Good morning all. I am feeling so blessed beyond measure as things continue to unfold right before my very eyes. We have had a dream of simpler living for a long time. A time to wake up in the morning and see God’s hand out a picture window if you will. Of course you can always see His handy work when your searching for it but this is a little different. When we were called to have this kind of lifestyle, we knew it would be different, it would be labor intensive and we would have a lifetime of knowledge to catch up on. We switched gears, got out of the “American dream” mentality, pulled the kids from public school, my husband quit his “job”, we got animals, learned to live off the land, my quiet husband came out of his shell and began his calling to minister to people that came out to hunt….. it has been quite an adventure. As we have been called to this lifestyle it hasn’t been easy. God has given us dominion over these animals and called us to be good stewards of this beautiful planet we get to call our temporary home. Thinking outside of the box and using regeneration farming practices has been a passion of ours to fulfill that obligation to our creator and future generations.
Some people use the term “I stumbled across” this or that. I like to think of it as God had to trip me in order for me to see what he was trying to show me lol. So, I will say instead that lots of information was divinely placed in my path. After a while, I began to see these “stumbled across” things as “it was Jesus” and stopped tossing it up as just a chance happening.
I’m going somewhere with all of this if you can hang in there lol. We have been blessed with a huge house and when all four of our kids where still home (and a few extra that we helped raised) all that space was very necessary. When they started moving away the empty rooms became a burden and a huge house with just three people living in it was overwhelming. So, we opened our home up to guests who come to experience the things we have to offer. This allowed us to pay for someone to clean and help with other things. It allowed us to start other ventures and create a thriving business for our family.
Because of the pandemic, our family run, thriving venue that took over 10 years to build was… murdered, dare I say even slaughtered and only within as few as 3 months. With my husband’s health declining after his back surgery, I was struggling, drowning really. Keeping up with all the chores, homeschooling our daughter, the farm, the business,…my sanity..ugh. Instead of planning events and scheduling parties and classes we were overwhelmed with cancellations, told to shut down and basically told stop living and on what was supposed to be our biggest year ever.. it was indeed the exact opposite. We prayed for answers and worked diligently, but it seemed hopeless for things to turn around and “get back to normal”. Everywhere we looked it was trouble and heartbreak. In what is our biggest income season, we were shut down, had no clients; with family and friends passing away on a regular basis: spiritual battles taking physical form… it was a long hard year. Then, just as it seemed it couldn’t get worse, a major tragedy struck our family right
around Thanksgiving.
When one is struck with tragedies, you find out who God wants in your life and those whom you need to leave in the past. You find out if you are strong
enough to “pray for your enemies and those who persecute you.” or if you will let your heart grow bitter. While it is much easier said than done, try not to loose sleep over other people’s actions, gossip or the like. Just pray for them and God will reveal to you that your worth isn’t found in others but in Him, our creator. You will find where your help comes from, my help comes from the Lord Psalms 121;2. So while it may seem like people making bad choices with your friendship and trust is a bad thing, it’s really just God picking out the sticker weeds so you can walk barefoot through the garden. It’s so much easier to bear fruit without the weeds stunting your growth. Psalm 25:19~21 Look upon my enemies, …… Guard my soul and deliver me: do not let me be ashamed, for I take refuge in you. Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you. I needed this verse so much this last year. When I was struggling and praying for help and begging God to restore my husband’s health, when our business was taking one hit after another and people who you thought were friends turned out to be just the opposite, when life is just one big train wreck,, it’s so hard to keep from doing and saying things you will be ashamed of later. Its hard to keep your integrity and guard your soul. It’s truly impossible without God.
Everyone that knows me, knows that I would not just go on and on about all the bad things that happen to me, at least not without the happy ending. With a lot of prayer, and pulling together of our close friends and family, let me just say that through that major tragedy a prodigal has returned. Isn’t it just like God to bring such a blessing in such a terrible time? We are not out of the woods with this tragedy, but we believe the worst is over and the prodigal now has a hope that is only found through our creator and he is no longer doing this “alone” spiritually. I believe he is experiencing God’s peace now that he has allowed God back in. A peace that only comes from God, exceeding anything we can understand. This peace that will guard his heart from becoming bitter and guard his mind from dark and self destructive thoughts. (Philippians 4:7)
As far as my husbands health, well we were divinely led to a doctor that does IV therapy with vitamins and minerals. It has helped in such a way we never knew possible. While he hasn’t received full healing that we know is possible as all things are with God, he is able to handle most days well beyond our expectations.
Back to our large house and the overwhelming responsibilities that came with this calling; and the real catalyst for this blog. In December we had the honor of renting our house out to a large family in need. This put into motion our dream of “going tiny” (a tiny house living term). Ok more of my dream and less of Clint’s dream to go tiny. Lol With finances being as they were, we moved into our small camper while this family became the newest members of our tribe. While we all originally thought it was going to be a temporary thing, it turned into a permanent situation and we couldn’t be more delighted.
After living in a very small camper for over 5 months (so small that my husband had to take his boots off to be able to stand straight up without touching his head on the ceiling), today we bought our forever “tiny home”. So, here I sit at my picture window, feeling the love puddle from my cup that overflowith. While things may not ever be the way they were, it’s ok they aren’t meant to be. God has plans to prosper us and not to harm us and continues to show us that. (Jeremiah 29;11) He is faithful and we have everything we need and so much more. This lifestyle that he called us to do and our yielding to that has been our saving grace through all of this.
I pray that this brings you a new hope and that you choose to lean on God through it all. Don’t let life lead you to ‘choose bitter’.
Life is like a garden. Figure out what you want planted in it; be sure to choose a variety of things you want in your life. Plant them and take care of it, tend to it as you would a garden, not letting any one plant take over another. Weed out the things you don’t want and be ok with pulling the plants that aren’t bearing good fruit. I pray that you find the balance and the peace that passes understanding down in your heart, down in your heart to stay. And I pray that you take the time to watch your garden grow from your picture window.