Becoming Country

This article was originally published in Do South Magazine. Check out their website here for my monthly contributions. 

You will never really understand how city you are until your life shifts and you find yourself removed from suburbia. I’ve harbored a homestead dream for as long as my memory can reach. At the age of twelve, my cousin walked me through his Texas back yard, showing me the neat rows of vegetables and how to feed chickens. Then he introduced me to the pig.

“This is Bacon,” he said.

“Why’s he called Bacon?” I asked.

“Because. We’re gonna eat him,” he replied nonchalantly. Seeing my alarm, he added “But we’re good to him, see. It’s kinder this way. Better than how factories raise them up like they don’t matter.”

“Cool.” I said. And I meant it.

That evening, my sister sat at the table and downright refused her dinner that we learned came from their last pig, Porkchop. I, on the other hand, decided then and there. One day I would have a pig named Bacon, too.

The dream didn’t die. While my peers pledged sororities, I read books on goat husbandry and growing things. While they purchased starter homes, my pile of books grew, books on beekeeping and chicken care and living off the land. For years I have perused seed catalogs with prayers on my lips and buried deep in my heart. Please, God, could I have this?

He answered in the most unplanned timing, when I had finally chosen to be content. I had just agreed to wait until the kids were older and money was less scarce when my dream came true by way of a vandalized foreclosure on four acres. It was the kind of deal people could hardly believe. “This is God,” I told them, “He, who hears my prayers.” They all awed at the house, and the potential for equity. But it was the land that captivated me. To my homesteader’s heart, just the idea of four acres caused a flutter of disbelief. It ignited my imagination.

Four acres. Do you feel it?

If you are like me, you hear four acres and you instantly see the gentle glow of an orange bell pepper lit up in the Arkansas sun. You can almost feel the skin of a freshly picked berry bursting warm against your teeth and hear the sound of chickens clucking around your imaginary muck boots. Four acres is no farm. It will never pay the bills. But coming from a sleepy suburban neighborhood, a stack of books, and a far off dream, four acres is everything I’ve ever wanted.

I would have been content to leave the house packed until October, instead spending the summer elbow deep in the earth, but reason won out. I suppose it’s a good thing. It would have been a long few months with five children at home and only a garden to entertain them. We worked through the spring and now the inside of our home is functional. The walls are painted and the boxes are unpacked. And I am the proud owner of a big pile of wood that my husband assures me will take the form of raised beds and a chicken coop in the coming months.

Patience has never been my strong suit. I like to think I live with abandon because that somehow seems more admirable, but you could call me reckless and you wouldn’t be lying. This is a trait that I fight. Recklessness usually yields regret. So while I stand at the brink of breaking ground on the homestead of my dreams, I am repeatedly reminding myself of something. Waiting rooms are great classrooms. These transitions between the before and the after are often the places that require stillness the most, or else we risk missing out on valuable lessons from our wise and patient Teacher.

While I wait, I am learning to become country.

Surely, you think, the difference between city dwellers and country folks is merely one of geographical location. But you would be wrong. I was wrong. I thought that because I so ardently desired to build a life outside the city limits, and because I was so well read on the process of doing this, that there wouldn’t be many necessary adjustments. I was born for this life.

It doesn’t matter how badly you want it, adjustments are going to be necessary.

Being twenty-five minutes from town makes a difference. I thought it would just alter how I plan my days and eliminate late night Kroger-runs for ice cream. But now I’m finding myself with this mindset of my comfort zone, which is home, and the rest of the world, which takes almost half an hour and three dollars in gas to reach. I never imagined that I would feel like I’d moved so far and that things had changed so much. Home is where I want to be.

It’s not the drive that makes me feel this way either. I enjoy the drive. I expected to hate the extra time spent in the car just to do things like go to church and buy groceries. Instead, I’ve found it so incredibly peaceful. I make the rural trek to town, admiring the explosion of wildflowers on the roadside, and am in awe. I get to live here. Before, in all my years of being city, I had never seen a horse play, running full bore down a hillside and rolling in the grass with hooves aloft. Now, thanks to my drive, I have seen it many times. I have stopped on the side of the road to look into the doleful eyes of a heifer nursing a newborn calf. “I know how you feel,” I told her. Under blue skies and toiling dark ones, I have talked to God in the very midst of His creation. This drive is good for me.

