Category Archives: homesteading

if you need a break: a kindling post

Posted on by June 13, 2023

I had a dream once where I was speaking to an adoptive mom. I asked about her story and how she was doing, and she tried a few times to speak but finally she just cried.

And I looked at her and said, “You probably need a break.”

if you need a break: a kindling post

It is a word for so many of us. You’ve been going and going, pushing through pain and discouragement and impossible situations, and you are so weary you don’t even have words for it.

You probably need a break, too.

And you might be like, Duh, of course I need a break. If I knew how to take a break I would do it. But do you know my life? There’s no break, no slowing down. No reprieve, no respite, no money, no vacation time.

I get it. Believe me. The need to take a break can feel like one more burden, one more impossible task that you’re failing at and unable to accomplish.

So, here’s the word: The break we need isn’t ours to achieve or figure out. It’s His to do for us.

I am learning that our role in the break — our breaking — is the surrender of the belief that we can and should be able to do everything. I have ran into the wall so many times, feeling like a failure over things I was never supposed to do or control or be responsible for in the first place.

Other people’s choices. The sale of our books. Our kids’ behavior. How people see me. So many things.

Here’s what He’s telling me over and over:

Obedience is doing what He’s told me to do. Surrender is trusting Him with what only He can do.

And it is a breaking of my pride and sense of accomplishment. It’s a good breaking, though.

So maybe you need that kind of a break. Some respite or a vacation would be a good break, too — but that is also His job, and we can surrender to it.

I’ve told you this before: The yarn does nothing on its own. It has to yield to the hands of a maker.

But I’ve been wrestling and relearning and going deeper with this lately: We abide, but He does the work. We seek the Kingdom, but He does the work. We obey in what He calls us to, but He does the work.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

— Matthew 6:33

It’s all Him — but also, it’s us…but it’s Him!…but it’s also us.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

— John 15:4-5

We connect with Him, and we bear fruit, but only because of the Vine. All glory and honor go to Him, but He lets us not only “seek for glory and honor and immortality” but He also lets us have them when we carry the light yoke and yield to His work in and through us.

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

— Revelation 4:11

He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.

— Romans 2:6-10

It’s us but Him but us, with Him.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

— John 17:10-11

Jesus, free us from fear and anxiety as we walk in the tension of doing and trusting, seeking and surrendering. Protect us from worries, feelings of not-enough, rejection, trauma, insecurities, compulsions or tics, shame, regret, unforgiveness of ourselves or anyone else. All those things go now, in Jesus’ name, and do not come back.

Help us do the work to keep those things gone. You do the work, but help us maintain it by keeping our “temple” clean and inhospitable to the enemy’s attacks. We choose forgiveness. We renew our mind and read the Word. We examine our thoughts and reject those that don’t line up with truth, instead of letting anything and everything that flies into our mind take root.

We pray for Your peace and freedom tonight in waves, for more encouragement than we thought we could experience in areas we’ve been struggling in. We pray for that peace and encouragement and hope in a way that feels solid, steady, growing, something we can grasp onto and not let go of.

Give us all the holy stubbornness we need to be steadfast in the mission You’ve called us to.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

— Hebrews 13:20-21

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hatch: thoughts from an emptying nest

Posted on by May 26, 2023

I’m trying to read my notes for you here but there’s melted chocolate on them and I don’t really regret it.

May has been filled with milestones and the month isn’t over yet. We have a boy who left for the summer to go commercial fishing and we won’t see him until September, and we have a girl who is moving out next week. Our home is shrinking, but not really – more like deflating, while my mama heart heaves and contracts in a season that feels blurry with movement and change.

hatch: thoughts from an emptying nest

All these milestones for each kid are major accomplishments in motherhood: The birth, the adoption, breastfeeding, potty training. Learning to read, learning to drive, learning a million things in between.

The nest is emptying, but still pretty full here; even after eight kids, five is no small thing. I threatened to pull over and spank boys who were misbehaving in the back of the Stagecoach last week, so my Mom Bingo Card is filling out nicely for the month and in no danger of being revoked due to inactivity.

Iree plays Nuvole Bianche on the piano and it has been the soundtrack of this season, the background music of these days until she moves out. I love this song; there’s a part in it that sounds like horses running that makes my heart pound even as I put away dishes and wipe the counters for the eighth time, pouring grief into the motions of the dishcloth.

“You’re sure you’ll get along, