Friday, November 24, 2017

Leaving The Farm




I've sat down to write this post a handful of times. There is so much I could tell you I suppose. I could tell you about the conversation the Cowboy and I had over Mexican food back in June and how he asked me if I might be willing to move to TX. I could tell you how simultaneously my heart lept and sank,  how a warmer climate and a fresh start sounded glorious, and how leaving our community sounded almost unbearable.

I could tell you how my dad (who lived in his own house on our farm) joyfully agreed to move. I could tell you how the Cowboy's boss agreed to let him keep his job, or how we didn't even have to put our house on the market, because a friend caught wind of our possible move and gave us an offer that was perfect for the both parties. I could tell you so many things, but what I want you to know most is this:

Obedience in and of itself IS success.

I think about this often when life doesn't feel good.

Sometimes you find yourself doing things simply because the Lord has asked you to do so. You have no idea how it's going to turn out, but that doesn't really matter.






The Farm has been a glorious and treacherous place for me. I've brought three babies home to this place, created traditions, loved well, and fallen hard. There have been countless folks who have gathered around our farm table, who've shared meals and conversation, joy, loss, struggle, and sorrow.

I have loved the nights on the couch with my Joey, watching the first snowfall after the kids were all tucked in their beds. I've taught 4 of the six to read under this roof, all those days of listening to them tediously sounding out each and every letter, only to find them years later hiding under their covers reading things I never imagined they would be able to read.

There have been pillow fights and real fights, lots of laughter and an equal amount of tears.

The Farm was also the place that housed my heart through the postpartum depression I had after our Solomon was born. These walls have watched me majorly succeed and majorly fail in my mothering.  I have soul has barely made it through the past seven winters. There's been great beauty in this place and great pain this place. I wonder sometimes if all the places we find ourselves in are like this, full of both the beautiful and the broken?






The truth I am coming to find more and more is that this is not my home. The Farm is not my home. The places we're going, the places we've been, they are not my home. I was made to be living in eternity with Christ. And until I get there, I have one thing in mind__ to make HIS name great in the way I live my life, for HIs glory, and my joy.



On our last Sunday, during testimony time, in our little country church, I mustered up the courage to share a bit about this move. I talked about Jesus and how wherever we are, He will always be what our life is all about. And then I went on to share the verse I have spent the past seven years clinging to. And as I began to speak it out loud from memory, my kids, unprompted, joined me__ there we were, our little tribe, together in unison, proclaiming what we believe with our whole hearts this life to be all about__ "I eagerly expect and hope, that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage, now as always, so that Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." {Philippians 1:20-21}







As we embark on the next leg of our journey my prayer is that this may be true of the Clark family.

I feel a million things about this move; some excitement for change and all things new, and some sadness over not living intricate, daily life with the some of the most real, authentic Christ followers I have ever met. But in all honesty, it doesn’t really matter how I feel. What matters is simply this: that Christ walks before me, and beside me, always. We can’t base life decisions on feelings. We must base them instead on a joyful obedience to whatever the Lord makes clear for us to do. We're here, in TX, and we're taking it one day at a time.