearing it was him, I never said a word. Sometimes I would listen to him talk, wanting to see him again. But I knew that if I met him again, I would just be going back to that old fear and sadness and slavery to an old secret. Eventually I learned to just hang up when he called.

  For six months I rejoiced in the fact that I’d left him. I felt so free. As I look back on my life, I see now that those few months represented God sweeping into my life and literally tearing me from the jaws of evil. During those months God completely rescued me from a life of unhappiness and despair. It was as if I was just about to fall into a bottomless abyss when God came swooping down and carried me away on eagle’s wings.

  Not that the road back was easy. As I said, I faced many times of temptation. And now that I had recommitted myself to Jonas and the girls, there was a lot that we had to work through. At first I resolved not to tell Jonas—I thought it would just be too painful for him and for me: I was embarrassed by the deceptive life I’d lived, and I certainly didn’t want to disappoint my two young daughters. But six months after I left Pastor, events began to turn, and suddenly I found myself in a position where I had to tell Jonas about my nearly six years of secrets.

  The emotional part of Auntie Anne’s was hard to let go. You’d like to think that some things just last forever. But at the end of the day, I can’t even accurately describe why I sold the company—the only thing I can say is that when it came to owning Auntie Anne’s forever, well, it just wasn’t meant to be.

  It’s not that I didn’t feel qualified to own the company, inspire my employees, be the public face of Auntie Anne’s, or influence the business world. I felt very comfortable in those roles. I think that sometimes God honors what we want in our lives, and maybe he knew that deep down I yearned for more time with my husband, with my girls, and with my grandchildren. But I also believe that God wanted me to step out in faith again with almost no knowledge of what lay ahead.

  Just as God entrusted me with $6,000 back in 1988, so too did God entrust me with the sale of Auntie Anne’s and millions of dollars. There was no particular reason that I started the first Auntie Anne’s at Downingtown Farmers’ Market apart from the fact that God put it in my path so I could support Jonas and his vision. I can say the same about the sale of the company. We are determined to be as faithful with the amount we received on selling Auntie Anne’s as we were with that first $6,000 he blessed us with.

  My seven-year-old grandson, Cristian, had an interesting take on the sale of the company. I was putting him to bed one night when he looked up at me.

  “So, Nee Nee, I hear you’re selling Auntie Anne’s,” he said, and tears welled up in his eyes, started rolling down his cheeks.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s okay, Cristian.”

  He didn’t agree.

  “No, it’s not okay!”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” he said with a very troubled look on his face, “then you won’t be the boss anymore.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s all right. We’re selling the company to Sam. You know Sam, and you know his kids.”

  For a moment that seemed to address his concerns. But only for a moment.

  “Does that mean that Sam’s picture is gonna be on the coupons now?”

  “No,” I said, trying not to smile. “We just felt like we needed to sell the company so that we would have more money to do what God wants us to do.”

  “But, Nee Nee. I thought you had a lot of money. I thought you were rich.”

  And with that he turned his head toward the wall beside his bed and wept. I put my arm around him, but he just shrugged me away.

  I said, “Cristian, I am sorry that you feel so bad about it.”

  Then he turned to me and said, “Well, I don’t care. I just don’t like it.”

  I couldn’t understand why he would care so much about our decision to sell the company. A few days later I told the story to my brother Dale, and we had a chuckle about Cristian’s response.

  “But that’s exactly how I felt,” Dale said. “I just don’t like it.”

  Suddenly I appreciated Cristian’s honesty. He didn’t try to change my mind or make me feel bad for the decision I made. He didn’t hide behind a bluff of anger or blame. His complete honesty about how he felt was so much easier for me to deal with, and so much healthier for him. He got mad, grieved, worked through it, and moved on. Meanwhile, the time came to tell the rest of the company.

  January 4—time to tell the employees. I sat in th
at first conference room at 8:30 a.m., waited for the first group to show up. They filed in and sat around the boardroom table with me.

  “I have an announcement to make, and I won’t keep you guessing,” I said. “I sold the company to Sam.”

  I stuck to a basic outline of points, trying to explain as best I could why I sold the company, why I thought Sam was the best buyer, what I looked forward to in life outside of Auntie Anne’s. Toward the end of each meeting, I tried to rally everyone around Sam as the new leader. I wanted everyone to feel as good as I did about the sale, and even though I knew it wasn’t possible, I did my best.

  The support that I felt from my employees at Auntie Anne’s completely overwhelmed me—nothing but positive support and incredible respect. I have dear, dear friends at the company, some of whom at that point I’d worked with for nearly eighteen years, so there was bound to be a few tears. The groups involved in operations were especially difficult to tell because for all of those years they represented my heart to the franchisees—perfect pretzels, clean stores, and friendly service. So many of them became as passionate as me when it came to upholding our high standards, and I greatly appreciated them during my years there.

  Finally the day came to a close, and as I ushered the last group out of the conference room with hugs and good-byes, I felt mixed emotions. Relief that the day had ended and everyone knew my plans. An empty sort of finality that we were actually selling the company. Excitement for the new adventure, a new time in my life. And some sadness when I thought back on all the great memories, all the wonderful people, all the amazing experiences that I would not experience again.

  I sat down in my office and took a deep breath, running about an hour late for the final debrief with my siblings. When I finally walked into the room where they sat, I was shocked at the level of anxiety and tension in the air. After all of their initial support, after the immense support I felt from the employees, something changed. My siblings couldn’t understand why they hadn’t been included in the process and expressed their disappointment. I felt devastated and all I could say was , “I am sorry. I am sorry you feel this way.” I left the building feeling that old familiar tug of depression and darkness wanting to pull me down.