Then there are those days that cling to our memories - days we wish we could forget.
I woke up to the phone ringing. I stumbled out of bed, barely making out my roommate's mother's words as she urged me to turn on the TV. I stood in awe and fear as I watched the World Trade Center dissolve in ashes, with the date - September 11, 2001 flashing across the ticker on the bottom of the news screen.
Some days are beautiful - full of fun and wonder. Other days are the eye of the storm, a storm that perhaps has been raging for quite some time and we wonder if we will make it to the next day. I am quite blessed to say that - ER trips and health scares aside - my story as a wife and mother does not have too many pages that contain days I wish to forget. Because even on the toughest days, I still saw God's hand in delivering us through it.
I shared briefly in my very first blog post about how I never had intended on becoming a farmer's wife. Farming was NOT in the cards for me. EVER. Or so I thought. I was clinging to the false illusion my darling fiancé had drawn for me... we would live happily ever after somewhere not near Illinois farm country where he grew up. He pinky swore.
Every year, at harvest time, he would venture back home to help out his dad and brother on the farm for a couple of weeks. I figured it was really good for him to stay connected with his "old way of life," envisioning that our "someday" children would love visits to the farm to experience tractors and combines and corn and things like that. After one of his yearly trips, he came home and told me that he felt called to move up north and farm with his family. The music stopped. Puppies everywhere were sad. WHAT. "Who called you?" I remember asking. "Are you sure it was God? He knows who you are married to!!!"
We had been married for a few years at this point, with no kids in tow just yet. I told Eric I would "pray" that God would call me to be a farmer's wife IF He was, in fact, calling Eric to be a farmer. And we would just see about that.
Well, several years and two kids later, things had started to change. By "things" I mean, my heart. Eric's desire to move back home to farm country had grown stronger. So had my resistance. I was adamant that God was most definitely NOT calling me to be a farmer's wife. I enjoyed Starbucks and easy trips to Target. What would the boys do without the splash pad at Bridge Street? Life was good in Huntsville, Alabama. But... actually it wasn't. 2010 was a rough year. Eric and I weren't seeing eye to eye on this whole moving situation. I had been hurt by a particular situation at the church we had been attending, so we were hopping from church to church on Sundays, and certainly not consistently. Relationships were changing all around me, and for no apparent reason. I was growing restless, and couldn't attribute it to anything. I began to feel isolated and disconnected from my own dream. What was my life shaping out to be?
It finally hit me one day that I was growing discontent with living in Alabama. I complained about the dang fire ants every day, couldn't stand the heat in the summer and missed snow in the winter. I remember praying one night, asking God why I was so miserable, and heard a response ever so clearly. I wasn't going to be "called" to be a farmer's wife. That was going to happen when I submitted to my husband and allowed him to be the spiritual leader of this family. By not submitting to my husband's leadership, I was being disobedient to God. And God was allowing me to grow discontent right where I was at. He got my attention, loud and clear. I remember the moment when I told Eric that I would agree to move up north and begin a country life. And immediately, our prayers shifted from a big IF to a big WHEN.
Now I need to interject here, that even though I had submitted - both to God AND my husband - I was still kicking and screaming about it. This wasn't an easy choice to make, and a huge part of it was because I'd be leaving my own family behind in Huntsville. My mother and I are extremely close, and the thought of living that far away from her was just about unbearable. Of course the Lord knew all of this, and that's why he very carefully and deliberately placed Kelly Minter's Bible study on the book of Ruth in my hands, in April of 2011. As I dug into this study, I felt myself identifying with Ruth's story. A woman - an outsider - lost her husband but remained faithful to her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi. At a pivotal point in Ruth's story where she has a choice to stay with her own family, or follow Naomi back to a new and foreign place, Ruth made a plea Naomi couldn't refuse.
"Don't urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." Ruth 1:16-17
As my eyes fell on these verses I saw flashes of my own life intertwined within them. I felt confidence, for the first time, that God was really calling our family to Illinois. Ruth - a pilgrim with reflections of my own heart - her story written on the pages of the Book I trusted more than any other, was leading me towards the life I was destined to live. As I unraveled this book of the Bible verse by verse, I felt myself awakening to the possibility that this life I was being called to might be... a really good thing. As I gained peace about the decision to move, Eric and I looked ahead for possibilities of when this move could happen. Finances, a very poor housing market, and uncertainty as to where we would live once we moved (if we could even sell our house), pointed us towards the following year at the earliest. The idea that we would make the move soon - as in a few months - wasn't even a possibility as far as we both were concerned.
It was the end of April. Spring was in the air. The Bradford Pear trees were in bloom and an array of colorful tulips were brilliantly stretching towards the sun. Eric was needed at the farm to help with the planting season. I couldn't go with him because Gabe, who was 7 months old at the time, had an appointment with a specialist in Nashville that we couldn't miss. So, Eric took Jack with him to the farm for the week, and left Gabe and I behind in our cozy little house. After three days of precious mommy and baby bonding, along came one of those days...
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
I woke up to the sound of storm sirens blaring. It was 5:something in the morning. I did what I always did when I heard the sirens - I turned on the TV. The weatherman mentioned strong winds and heavy rain, and if I am being honest, NOTHING ever came of any of these storms. The sirens went off almost every week during the spring and even in the fall at times. I was pretty much numb to them. I turned the TV on mute, eyes still fixed on the small little blob of red moving across the screen, and drifted back to sleep.
