I am five months pregnant, and I'm having contractions much of the time. Last night, they were so intense that they made me walk with a limp, and it seemed as though I were contracting for the majority of several hours with short breaks in between. I camped out on the couch, drank nettle tea, and let my husband fix dinner for the family. Then he worked in the garden, drove 5 miles to the gas station to buy gas for the tractor after it got stuck, took care of the chickens, and washed dishes. He went to bed in the wee hours of the morning and rose at five to go to work.
I am reminded of one of my favorite parts of the Bible. It is in the book of Luke, and it cracks me up every time I read it. Jesus says that if somebody sins against you seven times in the same day and says he is sorry seven times, then you have to forgive him every single time. At this point, Jesus had been teaching at great length without interruption, but that last instruction is just too much for his disciples. “Lord, increase our faith,” they say. I giggle at this because I just know that a millisecond before they said, "Increase my faith,” some of them must have thought, “You have got to be kidding me.” I can just see their faces drop in that moment before they got their act together and said the perfect thing.
I am in the “you have got to be kidding me” phase. When I think about it though, I throw in a little prayer and say, "Lord, increase my faith.”
I work long and hard every day with my children, the farm, and our home, and most of my work is totally invisible. I'm leaving a huge gap here, and I'm afraid I'm the only one who understands how huge the gap is. Folks are stepping up to help. Yesterday, Ian's father mowed most of our huge lawn. Today, one friend drove my daughter to orchestra practice, and another is bringing supper. Tomorrow, my mother is coming down to provide backup for me so my children can have play dates here while Ian goes to a farm auction. We are not without loving support, but I am still not clear how everything is goig to get done around here.
My midwife says not to worry. I have not shown signs of true preterm labor, and she has worked with many mothers who have experienced similar contractions, and then are still pregnant a week after their due date. But in the back of my mind I am trying to prepare myself for what it would be like to lose this baby. I'm also wondering what our life will be like if he is born early and with very serious disabilities, which makes me wonder if I will ever be free enough from family obligation to pursue my dream of being a farmer.
Lord increase my faith.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Spring
It has been a cold, wet spring, but now the sun has come out, and with it has come a time of almost feverish activity. You can't drive anywhere without slowing down for tractors so enormous they look more like spaceships than the little pictures of red tractors that appear in children's books. Yesterday, many of them were carrying tillage equipment, like huge, folded wings equipped with curving metal spikes to rake through the soil. Today, before seven in the morning, I saw a tractor hurrying down the road carrying plastic boxes of seed, ready to plant.
My husband left my daughter's orchestra concert early last night to go home and work while there was still daylight. With my ascent, he let my son stay up very late so he could keep working instead of putting him to bed, and when my daughter and I got home from the orchestra concert, we heard wild cries coming from the darkening fields. We looked at each other with horror, thinking that we were hearing unusually chilling coyote howls. My daughter hurriedly shut the outside cats on the back porch to keep them safe. It was my son howling. He had bit into an apple and wrenched loose one of his baby teeth way past his bedtime, and then run outside into the field to find his father. We could not see him in the dark.
The combination of my pregnancy, the weather, and equipment failure has left us awed by the amount of work we have to do -- even though we are not planting row crops. Most of the chicken work is apparently off-limits for me because of concerns about germs during my pregnancy, and I have still not learned how to operate the tractor with confidence, so far too much of this work is falling on my husband who is working more than full-time at his teaching job.
I am taking two lessons away from this time. First, I need to be pushier and willing to make more mistakes so that I can be a more active partner in this farm. There is no reason why I should not be driving that tractor as well as my husband is by this time. Second, we have been included in this wild and beautiful rhythm of working with the land, at least partially. I'm so grateful for that.
My husband left my daughter's orchestra concert early last night to go home and work while there was still daylight. With my ascent, he let my son stay up very late so he could keep working instead of putting him to bed, and when my daughter and I got home from the orchestra concert, we heard wild cries coming from the darkening fields. We looked at each other with horror, thinking that we were hearing unusually chilling coyote howls. My daughter hurriedly shut the outside cats on the back porch to keep them safe. It was my son howling. He had bit into an apple and wrenched loose one of his baby teeth way past his bedtime, and then run outside into the field to find his father. We could not see him in the dark.
The combination of my pregnancy, the weather, and equipment failure has left us awed by the amount of work we have to do -- even though we are not planting row crops. Most of the chicken work is apparently off-limits for me because of concerns about germs during my pregnancy, and I have still not learned how to operate the tractor with confidence, so far too much of this work is falling on my husband who is working more than full-time at his teaching job.
