Helen Byler, MTS ’18

“It’s important—even if we don’t stay in the religious tradition we were raised in—to be grateful for it, whatever it is. God uses those traditions, those people, and the communities we were raised in to make us into the people we’re supposed to be.”

Helen Byler was born in Ireland and raised in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where she now lives again after six years of exile in Idaho and Massachusetts. She graduated with her BA in liberal arts from New Saint Andrews College and her MTS in Jewish Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Helen is currently working on becoming more like Jesus and Jon Levenson, and spending as much time as possible with the two loves of her life: the Hebrew Bible and her fiancé, Caleb.

Life in a Mennonite Community

I grew up in a conservative Mennonite community in Virginia. One thing I value about my upbringing in the Mennonite church is the emphasis placed on scripture memorization. In school we memorized a number of books—1 Peter, most of Galatians, a lot of Psalms and Proverbs, the first few chapters of Genesis, the passion story from John, and the sermon on the mount, among other passages.

At home, we memorized a lot of scripture as a family. My mom would write scripture passages on big pieces of construction paper. She would cut out pictures from magazines and Sunday school books and paste them on the paper so we had pictures to go with the Bible verses. Before we were dismissed from the dinner table, we would read over a couple of passages and memorize them together. We would all have to recite the scriptures at some point before my mom would take down the passages we’d been working on and put up new ones. We would always get a chocolate bar for reciting the scriptures. I chose a Hershey’s white chocolate cookie bar every time.

Those passages we memorized as a family have been a comfort and a joy to me over the years—especially during the first few years after I moved away from home. When something is going wrong, the words come back to me. You can always go find those words in the Bible, but there’s something special about having them in your mind. They come back to you when you’re struggling, when you’re tired, when you’re depressed. God brings them back to you in the times you need them the most.

One of my favorites is from Lamentations 3: “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his passions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” That passage has come back to me so many times. Having those promises of God in my head, at the ready when I need them, has been such a gift.

Gratitude for My Upbringing

I left the Mennonite church my senior year of college, and I thought that the phase after leaving would somehow be magically different. But I take that tradition with me wherever I go. And I’m so incredibly grateful. I didn’t realize how grateful I was for the way I was raised, for the community I had in the Mennonite church, and leaving is a decision that I’ve second-guessed many times since.

It’s important—even if we don’t stay in the religious tradition we were raised in—to be grateful for it, whatever it is. God uses those traditions, those people, and the communities we were raised in to make us into the people we’re supposed to be.

Working in Home Hospice

I’ve been working in home hospice care since my senior year of high school, for about six years now. Growing up, families would hire you simply because you were Mennonite. They trusted that the Mennonites wouldn’t steal and that they wouldn’t mistreat their loved one who needed care. I started working because I needed money for college. I was able to work night shifts and go to high school during the day. I was usually able to sleep enough at night that I could survive school the next day. I worked a couple of nights a week.

For college, I moved to Idaho. There were no Mennonites in that community, but because I had work experience from high school, I was able to get a live-in job in Troy, Idaho. I moved in with a woman to take care of her. I still can’t believe I did this, but my parents and I drove across the country and I moved in with someone I had never met to do a job I had found on Craigslist.

She didn’t want me there at first. It took a few weeks for us to get used to each other. I had an apartment in her basement. I would cook her meals; after school, I’d spend a few hours with her before she went to bed, and I would leave for school before she got up in the morning. After she got used to me being there, we built a beautiful friendship and she became like family. I took care of her for three years until she passed away during my junior year of college. That was one of the best experiences of my life—learning to live with someone, to take care of someone that doesn’t want to be taken care of but that needs help, learning to respect someone’s privacy when you’re in their home.

“Practical” Work

I’m still doing home hospice work now. I work mostly overnights so I can go to school during the day. It’s hard to balance work and school. But when I started college, I knew I was going into a field that was not seen as very practical, and I wanted to also do work that would let me serve in practical, hands-on ways.

Growing up, there was a strong emphasis on hard work and practicality. Mennonites are very practical—you learn how to be a housewife, to cook, to clean. My dad’s business is making storage sheds. A lot of Mennonites are farmers. It’s a lot of work focused on the basics of living—and living simply—and my choice to attend a liberal arts college was probably seen as really out there. I was reading The Aeneid in Latin, I was studying theology and philosophy and art history and history of mathematics—all of these things that seem so theoretical. People asked why I would spend money to do that. So going into college, I wanted something that would keep me grounded, that would let me keep serving in a practical way, so I wouldn’t lose touch with people who aren’t in college or who aren’t studying the same things.

The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

But I personally think studying the Hebrew Bible is the most practical thing possible! I’m finishing my master’s degree now, planning to do a PhD, and I would love to teach at the university level—or teach anywhere, really. I love teaching, love the Hebrew Bible, and I’m up for any doors the Lord opens in that area.

I still feel some pushback—people asking, for starters, why would I go to school for so long? It’s a lot of money to spend on college. Why would I spend my life doing something so theoretical, something so ungrounded in reality? It’s not going to make much money. But what I’ve chosen to study, what I feel called to study—the Old Testament—is one of the most practical things we can study.

We have the word of God. It’s His gift to us, it’s our songbook, it’s a love letter from Christ to His people, it’s our handbook for living. It’s our handbook for how to live in the world God created, how to deal with it, how to love it and nurture it, how to relate to people, how to live as followers of Christ, how to love people, how to bless people, how to be a blessing as foretold in the Abrahamic promise—that through the descendants of Abraham, the whole of the world is blessed. How do we do that? All of that information is in Scripture!

Sometimes people say it feels like God is so far away. But we have God’s word—He gave it all to us in this literarily complex, rich, beautiful book. Why would we not want to devote our lives to learn it and teach it to others? We have God’s presence through this book. It’s the living, breathing word of God, and He uses it to speak to us, to teach us, to lead us, and to show love for us today in everything we do.

Photos by Jenna Alatriste