There is something about the country that just makes me feel so completely alive and small, and so undeniably created. It’s easy to become so submerged into a manmade world that we are blinded to that which God made. Now, even though the land and creatures around me are divided by our fences and cultivated by our tools, I am overwhelmed by the inexplicable wildness of it all.

The winged things that get trapped on our screened porch are the stuff of nightmares. I couldn’t name them if I tried, and it amazes me that they have been living so near for so long. They are as foreign to me as if they were from Africa. The ivy and the honeysuckle and every form of plant grows like maybe they know how greatly they outnumber us and our weed whackers. They stretch out with ferocity, glorious victors of a revolution. There is never a moment without some noise, some chirp or hum or buzz.

Oh, and the stars. How have I gone my whole life without being able to see these stars every night? Of course, they are direction for the lost with how brightly they shine. They are diamonds, artwork, with marvelous constellations. How many nights did we waste with our darkness lit by streetlights and a TV screen while these very stars burned on past the light pollution and our range of view? Such a shame.

I have watched my sons take to this new ground like transplanted tomato plants. Tobias, the toddler, has been in the creek as often as the dog. As soon as his eyes open in the morning, the first word he shouts is “Milk!” and the second is “Outside!” Mud seems to run in his veins. Ezra, the baby, is fearless, toddling through the grass, giggling as he grabs for fireflies. Jackson and Asher, my second and third-grade sons, are less sure. They were a little root bound where they were planted, with their sidewalks and after-school Baskin Robbins. It was all they knew, and this new life seemed to offer much less at first glance. Then they learned to climb trees. We explored the woods and found blackberries. They caught a blue-tailed lizard and started to believe that they, deep down, were country too.

When this house and it’s impossibly cheap price tag, which was all we could afford, fell into our laps, I kept coming back to Ephesians 3:20. “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” I just thought He was giving me my homestead dream. But I have realized in this short time of waiting that God didn’t give me this house just so I could make my own pickles and eat fresh eggs every morning. He was handing me a tool to raise our kids in a different world, a world where we can easily teach them hard work because there is so much of it to do. He was enabling us to teach them quiet in a generation that was born into noise and screens and distractions. It is a home to raise our family, not just a house.

He gave us four acres, a little bit of this earth He crafted, a little living piece of His creative wonder.

Four acres.

Do you feel it?

Reed Silk Studio- Review & Giveaway

Imagination. 

I hate to pull a "back-when-I-was-a-kid" move and completely romanticize the past the way people often do. But I don't think I'm looking through rose-colored glasses when I remember the way we used to play. I had my secret hideout, an overgrown easement behind the fence which my brother and I called "The Nature Spot". We would spend hours there, making mud pies, pretending to be runaways, with nothing but our imaginations to entertain us. 

I try to remember what my parents did to foster this sort of imaginative play. I know we didn't watch much television. But we didn't have cable and the only kid shows were replaced by soap operas by midday anyway. There were no video games (well, there were but we couldn't afford them until much later in my childhood). So we played. 

Kids now seem to be at a disadvantage. From toddlerhood, they are absolutely inundated with screens, and games, and around-the-clock available shows. There is always an option of something mindless to do. Unless. 

Unless they have a parent willing to turn off the screen and equip them instead to think, and play, and create. I love toys that help with this. I love things that don't run on batteries but instead on the thoughts of my babies. And I love the product, their games and their creations. 

My friend Kate is a mom like me. She loves to teach her babies to grow beauty and make art and imagine anything they can. And not only does she believe in this line of thinking for her children, she herself love to create. She owns Reed Silk Studio, where she sells her handmade creations. 