I am taking two lessons away from this time. First, I need to be pushier and willing to make more mistakes so that I can be a more active partner in this farm. There is no reason why I should not be driving that tractor as well as my husband is by this time. Second, we have been included in this wild and beautiful rhythm of working with the land, at least partially. I'm so grateful for that.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
The ditch
We are thinking about not mowing the ditch in front of our house. Its steep sides make it frightening to mow, and my mother-in-law is concerned that the mower will tip and squash one of us. I hate mowing for both environmental and practical reasons, and I like the idea of planting wildflower seeds along that ditch, making it a haven for bees and butterflies. However, nobody along our busy street lets their ditch go wild. People put great time and energy into making sure that their ditches looks smooth and green, right up to the road. Most folks mow just in front of their yards, but some, like our two closest neighbors, keep their ditches clipped in long for swaths along the road.
As I try to understand what manicured ditches mean to people, I feel like I am trying to understand a foreign language, like attempting to decode the baffling implications of clothes and hairstyles. It seems to me that mowing is a way of presenting oneself to the community as somebody who works hard, who cares about the world, and who was generally not falling too far behind in life. If we were to stop mowing the ditch, I worry that this would be interpreted as a lack of care and organization. I'm even more afraid that people would see the wild looking ditch and think that we're hippies from the city, which certainly has a grain of truth to it. I do not want anyone to look at our house and decide that we do not belong in this community.
In Minneapolis, I would've felt fine about doing something different from the folks around me. In the country though, the house and the land around it do not feel like they are completely mine. Instead, they belong, in part, to the community. When we run into people who have lived in the area for a long time, they know our home. “Oh, the green house!” they exclaim, and then go on to describe other families they have lived there or comment on the changes that we have made. They comment on our chickens and notice some bushes that we have planted. They ask about the new cars parked in the driveway. This house has been a character in their lives for decades, and they feel friendly sense of ownership about it.
They remind me of the truth. This house is been standing here for 110 years, and many families have come and gone during that time. The community and the farmland that surround it have been here for even longer, and before that was the woods, and other communities of people. We are just an afterthought, and even if we live here until we die, the house may still be standing to receive another family. Although we own it, and I am very grateful to own it, the place will never be completely ours.
A person could look at this with an environmental point of view and come to the same conclusion about not fully owning the place. Looking from that point of view, it is our job to spend a short time on earth nurturing the natural communities that sustain us and include us. One very small way of doing that might be to stop mowing the ditch.
In reality, the ditch is only a very small part of our enormous, mowed yard. One neighbor suggested laughingly that we get some sheep, but I think he was only partially kidding. That sounds like fun, and I don't think it would evoke the same shock and disapproval as a wildflower garden in the ditch. But like so many other things, caring for sheep takes organization, money and work, and with the baby coming, I can't imagine getting around to it for at least another several years. God willing, we will still be here, and the house will still be here, and the land will still be here. God willing, the folks who have lived here the longest will still be around to comment on new sheep.
As I try to understand what manicured ditches mean to people, I feel like I am trying to understand a foreign language, like attempting to decode the baffling implications of clothes and hairstyles. It seems to me that mowing is a way of presenting oneself to the community as somebody who works hard, who cares about the world, and who was generally not falling too far behind in life. If we were to stop mowing the ditch, I worry that this would be interpreted as a lack of care and organization. I'm even more afraid that people would see the wild looking ditch and think that we're hippies from the city, which certainly has a grain of truth to it. I do not want anyone to look at our house and decide that we do not belong in this community.
In Minneapolis, I would've felt fine about doing something different from the folks around me. In the country though, the house and the land around it do not feel like they are completely mine. Instead, they belong, in part, to the community. When we run into people who have lived in the area for a long time, they know our home. “Oh, the green house!” they exclaim, and then go on to describe other families they have lived there or comment on the changes that we have made. They comment on our chickens and notice some bushes that we have planted. They ask about the new cars parked in the driveway. This house has been a character in their lives for decades, and they feel friendly sense of ownership about it.
They remind me of the truth. This house is been standing here for 110 years, and many families have come and gone during that time. The community and the farmland that surround it have been here for even longer, and before that was the woods, and other communities of people. We are just an afterthought, and even if we live here until we die, the house may still be standing to receive another family. Although we own it, and I am very grateful to own it, the place will never be completely ours.