A hungry baby woke me up not too long after the sirens went off. And then the sirens went off again. And again. By 8:30 am, the sirens had screamed five different times. A huge storm passed through mid morning, knocking trees down in our neighbor's yards and covering the ground with hail that measured over an inch wide. After this storm passed, I collected some of the hail in my hand and sent a picture of them to Eric. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the ground was white with ice. I'd never seen anything like it. I decided after this crazy and relentless weather, that it might be a good idea to sit at the table with a cup of hot chocolate and do my Bible study for the day. I'm so thankful I did.
My study for the day was titled, "Arriving : A Hopeful Glimmer." At this point in the study, Ruth and Naomi were arriving at their new destination. For Naomi, it was a home she had left long ago, for Ruth it was new and unfamiliar. I was prompted with a question: "Have you prayed or waited for something for a long season? If so, have you seen a glimpse - no matter how small - that God is working?" As I thought about the number of years Eric and I had spent in prayer about whether or not farming was a lifestyle meant for us, I read the portion of the study that brought Ruth to her new home in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning. As harvest was beginning... these words settled on my brain like magical pixie dust and before I knew what I was doing or saying I had Eric on the phone and was informing him of the revelation I just had. We would be living in Illinois by harvest time. I felt it in my bones. There was no doubt in my mind. God had given me a picture that exploded in my mind like a watercolor painting in motion. I saw me and my boys, watching Eric in the fields as he harvested the corn. God had given me a glimpse. A hopeful glimmer.
As I wrapped up my study and went about the rest of my day, I felt such peace. I couldn't believe it. We'd be moving in just a few months. How would all this work out? I had no idea, but for the first time in years, I knew it was right. I knew it was from God.
By 2:30 in the afternoon, another hail storm has passed. The sirens had wailed at least six more times. My parents were coming over for dinner, so I had just finished searing a beautiful roast, drowned it in some really good wine in my dutch oven, threw in some fresh rosemary and thyme and placed it in the oven. The house smelled AMAZING. At 4pm, I was on the phone with my mom when the sirens went off for the 14th time that day. As I was speaking to her, I lost power in the house. She informed me that she had lost power too. There went the roast. I hung up with her just as my phone died and went to peek in on Gabe, who was asleep in his room. I headed for the window in my bedroom which gave me the best eastern view of the sky. My heart stopped beating.
The sky was an eery fluorescent green color, with a long, dark gray cloud that cut straight across the horizon like the blade of a knife. The cloud then dipped drastically towards the ground, making contact with the earth in a place I could not see. I ran through the house to look out the front windows but the rain was hitting the house sideways like someone was standing in front of it with a fire hose and I couldn't see a thing. The rhythm of the wind pushing against the house was like that of a propeller blade - a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh... relentless and strong. Panic set in quickly. We had nowhere to go. Our ranch style house was sitting on a slab of concrete. I stood in the middle of my living room, watching the tall oak trees in my back yard bend and sway. It was as dark as night outside.
Lord, is this it? Is that a tornado out there? We have nowhere to go... nowhere to stay safe. God, please protect us!! Anchor the trees in our yard. Don't let them fall on us. Lord, keep the walls of our house strong! Jesus, please protect us!
I remember crying as I prayed, the words pouring out with fear and worry. And then it hit me like a wave and washed over me from head to toe... peace. The storm was raging outside, the pictures on the walls rattling... but my heart was still. And I heard Him whisper to me...
Did I not just give you a glimpse of where you will be at harvest time?
Yes. Yes, He had given me a glimpse! I saw ALL of us in that glimpse. We were all there, standing amidst the harvest that my husband was currently sowing. Tears of fear turned to tears of relief, and I knew in that moment that Gabe and I were going to be ok. That hopeful glimmer was all I needed.
The wind eventually died down. The power did not turn back on. The F5 tornado that just missed our house by 1/2 a mile had been on the ground for over a hundred miles. Gabe and I spent the night in a quiet house lit by every Yankee candle I owned. The following morning, upon hearing that the northern part of Alabama was in a state of emergency and would be without power for at least five days, I packed up the only cooler we owned with every bag of breast milk I had in the freezer and made the nine hour trek up north to be with my husband.
As I drove past the leveled and obliterated houses that I had passed every day for the past several years, I wept. This all was too close to home. An older man, a grandfather perhaps, stood in the middle of some rubble that used to be a bedroom. A partial wall still stood, painted purple. He shifted a large piece of debris and found a doll that he handed to a little girl standing beside him. I had a long, emotional conversation with God during that cross-country drive. I was wrestling with some big questions and raw emotions. But I settled on the fact that our God is a good God. The same God that delivered peace and protection to me and my child during that storm would deliver peace and provision to the families who lost everything.
Three years later, I am experiencing God's faithfulness to the glimpse he gave me on that day. Not only are we all here, living in a quaint little farming community, but we are living that life ABUNDANTLY. We are so blessed here! The very life I was so resistant to claim, was the life that would bring me more joy and purpose than I could ever imagine. Today I am thankful for a God who knows me better than I know myself. I am also thankful for the storms I have experienced. Without them, I wouldn't have seen God's deliberate and protective hand weaving my story into His.
Heather, I was so blessed by this in so many ways. Oh how the Lord provides, sustains us, and fills us with His peace !
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