I have been so excited to work with Kate for a giveaway, and when I checked the mail and found the review box she had sent full of delicious play silks, the kids and I headed straight for the yard to play. I didn't even unload the groceries! It has been so incredible watching them take these beautiful silks and turn them into wings, and fires, and super hero capes. 

How incredible a child's imagination is when it is equipped and encouraged! 

Reed Silk Studio sell products all hand-made in the U.S. These play silks are made with all natural materials and are all unique, as each one is hand-painted by Kate. She sent us two large silks and two small ones to play with and tell you about. One thing I had wondered before having play silks was what made them different from other fabrics. I thought, surely, I child could play with any fabric cutting just the same. However, I've seen now how weightless these are, which makes them easy for small hands to manipulate and tie and throw into the air and watch them slowly float down. They are a little transparent too, so the light shines through them and little eyes can easily peek from behind them. And maybe it's just the silky. I know my Tobias is not the only small child who is addicted to silky. 

I could tell you all about the things my children have pretended to be with their new play silks, but I thought it might be better just to show you. Inspire imagination, and just sit back and watch magic happen. 

Would you like to win a "35 playsilk from Reed Silk Studio?

Enter below! There are multiple oppourtunies for entries. The giveaway will close Wednesday, July 2. 

Also, Kate has offered a coupon code to The Hodgepodge Darling's readers! Just enter "darling" at checkout to save 10% off your purchase! If you haven't already, go check out Reed Silk Studio's website. 

Entry-Form

My son is not a sissy.

I wonder sometimes what my kids will think when they get old enough to read the things I write.

They try to show interest now. Well, the older ones do. But at 7 & 8, even though they would like to be interested in my ramblings, they aren't. Their eyes glaze a bit when they realize the wordiness, and though I can see their brave attempt at pride, the same pride I show in the work they present to me, I can tell. It's over their head.
Of course, I don't expect anything else. I do wonder though if my writing will become as commonplace to them as my photography. Now, at their young ages, they don't seem to realize that not everyone's mom carts around a dSLR. They seem to find the thousands upon thousands of photos of their lives completely normal.

I like to think that the moment they come across my work will be something of a second meeting. After my grandmother passed away, I retreated to her attic for days, pouring over letters she had written to my great-grandfather. Boxes of boxes of letters from all stages of life. Clearly he had saved them all, treasures no doubt, and she had ended up with them after his life ended. Then at the end of hers, I found them. I met my grandmother after she died, in her dusty attic, and I felt like I really, really knew her for the first time.

The thing is, my words aren't hidden in a single place. I compose my words and then click the publish button, and then I can never really take them back.
I wonder then, when will they become curious. Will they be teenagers? Will they google my name and curiously weed through my writing for mentions of them? Or will the fact that their mother tells their stories to the world become as average to them as a lifetime of professional photos?

I don't know.

But you see….I wonder because there are things I want to say that I'm not sure I want them to read.
This post is one of those things. Because a mother wants to protect her child from hurtful things, namely the opinions of others.
So it may disappear before they learn to google.

Asher. His name means happiness, and I would say it suits him. Asher's personality is contagious. He has this unique viewpoint and his comments are somehow hilarious and thought-provoking while completely obvious.

When he was a baby, there was something about him. He would cling to strangers in the grocery store line and ignore certain family members every time they spoke to him. He chose his people, and no one else existed.

As he grew, his quirks became more distinguished. He would only wear comfy pants and rain boots and would melt into a puddle of tears if forced to do otherwise. So I let him. Because who did it hurt?
He carried a Lightning McQueen car in his hand for approximately 3 straight years. To bed, to bath, to the store, to daycare. Then one day he didn't want it anymore. Then came the Mario hat, which was used for Halloween after Halloween and most of the days between.
When the boys started soccer, Jackson took it as an opportunity to work hard and score, to win, to shine. Asher pretended to be Sonic the hedgehog on the field. And during the games, he was often spotted running in the exact opposite direction of the ball.

When he was little, people would say "He is so sweet". And as a toddler, "He is so funny." But then it became a question. They all adored him, found his quirks endearing, but sometimes they asked "He's kind of different, huh?"