A person could look at this with an environmental point of view and come to the same conclusion about not fully owning the place. Looking from that point of view, it is our job to spend a short time on earth nurturing the natural communities that sustain us and include us. One very small way of doing that might be to stop mowing the ditch.
In reality, the ditch is only a very small part of our enormous, mowed yard. One neighbor suggested laughingly that we get some sheep, but I think he was only partially kidding. That sounds like fun, and I don't think it would evoke the same shock and disapproval as a wildflower garden in the ditch. But like so many other things, caring for sheep takes organization, money and work, and with the baby coming, I can't imagine getting around to it for at least another several years. God willing, we will still be here, and the house will still be here, and the land will still be here. God willing, the folks who have lived here the longest will still be around to comment on new sheep.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Shadows
Regi Haslett-Marroquin tells a story of growing up farming near the rainforests of Guatemala. Weeds sprouted in a day, and even when Regi’s family hung the pulled weeds in the air, their roots continued to grow toward the earth. When he was about eight years old, Regi’s father decided to try some herbicide on the weeds, and it worked. The robust plants turned to mush. Regi remembers his father studying the dead vegetation a couple of days later. He decided the chemicals were too violent to use in the fields where the family grew their food. They never used those chemicals again.
I expect that the fields around us will be sprayed with herbicide within the next couple of weeks when the ground dries out enough. I am waiting for this uneasily, wishing that more people shared the views of Regi’s father.
In the meantime, the skies have been gray, and in some places water lies bright between furrows of turned earth. The wind has been raw. My children have been playing inside for the most part, and my son is engrossed by a huge collection of Star Wars action figures and space ships, saved from my husband’s childhood. Our family room is the site of constant battle.
I wish I felt easy putting an end to this game. With all this talk about guns and shooting, shadows are gathering in my heart. As a survivor of gun violence and other abuse, I know a murky land that lays itself over the rest of my life. Gray vapors hover at the edge of my sight and evaporate when I turn to look at them directly. A dank coolness pools around me and wraps me in fear now and then.
Playing with action figures is a normal part of growing up for lots of kids. My husband thinks it is part of a developmental stage. I don’t want to keep my children from what most people consider to be normal childhood fun. Already, we don’t have a television, and watching a movie is a huge deal in this house. And yet, why is it normal for so many toys to be based on games of murder? Why is it impossible for a family to watch a baseball game on television without seeing people shoot at each other during the commercials? The prevalence of violence makes it feel more awful, not less, and I feel wildly alone and a little off my rocker because I can’t accept this as normal and fine.
The same feeling envelops me as I wait for the neighboring farmers to start spraying the fields. Like Regi’s father, I believe those sprays are violent. Most people feel the sprays are helpful and necessary, and that they prevent the misery of hunger. Perhaps they are deferring some misery, but I feel in my bones that future generations will be repaying that debt with crushingly high interest. I also remember the six-legged frog I held in my hand, and I picture the nearby sign that stands at the beginning of a corn field, honoring a child who died of cancer. Every week or so, someone ties a new stuffed animal to that sign. I feel lonely and even a bit frantic as I think that the collective wisdom of the culture is not keeping us safe.
I know from experience that nothing good will come from staying in a place of fear. So I am holding on to the memory of a dream. In this dream, I am standing at the bottom of a terrible, haunted stairway, its walls covered with peeling yellow wallpaper. The stairway is the symbol of all of the destruction left behind by violence. Fear fixes me to the ground, and I grieve that I will never be able to climb those stairs. I’ve dreamed this over and over, but one night Jesus stood with me at the foot of the stairs. He looked up the stairs, not afraid or even surprised, and then his laughter echoed warm and spacious in that narrow place.
I expect that the fields around us will be sprayed with herbicide within the next couple of weeks when the ground dries out enough. I am waiting for this uneasily, wishing that more people shared the views of Regi’s father.
In the meantime, the skies have been gray, and in some places water lies bright between furrows of turned earth. The wind has been raw. My children have been playing inside for the most part, and my son is engrossed by a huge collection of Star Wars action figures and space ships, saved from my husband’s childhood. Our family room is the site of constant battle.
I wish I felt easy putting an end to this game. With all this talk about guns and shooting, shadows are gathering in my heart. As a survivor of gun violence and other abuse, I know a murky land that lays itself over the rest of my life. Gray vapors hover at the edge of my sight and evaporate when I turn to look at them directly. A dank coolness pools around me and wraps me in fear now and then.
