It was more than a year ago now when we first saw our farm. As Linne, our realtor, worked to open the battered door, we could hear a fire alarm screeching away inside the empty house. It blared the entire time we were there, and it continued after we left. The temperature inside hovered at about 15 degrees Fahrenheit, at the empty rooms were full of shadows because there were no working lights. Orange stickers decorated the sinks and toilets to say that they had been filled with anti-freeze, and that pipes were missing. As we all stood in the frigid basement, Linne reassured our children that it feels funny to be in a house that is so dark and cold, but if our family lived here, we would have heat and lights and running water.
When we looked out the windows of what is now our bedroom, I saw trees at the end of a field – the same kind I saw in my heart during the silence of Quaker worship for more than a decade. Before we left, my husband chased the children in a shrieking, giggling circle through the kitchen, dining room and living room, and it looked like the place could be home. The children and I sat inside the car with the heater blasting during the last part of our visit as Ian romped around a little bit to check out the land around the house.
In some ways, our lives were uprooted on that day, and I expect that months or years will go by before it feels like we are really settled again.
We ended up with the farm purely through Grace. After making our first offer to buy the place, my husband became very worried about the finances and about the dangers of buying a foreclosed property, and we withdrew the offer. My mother- and father-in-law offered some financial help, and we tried to put our offer back in, but another offer had already been accepted. The next weeks were miserable as my husband struggled so mightily with regrets that they turned to serious depression and almost everything else in life came to a halt. His mother flew out from the East Coast to offer moral support and give extra attention to the children. It was a scary time, and I felt like I needed to decide what I would do if I had to choose between my husband and my dream of going to the fields. It was clear that I would choose my husband.
My husband was barely on his feet again one Sunday a few weeks later, and I was putting on the children’s coats to go to worship when Linne called. The other family that was trying to buy the farm had an emergency and needed to pull out of the deal. I’m so grateful that the call came just before worship because we were able to hold the news in prayer with the help of our beloved worship group. It felt then, and it feels now, like God opened the way for us to buy the farm, and along with that gift came responsibility of moving to the country and doing our best to be faithful there.
The drama was not completely over. When banks to sell foreclosed homes, they can be unresponsive and quirky right up to closing. Our loan also fell through without warning as the company that was lending money to us was purchased by another company that did not make loans for farms. Everything worked out though. After years of imagining how hard it would be to leave the beautiful life that we built in Minneapolis, I felt uncharacteristically matter-of-fact about the whole situation. I guess I felt more like a technician, doing the work that needed to be done, but feeling like the big decisions were in the hands of my boss.
I think I will look back on the purchase of the farm the same way I sometimes look back on my courtship with my husband. (Our courtship was much more fun than trying to buy the farm, thank goodness!) In the thick of a relationship, or in the ups and downs of trying to start a farm, people can forget why they are there in the first place. In my relationship with my husband, I never forget for long, and I always turn again to orient myself steadily and gratefully towards love. I pray that the same will be true in our relationship with this land. Whether we live here for the rest of our lives, or for only a few years, I pray that we will always be focused on the movement of the Spirit, and that we will be able to follow faithfully.
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