The Narrow Way: Persevering Through Betrayal & Opposition

Hello, All!

Last night and this morning, I found myself occupied with less spiritual matters—Beck and I seeing our kiddos lined up in a tent and piling their sleeping bags high with extra blankets. We’re tucked beside a creek high in the Rocky Mountains, where there’s no cell phone service, but we’ve spotted moose, elk, deer, trout, and the brilliant golds, flaming oranges, and greens of fall in Colorado.

Tent camping removes nearly all barriers between you and nature: the cold drafts, the sounds of the river, the calls of night birds, and the rustling that the kids imagine might be a bear. Two of my kids woke with a start, convinced they heard the low rumble of a black bear just outside the tent, only to discover it was Daddy snoring, courtesy of his sinus allergies.

After pulling my handmade Daddy’s biscuits, cream gravy, and sausage off the hot coals this morning—imagining it was a bit more like how our ancestors used to cook—we sat around sipping hot drinks, soaking in the solitude, the beauty, and the warmth of the fire on our cold feet. :-)

After cleanup, I wandered down a trail canopied by aspens and evergreens sparkling with dappled sunlight. I wanted a brief moment of isolation to pray and gather my thoughts. Sometimes the beauty of life on the land at home, or the exceptional moments we share with family, make the anger, madness, and lies swirling around us feel distant. We could almost imagine a world of kindness and peace. As I prayed, my thoughts turned to the recent struggles we’ve faced—the absurd media smears, the ongoing efforts to clear our names, and the stress caused by those who’ve chosen a different path but cannot be content to let us live and enjoy our lives. As I walked and prayed softly, I thought, “I need to get back down to cell service. Something has happened, and I need to check in.”

My 14-year-old, Connie, volunteered to go with me, and I agreed to pick up an extra blanket in the small town an hour and a half away. Beck assured me that she and my oldest, Aviva, would work on high school evaluations in the serene setting outside our tent while Sean and the younger ones fished the stream, hoping to catch a brook trout or two. Sean, just 13, is such a hard worker around the campsite—though they all are. The kids, now including three teenagers, amaze me in every new phase of their development.

Even little three-year-old Ella, who loves gathering sticks for the fire, helps out with the others—cleaning, cooking, moving gear. The older ones prepare the fishing poles for the younger ones. It almost brings me to tears—not just because of the beautiful colors, weather, and glory of nature around us, but because of the rare miracle of a beautiful family.

The Battle of Two Natures

As Connie and I bumped down the rugged 1.5-mile “road”—more like a creek bottom—toward the county road, our conversation turned to dreams for the future and the nature of living for God. I told her how, at 14, I made up my mind to live for Jesus, no matter how hard it would be. We talked about God’s grace and how that pivotal experience with His Spirit doesn’t give us everything we’ll ever need but introduces us to the One we’ll always need—reminding us that we can go to Him in every circumstance, and He will help us.

Still, I told her that throughout life, we face two natures inside us. It helps to picture them as two pets we care for: a puny new pup and an aggressive teenage dog. The pup is like our new self—our spiritual nature of love, kindness, and integrity, our child of God. But alongside that new beginning is a robust, fleshly nature with a head start. It feels like an unfair fight—the teenage dog eats the other’s food, corners him into little spaces, and grows stronger by the day.

But our will—the power to make free choices—decides which nature we feed and care for: our selfish, grasping nature or the new beginning we received through the Spirit. The latter is fragile and tentative, but if we protect it, feed it through prayer and God’s word, and exercise it in the small obediences Jesus prompts—kindness, service, love—it will grow stronger. One day, it will evict the bully of our baser nature from the yard.

I thought about how my own mother gave me a similar talk when I was young and how a faithful believer gave that same talk to her. This is where it becomes real—where the third and fourth generations of our community learn to face the battle, embrace the struggle, and give it all they have. I told Connie it’s not easy. Living for God isn’t about receiving a big package from Jesus that solves all your problems. People who expect that will be constantly disappointed. It’s going to be hard, and it will cost you time, energy, and emotion. But in the end, if you persevere, you’ll have something to show for your life, just like your grandparents and your aunts and uncles. You’ll see the contrast—those who chose what they thought was the easy road, and those who stuck with the narrow way that leads to life. They would tell you—choose life, no matter how hard it may be.

The Agony of Betrayal

Our conversation was abruptly interrupted as my phone regained reception. The pings started coming in like a volley of shots—ping, ping, ping. Some messages were from our missionaries overseas, whom I look forward to speaking with shortly. Others were about practical matters—discussing new book publications and challenges. But then my heart sank as I saw multiple messages announcing another smear job against our community, this time by the left-leaning UK-based tabloid, the Independent. We knew this was coming. Michele, the reporter, had sent us a list of “gotcha” questions so baseless that even answering them felt like walking into a trap already set and baited.

Her article claims to tell the traumatic horrors of former members of Homestead Heritage—people allegedly abused by our midwifery tradition or neglected by our educational approach. But those who know these individuals understand how absurd their stories are. We have the letters, text messages, and newsletter publications where they described these same events differently before they spun them for the reporter years later. We have the facts, the history, and the reality of having lived with them and loved them genuinely. And perhaps that’s the most painful part—we can’t stop loving them, even though they’ve clearly chosen to hate us.

Jesus warned, “You will be hated by all men for My name's sake” (Matt. 10:22), and that’s exactly what we are facing. When not a word of this has ever been spoken to the community, and the first step in “exposing” these matters and “seeking truth” is to demonize and vilify an entire community through the megaphone of a leftist tabloid, how can we take their supposed pursuit of truth seriously? We cannot. The first truth we would invite them to seek is honesty behind their own motivations.

I am also reminded of Jesus’ warning: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). It’s a sobering reminder that following the narrow path often means being slandered, ridiculed, and hated by those who don’t understand or who oppose the truth.