Playing with action figures is a normal part of growing up for lots of kids. My husband thinks it is part of a developmental stage. I don’t want to keep my children from what most people consider to be normal childhood fun. Already, we don’t have a television, and watching a movie is a huge deal in this house. And yet, why is it normal for so many toys to be based on games of murder? Why is it impossible for a family to watch a baseball game on television without seeing people shoot at each other during the commercials? The prevalence of violence makes it feel more awful, not less, and I feel wildly alone and a little off my rocker because I can’t accept this as normal and fine.
The same feeling envelops me as I wait for the neighboring farmers to start spraying the fields. Like Regi’s father, I believe those sprays are violent. Most people feel the sprays are helpful and necessary, and that they prevent the misery of hunger. Perhaps they are deferring some misery, but I feel in my bones that future generations will be repaying that debt with crushingly high interest. I also remember the six-legged frog I held in my hand, and I picture the nearby sign that stands at the beginning of a corn field, honoring a child who died of cancer. Every week or so, someone ties a new stuffed animal to that sign. I feel lonely and even a bit frantic as I think that the collective wisdom of the culture is not keeping us safe.
I know from experience that nothing good will come from staying in a place of fear. So I am holding on to the memory of a dream. In this dream, I am standing at the bottom of a terrible, haunted stairway, its walls covered with peeling yellow wallpaper. The stairway is the symbol of all of the destruction left behind by violence. Fear fixes me to the ground, and I grieve that I will never be able to climb those stairs. I’ve dreamed this over and over, but one night Jesus stood with me at the foot of the stairs. He looked up the stairs, not afraid or even surprised, and then his laughter echoed warm and spacious in that narrow place.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Our excellent watch dog
The day before Halloween, some friends of ours gave us their dog because they were moving and could not take him with them. We had debated long and hard about whether to accept this dog, which had been bleeding from a foot injury for almost all of his two years. Still, he was a friendly outdoor dog, and we wanted an outdoor dog.
We took the dog to the vet as soon as we could get an appointment, and the vet looked in amazement at his crushed, bleeding foot, which was still open to the bone two years after it had been crushed by a car. She recommended amputating two toes and said we'd need to keep the foot dry for a couple of weeks while it healed. We rigged up a small area in our front porch for his recovery area because he was, after all, an outside dog that had not been potty trained.
It is now April, and the dog's paw has finally healed. For more than five months, I changed bandages on that dog's foot, and he gradually made himself an indoor dog, barging through the barriers we had erected and making it clear that his main goal was in life to hang out within 3 feet of me. On many occasions, I have shreaked and cried as he stood with dogly dignity, peeing a couple quarts onto my floor. At one point, in a frenzy of panic and bad judgement, I tried to stop the pee up at the source while dragging the 75 pound dog outside. I will not do that again.
Ian took on more extra work after school, inspired in large part by the vet bills. This is a heavy weight for him to bear. And I'm still fiddling around with the dog's foot. I have to slip a heavy fabric bag onto it when he goes outside so he doesn't tear up the scar tissue.
We hoped for a good outside dog to help us. On some farms we've visited, dogs are great helpers, keeping the place safer from unwanted guests of all kinds. We really want that kind of help, especially because last year a possum bit me, a skunk ate several ducklings, and a coyote took my favorite cat. I also wanted to know if anyone unexpected came poking around the house, which is located smack dab in the middle of nowhere.
This dog can not help us in these ways. He flees from our cat Myrna, who hisses at him because he offends her principles. Once he silently tried to hide from the cat, wedging himself between the wall and the buffet. It took me a few moments to understand what he was doing. He is also a terrible watch dog. One evening when I was home alone, a friend who doesn't visit often came by to drop off eggs. He slipped through the back door into the dark family room, which I couldn't hear because I was washing dishes. As our friend fumbled for the light, he heard something approaching quietly. When he finally found the light, he saw the dog sitting nearby, wagging its tail and gazing up with gentle brown eyes. I finally learned that our friend was in the house because he shouted out a greeting.
So my big heart really got my family into a mess here.
Except the dog is marvelous. He's sitting beside me right now to keep me company, and I think he is probably the one of the most gentle, cheerful and patient creatures I've ever met. He could be an inspiration for saints. Besides, I like to pet his ears. The ears are satiny and a little darker than his other yellow fur, so it looks like I'm smoothing carmel over butter.
