PREPPING…

The parking lot is full and this old man comes shuffling out of the store with a lanky teen walking next to him.  Our town is filled with cold purpose.  Everyone is gearing up and battening down, ensuring they have enough essentials to survive the impending storm.  Two feet of snow and howling winds, the media has peered into it’s crystal ball and shouted "Blizzard! The end is near!"

Shelves at the Walmart are bare of bread and minus milk. The toilet paper isle is spare with perhaps no square to spare.  I sit in the truck, watching people, surmising what they deem essential for survival as my husband waits in line to purchase feed for our chickens, goats and sheep. 

I'm too vain to leave the truck when I still have my pajama flannels on underneath the dark brown Carhart coveralls and coat that I affectionately call the turd suit (because that is how I look). 

The old man shuffles towards his truck.  The teen is patient with his friend’s effort.  Their snail-like cart is obviously loaded to capacity, but I can’t see the contents.   I only see the inching of their torsos above the hoods of parked cars.

It seems most of town is wearing camo and hats.  Are we all going hunting?  Elmer Fudd comes to mind and now I'm involuntarily humming "kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit".  

 I look into the carts of strangers and gather clues about who these people are by the contents.  What is essential?  

One ample woman in a tired, limp coat and matching fur lined hat gets into an ancient mercedes.  She looks like she hasn’t showered in a while, and yet she is wearing a skirt and has nylons on.  Nylons are an effort!!  Kudos lady!  She throws her bagged purchase haphazardly into the back seat, then opens the driver side door, points her backside towards the seat and lets her entire mass give over to gravity as she flops down onto that seat.  She then pivots her suspended barely covered legs into the car and slams the door shut.  

This is when I see that the window is covered in yellowed tattered plastic.  It's possible that she is on her own, and my stomach knots uncomfortably because she is unreachable.  One old woman in a beat up car going who knows where, and it’s not wise to knock on her thin holey window to ask,"Are you alone?  Do you need help in this storm?”  I watch her drive away and wonder how cold it must be to drive with a partially exposed window while wearing a skirt and nylons.

Praying feels like a copout, but I pray for her anyway, that someone who is close can reach out and provide assistance or at least get some new plastic on that window, and maybe bring her some warm socks or a coat that hasn't lost all of its stuffing.

The old shuffling man and his teen load the back of his rusted sun faded green pickup.  The cab shakes as each load is dropped.  The engine sputters, then pushes white smoke from the tail pipe.  He puts it creakily into gear, pulls forward passed me, and I nosily peek into the truck bed to see what brought him here to put forth so much effort right before a blizzard.  

The truck bed was filled with at least 8 large bags.  My first thought was cows.  Cows might need 8 bags of feed during the 3 days we were predicted to be snowbound.  But then I scanned a bag and saw pictures of birds and sunflowers. Instantly this wave of awe overcame me.  Birdseed was his essential thing.  Not bread and milk and toilet paper but birdseed.  The least of these, he's taking care of the least of these.  Creatures who don’t belong to anyone are his priority. 

No news anchor will interview him and point out this extreme kindness. The shortage of bread, milk, and bottled water is the newsworthy footage.  Not many will know of the goodness of this aged man and his helpful teen.  The birds will know.  I know.  Now you know. 

There is kindness.  Maybe it takes nosiness to find it.  

Hum it with me.  "Feed the birds. Tuppence a bag."

WAIT

The belated Christmas Confession. It was all the Chickens’ fault.

Starlings fly over me.  A flock flittering right over me, and I feel them. 

No really,

I could feel the very life of them.  They circle back as if they sense my doubt and prove it again.  Head to toe, I feel them all, electric and humming. 

One dandelion pushes up stumpy in the December grass, smiling through this season's attempt at winter.  Me in short sleeves, arms bare to the feathering of a gentle wind, and it's Dec 12th. 

I wait for the teenaged chickens to finally go to bed.  They are as unwilling as human teens, circling the barn door then following a new whim. Defying the creeping darknes.  Rebellious.  Plain rebellious, and I love them like my exhales depend on their soft clucking. 

On inhales I pray that God protect them from stupidity.  The same deep call I repeat for human teens.  The same prayer encoded in some base pair twisting in the nuclei of each beings' cells.

Unmoving, I soak up this 10 minutes of non-rushing, non-flapping and non-flittering. Entirely glad for the inconvenience of waiting for birds to tidily go to bed. 

The skies fall darker each minute, pressing the chicks toward the door.  Finally they flow in, and the waiting is sadly over. Busy-ness once again presses hard.  Close the door, fill the feeders, check the water, and walk briskly back to the house where chores have surely multiplied in my absence. 

Christmas seems to have turned into a feat of plate spinning by a naughty cat in the hat. “No I do not like this not one little bit.” Yet, I am trapped in the going, doing, buying, and selling of my soul. Trapped by a seasonal job at a call center where selling to the desperate-busy seems like taking advantage.  Like selling snake oil. Like promising them a sacred Christmas space walled in by purchased items made cheaply in far away factories. 

I count the advent days today, but not in anticipation of celebrating the birthing of God who came to save us, came to get us, came to love us out of our traps. No, as if to prove that He came for a wretch like me, I count the days until it’s OVER!

I wait for the days when it's all simplified and tidy.  

Maybe I am hoping for the right thing.  Maybe I know deeply that only He can give me the gifts I need like flocks of birds to soothe or chickens come to keep me still and silent and peacefilled.  Maybe that's just Him come to save me.  

