When I grow up...

Never in my wildest dreams growing up, did I aspire to marry a farmer and actually work on a farm.  Farmers were the guys who walked around in jeans and plaid shirts and got awful tan lines.  And they work crazy hours, I do not like getting up early in the morning.

I always thought cows were big, smelly, and scary.  Every time we would go down to our pond, the neighbor's cows/heifers would come stand along the fence and stare at us.  One time they got loose and the whole herd of them came in our driveway and were running around the yard and my mom's garden like crazy!  The yard was all torn up and they destroyed some things in the garden too.

And farming was so uncool.  It was okay that other people did it, but that isn't what I wanted to do, that couldn't be what God had planned for me.  I don't even know what I wanted to do.  Maybe I wanted to be a kid all my life, play, have no responsibilities.  I liked to be outside and didn't mind getting dirty, I just didn't really like to shower.  But farming never even made my list of possible careers.

Now I walk around most of the day in boots, jeans and t-shirts (with the sleeves cut off so I don't get that farmer tan, of course), getting dirty, probably smelly, and spending most of my time among the cows.  I didn't see this coming, it just sort of grew on me.

So now, I guess I'm a farmer.  I feel weird calling myself that because I'm in charge of nothing, I just help get the work done.  And I like the work, most of the time.  I don't have to get up too crazy early, just on weekends that we work, but other than that my morning hours are pretty limited.  I still don't mind getting dirty, it is a different kind of dirt, manure rather than soil and grass, but I don't mind the smell so much anymore.  And I get to spend as much time outside as I want.

So maybe, just maybe, God was preparing me for this the whole time, I just didn't realize it until now.

"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.  In those days when you pray, I will listen.  If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.  I will be found by you,” says the Lord. “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”

Jeremiah 29:11-14