The Battle between Truth and Lies

For 50 years, we’ve taken the approach of minding our own business, living our lives, and letting our open community speak for itself. But the bullying against our small minority faith group hasn’t stopped. People feel that we won’t push back or stand up for ourselves, so they keep piling on with more absurd claims. I don’t know if they believe their own stories. It’s possible, consistent with the psychological mechanism of reaction formation, that they resolve their internal cognitive dissonance and pain over leaving us by demonizing us to justify their choices.

Why, someone might reasonably ask, are they telling these horror stories about midwifery? I don’t know all their reasons, but I do know they never said anything like this while they were here. We have their exact words in writing—text messages, emails, letters, recordings of public testimonies they gave immediately after the births—where they expressed the wonderful experience they had. So why are they telling  these stories years later? They do so because they know what will be most sensational and believable in the media. The bitter rarely tell the truth when it comes to slandering those they loathe. No one is interested in the real reasons they left because they’re too personal or benign. But they count on the public being deceived. We will never resort to hatred, lying, or misrepresentation. But we will seek vindication of the truth.

We haven’t sued anyone in 50 years, despite egregious lies and unethical media behavior. Some may claim we’ve lost our way by taking the steps we have recently. But I appeal to the apostle Paul and his example. When religious zealots sought to destroy him, he appealed to the local Roman authorities. When unjustly beaten in Philippi, he invoked his Roman citizenship and reversed his mistreatment, insisting that they release him publicly since they had wrongly imprisoned him publicly. In these instances, Paul used the law when truth held no sway over unethical people. After much prayer, we’ve filed a sweeping lawsuit in an Alabama superior court against three entities behind the recent media madness.

Today’s new smear job in the Independent comes from a journalist who spent over a year interviewing a handful of angry, bitter individuals. On the flip side, she sent us a list of “gotcha” questions, demanded a response in three days, and refused any further discussion. Official correspondence—letters and texts—between Tabitha and her former Café Homestead employers utterly disproves her claims, showing that she left of her own free will and was generously compensated with severance.

We want to believe people know better—that fake news has been around long enough for them to see through it. But then another voice warns us—be careful, because we belong to a minority faith group toward whom prejudice is still tolerated. These lies can gain traction among those who don’t know us, and that’s the point. They’re exploiting fears of the unknown, tapping into personal biases, especially against a version of Christianity that seems too restrictive or conservative.

And then we remind ourselves—thank God we’re as open as we are. Thank God tens of thousands can see us for who we really are, worship with us, and make their own decisions, free from the skewed lens of a media that thrives on rumors, hearsay, and gossip designed to harm and destroy.

In a previous post, I explained the psychology behind ex-member hatred and distortion when telling horror stories—something not unique to faith-based groups like ours. When strong bonds are broken, bitterness and misrepresentation often follow. But we admit that we feel more vulnerable than any political figure or group. We are different. Prejudices against our way of life, our dress, and our educational approach haven’t been challenged by the broader public or discarded like other forms of bigotry. People are less likely to examine their assumptions or question their knee-jerk reactions. We feel that vulnerability keenly.

It’s painful—beyond words sometimes—to see the love you’ve poured into people’s lives twisted and turned into weapons against you. But, as I told Connie, living for God isn’t about an easy road or quick solutions. It’s about making the choice, again and again, to walk the narrow way, to persevere even when it costs us time, energy, and emotion. We will answer these lies. We will present truth for the fiction being spread about us. We will protect the future of our children and the way of life we cherish. And, just as we discussed, our will decides which nature we feed. We will not feed the bitterness and hatred but instead nurture love, kindness, and integrity.

Perseverance in the Face of Adversity

Our new nature will grow stronger as we protect it through prayer, God’s word, and small obediences—just like feeding that fragile pup. We will refuse to let these attacks define us. We will not become like our accusers by resorting to lies or sensationalism. Instead, we will continue to build the future by walking in the light, knowing that if we persevere, we will have something real to show for our lives, just like those who’ve come before us.

We will keep on. We will keep praying, believing, sharing God’s word, tending our gardens, running our businesses, raising our families, and being a community. We will live out what I shared with Connie—that through every struggle, there is the promise of growth if we make the right choices. If my experience has taught me anything, it’s that storms of bitterness eventually pass, leaving those causing them soon needing help, healing, and forgiveness. We want to be that place—with open arms, soft hearts, and sincere compassion—where prodigals can return home.

So, we take it as a compliment that we’re making a difference, that our way of life and faith is worth attacking. We’ll continue to be faithful, humble, determined Christians, armed with truth and guided by love. And we’ll continue to strengthen the new nature within us, knowing that the battle is not in vain. The narrow path may be hard, but it leads to life.

So, there’s my newsletter for the week. Now I’m heading back up into the mountains where there’s no service, to pack up and come back down. Two nights disconnected is something to be thankful for, but we’re not called to be separate from the world’s harsh realities. We’re called to be in it but not of it. And in that calling, there’s no greater privilege than standing up for the truth, even when it’s hard. It’s a fight we’ll never back away from, and I pray you’ll join us—in prayer, in spreading the word, and, above all, in love for each other and for God.

Warmly,

A.Z. (Asi) Adams

* Clarification Regarding Tabitha Haugh:

This post has been updated to reflect that, as of September 19, 2024, the charges of disorderly conduct and discharge/display of a firearm against Tabitha Haugh have been dropped. We also corrected an earlier mistake where we said “parole” instead of “bail” before publishing the blog, and we apologize for any confusion this caused. Information about Haugh’s arrest came from public records, including her mugshot and charges. Because her charges were dismissed the day we published, we promptly removed the statements and issued an immediate correction.

— A. Z. Adams