And he is.

I can't place it. But Asher is kind of different.
Sometimes he seems so very far away from me. He hugs me. He looks at me from across the room and signs "I love you".  He connects in these fleeting moments, but other time is hard to reach. There are moments I feel like I barely know him, but then we will lay on the floor in fits of giggles making shadow puppets on the ceiling and I know I've known him all along.  He is just a puzzle.
For a long time I worried. I poured over information on autism and found so many of my Asher's eccentricities detailed in articles about Asperger's. I asked the doctors and got mixed answers. As long as he is doing well in school. As long as he is happy…

And he is.

But there is this lurking fear I fight, and it is a daily theme in my prayers. I beg God to use my son, and to protect him from the cruelty of a world that rejects what it doesn't relate to.
Because Asher isn't like the other boys. I've heard it already, said in a well-meaning way, that we will have to watch out for him. Because he is different. and soft. 

My son is different, so we will have to protect him.
He is soft, so he should be toughened up.
He is different, and it will be seen as weakness.
He is soft, so they will call him a sissy.

I will do my best to say this in calmness and love. I will do my best to explain this while I wrestle with the momma bear that rages in my heart at the idea of needing to protect my Asher.

But my son is not a sissy.

He doesn't like to get dirty. And when the breakfast he planned on eating is not available, he has been known to cry. He isn't fast. And he doesn't have the patience for sports. He disappears into video games, because he succeeds there, and when I tell him his daily screen time is over, he looks at me with the saddest eyes. He is immersed in his thoughts and exceptionally bright, but sometimes he is oblivious to what goes on around him. Yes, it's frustrating. But when he realizes that he has been insensitive to someone's feelings, it breaks his heart. He feels…so deeply.

But let me tell you. These things, his quirks, do not define him. He is defined by the God who made him. And my God says that Asher was worth pursuit, that he was worth dying for. The problem is not that I have a son who is soft and different. The problem is that our society sees such a boy and is blind to his value. The problem lies in a world that wants to call him names. Like sissy. This macho society, full of hardened men failing to lead their families, wants to point out the weakness and softness of a small boy.

He does not have a problem that needs to be fixed. When a child shows inherent athletic ability, we encourage parents to hone his skills. When a child shows an inclination to the arts, we put a paintbrush in his hand and praise even his most rudimentary work. But if a boy is soft, we think we have to remedy that. We have to toughen him up to the standard that is expected of him.

Why?
Why is is so difficult to believe that God made my Asher…to be soft? Why are these gentle children pushed and pushed to the brink of violence, broken to fit into a mold that they were not created to fit into?

When he started Pre-K, he befriended the boy with a cleft lip and the overweight girl that couldn't pronounce the letter S. He told me they were the coolest friends anyone ever had.
I thought he was such a kind boy, befriending the bullied, until I realized he was one of them. In first grade, when he came home and told me that a kid named Will kicked him in the lunch line and told him he sucked, I knew. But when we talked, he assured me that Will just needed someone to be nice to him.
So he was nice to him.
And Will told him he was his best friend.
But there will be more Wills. And they may not be so yielding.

He is passionate. The way he ignites when he talks about the things he knows about, the way he adores those he cares about, the way he follows that which his eyes are set on….these traits are no different than the rest of us. We just know how to pretend a little better. We know how to make our fixations more acceptable. But really, when it comes down to it, there is only right and wrong. We are either fixated on something useless or on Jesus.

My son is not a sissy.
And I beg you. If you have ever been the host of thoughts like this, challenge yourself to think differently. Challenge yourself to see a quirky, quiet child and think of what incredible things they could do with the overflow of these traits.

The way I see it, my son has a head start in his pursuit of Christ. Because when he is told to be gentle and humble and kind, he can say "Well, that's how God made me."
He is a creation of the King. He is a masterpiece. He was designed with perfect intention, to fulfill a perfect plan.  He is soft and he is different, made by a God who does not make mistakes.