I can't decide if what I've done is ministry or foolishness. I'll probably never know.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Staying home this year
The summer before my son was born, I stood in front of the historical Quaker meetinghouse at Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative, watching a crop duster dive over the fields of soybeans across the street. I watched it, musing about how ironic it was that yearly meeting had been working so hard to keep people from wearing perfumes so that it would be safe for people with chemical sensitivities. I did not flee indoors or rage at the injustice of it. I just stood there, thinking, and then headed back to the activities of the yearly meeting.
Worship had ended for the morning, and few dozen Quakers had scattered about the campus of Scattergood Friends School, waiting for lunch. We had just spent the mornings in the bright, plain Quaker meetinghouse, considering business slowly and worshipfully. Even after the time of waiting worship has passed, silence stretches on in the midst of the daily business deliberations. The old meetinghouse has absorbed hundreds of years of silence which nuilt into a palpable presence. The group of people is elderly and sweet and some of them are grounded in generations of Friends' traditions. I feel that when I talk there, I can be heard, and that when I listen I can listen with all my heart. I feel the presence of God intensely in that safe and faithful setting, and I have often been called to vocal ministry.
However, I have developed a problem that makes it harder for me to attend the gatherings. A couple years after my son was born, I started to feel sick almost all the time. It was like trying to live with a low-level stomach flu that sometimes became a debilitating sickness for a day or two. Very gradually, I began to recognize that I was sickened by things like applying sunblock or using contact paper to create supplies for our religious education program. Regular life suddenly seemed full of booby-traps. One of those booby-traps is cropdusting.
When we attended Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative a couple of years ago, and little planes started buzzing overhead, I got flulike symptoms and had to sleep for a whole day. After all that sleep, I felt somewhat better, but I lost another day to sleep and sickness as soon as I returned home. Maybe I had a virus, but I had experienced very same symptoms over and over again during the previous months. I blamed the cropdusting for that little bout of illness.
The regular doctor said I was getting ill because I'm a survivor of violence and my body overreacts to things that it perceives as dangerous. He said get counseling and do not avoid the things that make me sick. His advice did not sound compelling. An osteopath suggested an outrageously strict diet, but I tried it, and within a week, I started to feel better. I stayed on that diet, and last year, when they started cropdusting at Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative, I hopped in the car and fled to Iowa City for the day, but I did not lose a day to illness.
This year, the cropdusting will keep me away from that beloved yearly gathering. I am pregnant, and I'm afraid that because I can’t seem to protect myself from these chemicals, then I also can't protect the baby growing inside me. Going to yearly meeting feels like going home in some way. It helps give me strength for the rest of the year. I feel like I offer something special to the yearly meeting, too, and I feel wrong staying away from it. Still, the trip sounds too risky this year.
I feel angry about this, but I think I might've felt even more angry in past years. My faith has grown enough so that at least at this moment, I am more willing to wait eagerly for the window that God always opens when a door is closed. More than going to any gathering, I want to walk in true faith.
Worship had ended for the morning, and few dozen Quakers had scattered about the campus of Scattergood Friends School, waiting for lunch. We had just spent the mornings in the bright, plain Quaker meetinghouse, considering business slowly and worshipfully. Even after the time of waiting worship has passed, silence stretches on in the midst of the daily business deliberations. The old meetinghouse has absorbed hundreds of years of silence which nuilt into a palpable presence. The group of people is elderly and sweet and some of them are grounded in generations of Friends' traditions. I feel that when I talk there, I can be heard, and that when I listen I can listen with all my heart. I feel the presence of God intensely in that safe and faithful setting, and I have often been called to vocal ministry.
However, I have developed a problem that makes it harder for me to attend the gatherings. A couple years after my son was born, I started to feel sick almost all the time. It was like trying to live with a low-level stomach flu that sometimes became a debilitating sickness for a day or two. Very gradually, I began to recognize that I was sickened by things like applying sunblock or using contact paper to create supplies for our religious education program. Regular life suddenly seemed full of booby-traps. One of those booby-traps is cropdusting.
When we attended Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative a couple of years ago, and little planes started buzzing overhead, I got flulike symptoms and had to sleep for a whole day. After all that sleep, I felt somewhat better, but I lost another day to sleep and sickness as soon as I returned home. Maybe I had a virus, but I had experienced very same symptoms over and over again during the previous months. I blamed the cropdusting for that little bout of illness.