That’s what Jesus translates to, “God Saves.”  And I would add "Me" to that.  He saves Me from walls made of plastic and leads me to the "real" electricity of creatures and the hum of clucking and the presence of this electric current in Everyone.  

Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com) writes that Peace is not a place, peace is a person.  We sing of Jesus, prince of peace, and I want peace, am hungry-desperate for peace.  There is peace in chickens and flocks and women and men desperate for the right gift. 

If you can stare into space a bit and breathe with intention and let your other senses loose, it might be clearer.  It might come as a gift, wrapped or not, being so weighted in the present.

Now, He is here for me, and He is coming for me, and He is peace in each exhale and flap of chaos. THIS Peace loves us. 

I feel it!  

A PAUSE

A PAUSE

There has been a pause in this blog, but certainly not a pause in writing. 

I have written long and unpublishable things, rants really - spoiled child dissertations about rights and unfairness and love and letting go.  When sorting out is hard, you don’t go public.  You wait until chaff is blowing towards the trees and you’ve cleaned up a little, cleared your throat, and washed your face. 



CHRISTMAS CARDS

When my youngest son was 9, in the middle of the Christmas rush, he left our kitchen filled with the soft hum of Christmas music, and quietly walked outside.  When I couldn't find him I panicked.  When I found him and heard him, the panic was just beginning.  He had locked himself inside of our minivan and wailed to me he wouldn’t come out because he hated his life and wanted to die, specifically freeze to death.  Of course, I easily extracted him from the van (I had keys), but it would be years before the sorting out of depression, anxiety and autism was in a state where we could address it, talk about it, understand it, live peaceably next to it and stop blaming “it” for taking our son’s intended life from us.

The outgoing Christmas cards never went out that year.  Then, like now, too much sorting out.  The outgoing Christmas cards haven’t made it out since, but not so with this blog.  Thankfully, this sorting is a fraction less complex.

TRANSITION
The current sorting started last Summer a little before the Wholesaler I sold produce to folded their business up into a tidy chain of words: "we will be closing as of September 11th."  Slightly before that my very level headed and loving husband announced that he didn't want the farm any longer.  He wanted to get rid of the animals, sell it all off and live like “normal” people do.  

a Storm Approaches

So I gasped for air.  Over and over.  Gasping and grasping sorting out the tug of war.  Not even sure what the prize was should I win.  If we stay, then he is unhappy which ultimately makes me unhappy.  If we go, everything about who I am is stripped down and I will have to spend my days clean and dressed appropriately, smelling like the “normal” people. 

A TRUCE  
He conceded that we could stay until the youngest son graduated, if I would agree that there would be no additional animals to the farm.  We agreed to stop farming by attrition.  In the hopeful corner of my mind, we get to stay here, but outwardly I am lobbying for buying a 5 acre lot and building a “farmette” so we can keep the animals we have until they die, but live in a lower maintenance house.  If that should ever come to fruition, I plan to lobby for only 3 chickens and 2 dairy goats. It's my 5 year plan, and my tenacious mate is prepared for the battle.  After 24 years of marriage, the man knows me and the hopes I harbor.  He absolutely doesn't want to build a house and wants to live on a lake or river.  Negotiations continue….

This is Whisper's Negotiation Face

THERE IS PEACE

I'm not angry anymore.  Truly, this life of dirt and eggs and fruit and vegetable production is no longer sustainable.  It takes 2 people to build any kind of family life and if one person is unfulfilled, then the whole schmear is unsustainable.  A farm needs at least 2 and maybe 10 people who are invested up to their armpits in order to thrive.

Rose Hips drying

Making Grape Juice

Neck Pumpkins for Pumpkin Pie
Enough for an Army really! 

Roasting Tomatoes for Sauce

THANKFULNESS 

Each day, the rising and setting sun, is so new as if I see it for both the first and the last time.  Each day, I ready this place for the eventual real estate sign at the end of the driveway and our journey to a sustainable life.  Each day I count the crows, moos, and baas and mehs and store them in the corners and folds of my mind.  I hear the opening line of "Out of Africa".  That breathy exhilirating whisper, "I had a farm in Africa."  “I have a farm in Virginia” continues to fill my soul.

The Fab Five Teenage Chicks Check Out the New Windows

Replacing the Old Broken Windows With Old Unbroken Windows

Residing the Barn, Step 1: Tear down

My Sweet Husband

LUCKY

All in all, I am living "the dream", and fixing up this old place for sale is part of it.  Someone else will get to make a fresh start of it.  I imagine a young couple with ambition and strength building upon the foundation we laid just as we built on the foundation that the Hills, the originators of this farm laid.  I had hoped to grow old here, maybe die in the same bedroom that Mrs. Hill died in, roam the house as a ghost like Mr. and Mrs. Hill do, and bounce blessings off of the walls like their gentle apparitions continue to do.  But perhaps, that is someone else's destiny, and mine is to figure out how to become civilized again.

UNTIL
Until then,

I will grow

and harvest

and cry

and laugh

and dress funny

and smell like dirt and manure

and pound nails

and prepare for something a little more mainstream and maybe a little easier on my bones and heart. 

And I will love my husband for his honesty, and for the gift of these 13 years here and the gift of having my dearest friend as my partner these 26 years.  Above all, I will remain steadfastly thankful for every favor God showers on my expectant heart. 

Goodness!

Passion Flower (May Pop)

Palms up to Catch Every Good and Perfect Gift