The Cheerleader

I’ve never really been afraid of tornadoes. You see, I’m an Arkansas girl, born and raised. I remember the thrilling nights as a kid when my mother pulled us from our beds and we’d spend what seemed like all night giggling under a mattress in the hall with flashlights and teddy bears. It was fun. 

And I’ve seen the aftermath, the piles of rubble, the death counts on the news. But you see, I’m an optimist. And all these things I have seen from an emotional distance. So the prevailing theme to them all is the hope that humans are able to cling to, the stories of survival. So I’ve never really been afraid of tornadoes. 

So on Sunday, April 27, when the weather man said the forecast was a mix for disaster, we decided we’d go ahead with our move to Vilonia anyway. We already had the UHaul. The house was in boxes. The helping hands had signed up. Our new house has a concrete basement. We’ll be safe, we thought. 

We were. 

While 20 people ate hot dogs and potato salad in the basement, the wall cloud blew over our mountain to the valley beyond it. The TV showed the eye of the storm directly over Cody Ln. And I stood on the front porch and saw the sucking black sky twirl in the distance. And for the first time that day, a fear swelled up because I knew that street. Because I’d traveled over the mountain just days before to that street. I’d stood in a house with a red door with my precious friend April, while our sons played in the yard. I’d marveled at her garden patch and seedlings and thought how much I loved her when she’d showed me her Hobby Lobby project, letters that spelled “Smith” above the door jam. “I spaced them out,” she said, “because I didn’t want to copy you.” 

I couldn’t reach her. The storm had moved on but she wasn’t answering. We prayed for them as the minutes passed. Five, then ten, then the rain stopped and the sky stilled. But she didn’t answer my calls. “Call Daniel,” I told Miah. But he grabbed the keys instead. He and Jud got in the truck and left. I don’t know….I think he knew somehow. The way he was praying…it was different. He wasn’t asking for safety but for peace and I found it odd. I was afraid. 

Time passed. He should have been there but the phone kept reaching voicemail. She wasn’t answering and now he wasn’t either. The group of guys that had been unloading our Uhaul left to go help. My texts to him grew in desperation. 

Did it hit them? 

Are they ok? 

Honey, are they ok? 

Please tell me if it hit them. 

Please tell me they are ok. 

Are they hurt? 

Are they alive? 

Miah, please tell me they are alive. 

And then he responded.   I can't.  

A blur. Calls to our pastor’s wife. Praying. Crying. And then another message  

April and Daniel are alive right now but the boys are gone, honey. 

I don’t know what else happened for a while. My face was on the floor and my sister was there hugging me. Stephanie and I, both mothers, both friends of April, wailed. And only one prayer, a prayer more desperate than any I have ever prayed in my life, left my lips. “God, please, not this for her.” 

It’s been a long couple of days. Little sleep. Lots of calls and messages. A group of men from the church went to the site and gathered what they could of the Smiths’ belongings. The house is completely gone.

Back in the fall, April and Daniel were still living in Sherwood. They received a 30 day notice that they needed to move so the owner of their home could sell it. She started to worry but in true April-fashion, she said “I know God will provide”. Just a week or so later she told me about the house they had found in Vilonia, about how perfect it was. The owners wanted to work with them to get them in it. It was just. so. perfect. It even had the red front door she had always wanted. 

So, you see, I was angry. Because I knew God put them in that house. And it was no act of violence or human mistake that took their sons’ lives. It was an EF4 tornado, a mile wide, and it sucked everything that seemed so perfect off the foundation that God had given. I was SO angry. 

I’ve always called her the cheerleader. Because she was one once, in a pom poms and pyramids sense, but because she still is now, in a bible and faith sense. She is who I call when my faith is stretched. And every time I hang up the phone, I’ve been reminded of how big and how good and how strong my God is. 

I spent these angry couple of days questioning why God would take those boys and why he would take the best cheerleader he had. Because who could still cheer for their God after this? 

The thing is though, my faith is not April’s faith. It never has been. 