The regular doctor said I was getting ill because I'm a survivor of violence and my body overreacts to things that it perceives as dangerous. He said get counseling and do not avoid the things that make me sick. His advice did not sound compelling. An osteopath suggested an outrageously strict diet, but I tried it, and within a week, I started to feel better. I stayed on that diet, and last year, when they started cropdusting at Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative, I hopped in the car and fled to Iowa City for the day, but I did not lose a day to illness.
This year, the cropdusting will keep me away from that beloved yearly gathering. I am pregnant, and I'm afraid that because I can’t seem to protect myself from these chemicals, then I also can't protect the baby growing inside me. Going to yearly meeting feels like going home in some way. It helps give me strength for the rest of the year. I feel like I offer something special to the yearly meeting, too, and I feel wrong staying away from it. Still, the trip sounds too risky this year.
I feel angry about this, but I think I might've felt even more angry in past years. My faith has grown enough so that at least at this moment, I am more willing to wait eagerly for the window that God always opens when a door is closed. More than going to any gathering, I want to walk in true faith.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Walking in the fields
While eating breakfast, I started to feel like I should walk around in the fields. I put off doing it until I almost felt as though ants were crawling all over me and could no longer bear to be inside. Stepping over last year's corn stalks, I zigzagged across my 20 acres trying to memorize the dips in the soil where waters still stands between the furrows that were turned last fall. I noticed the sandy places, and the places where the soil is rich and soft as a buttery biscuit dough. Even someone as inexperienced as I am can see the soil is rich and good.
Within me rose a chorus of old voices that say that this land is the best kind of wealth. Maybe I heard my forefathers who farmed rocky soil or died in poverty if they didn’t inherit the farm. Maybe I heard the voices of those who worked land they could never own, or who lost their land to bankers or armies. I don’t know. I am almost frightened by the fervor, and by the suffering that bubbles just beneath such a longing for good land. I am ashamed that I don’t fully understand how to care for this wealth that I have been given.
As I walked, I also became aware again of this child growing in me, and again I experienced it as a light that accompanied me, listening and watching. We stood on the western border of our property and looked into the golden fields of corn that have been standing all winter, waiting to be harvested. The corn fields are vast, and they whisper in the strong wind. I do not understand them, and I am still not sure whether they feel friendly or not, but I feel awash in colors when I stand near them. We walked again and marveled together at a small hunks of rose colored granite that frost brought to the surface of the soil.
Climbing the gentle slope that leads from the field up to our yard, I knew that I need to take this unborn child out to see the soil and sky every day if I can. We need to listen to plants and trees together. I think this is a fabulous idea, but I am still bewildered. My other two children did not appear to me as light and start asking me to do things with them before I’d even made it through half my pregnancy. I'm starting to wonder what kind of child I might be dealing with here.
I am so grateful to be amid fields, balanced between the dreams of those who came before me and the passion of one who is yet to come. Finally, I am able to see this pregnancy as a wildly generous gift. Finally, I am in awe.
Within me rose a chorus of old voices that say that this land is the best kind of wealth. Maybe I heard my forefathers who farmed rocky soil or died in poverty if they didn’t inherit the farm. Maybe I heard the voices of those who worked land they could never own, or who lost their land to bankers or armies. I don’t know. I am almost frightened by the fervor, and by the suffering that bubbles just beneath such a longing for good land. I am ashamed that I don’t fully understand how to care for this wealth that I have been given.
As I walked, I also became aware again of this child growing in me, and again I experienced it as a light that accompanied me, listening and watching. We stood on the western border of our property and looked into the golden fields of corn that have been standing all winter, waiting to be harvested. The corn fields are vast, and they whisper in the strong wind. I do not understand them, and I am still not sure whether they feel friendly or not, but I feel awash in colors when I stand near them. We walked again and marveled together at a small hunks of rose colored granite that frost brought to the surface of the soil.
Climbing the gentle slope that leads from the field up to our yard, I knew that I need to take this unborn child out to see the soil and sky every day if I can. We need to listen to plants and trees together. I think this is a fabulous idea, but I am still bewildered. My other two children did not appear to me as light and start asking me to do things with them before I’d even made it through half my pregnancy. I'm starting to wonder what kind of child I might be dealing with here.
I am so grateful to be amid fields, balanced between the dreams of those who came before me and the passion of one who is yet to come. Finally, I am able to see this pregnancy as a wildly generous gift. Finally, I am in awe.
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