Last night, we walked in the hospital room to see her. While Jeremiah and I held her hands and kissed her face, she wept. She had questions about that night. She had heard that Jeremiah found the boys and she told him she was comforted it was him because she knew he would have prayed over them. We all cried. A wise, young friend of ours sent us a message of encouragement yesterday that we were able to share with April. 

  

She shared the following scriptures: 

  

Isaiah 55: 8-11 

8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 

9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. 

10 “The rain and snow come down from the heavensand stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. 

11 It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.

Jeremiah shared with her what a comfort it was for him to think that everyone is here for a purpose, for God’s purpose not for our own fulfillment. And when their purpose is reached, they GET to go home. He repeated Taylor’s words to her, “How incredible it was that Tyler and Cameron were able to serve their purpose in such a short time, when it takes some people 100 years”. I told her how angry I had been, grappling with the truth that this was allowed, arranged even. 

And my beautiful friend, my cheerleader, laid in the hospital bed with her broken body and battered, beautiful face and held my hands and told me not to be angry because her God is good. She knew that her sons had fulfilled their purpose in life and that they were with the father now. 

Tyler has always talked about heaven. About how he can’t wait to get there. She said she thought it was because he heard them saying how wonderful it would be…some day. But he looked at her Sunday afternoon, before the storm, and told her he was ready to go to heaven. “Will you miss me?” he asked her. “Well yes,” she said, “but let’s not talk like that now.” “How long will you miss me?” he persisted. And she just smiled and said, “I guess until I see you again.” 

“I have peace,” she told me last night through her tears, “I know I have more pain to go through that I probably can understand. But I have supernatural peace. I don’t know what God has for me and my husband that our boys couldn’t be here for, but I do know that He is good. His plan is good.” 

I don’t understand this kind of faith. Because I think every parent who has heard this story since Sunday has wondered, “How do you live through that?” 

For those of you who have been worried about April and Daniel, worried that they would not be the same, that they could not carry on past this loss, please don’t worry any more. I have seen her hope. It is anchored in eternity. It is the kind of hope that saves people. And that’s not just the optimist in me talking. 

For those of you wondering how a mother could serve a God that might allow this, understand that Tyler and Cameron knew Jesus. Just a couple of weeks ago, they led a friend to Christ. They aren’t over. Their story hasn’t reached the end. They aren’t even really gone. They’ve just moved for now. 

We will miss them. Like April told Tyler on his last day on earth, we will miss them until we see them again, April and Daniel more than any of us. While none of us understand it, we must take up her lead and know that even still, God is good. And we must understand that while we may love these boys, God loves them infinitely more. He loves them perfectly. And with his knowledge of the lives and futures of the Smiths, God took them home. 

But he left their mom and dad. Somehow, though every bit of that house was ripped from the foundation, April and Daniel will live. They will tell this story and honor Tyler and Cameron’s lives. Masses of people will know Jesus because of this story. Because we cannot fathom this strength. 

When I left the hospital last night, I just cried and thought “She is so strong. She is so faithful. She is so selfless. She is so beautiful”. And it hit me. April is all of these things because she allows herself, even in the midst of this tragedy, to be a reflection of our strong, faithful, selfless, beautiful Savior. 

They are greatly broken. But they will mend. They haven’t fulfilled what God has for them yet. But they will. Because while she could be angry, and she may be at some point, she is holding tight to the only thing she has left: 

The truth that GOD IS GOOD. ALL THE TIME. 

  

I asked her if I could take her photo, so she could have it later when she told her story. 

She told me to show you all now. And to tell you… her God can overcome even this.  

My friend. Who remains the most beautiful woman I know. 

April, the cheerleader. 

About a year ago, our home church (Thatchurch.com) in Sherwood, AR, told April's life story. This post has gone absolutely viral. Millions have heard the testimony of April's faith. She is showing hundred's of thousands to Christ. Watch the video of her story, and you will understand a little of the plan she is so sure God has. 

Added May 9, 2014- Also, if you would like to watch the funeral services for Tyler and Cameron Smith, please go here. 

To donate to the Smith family, go here.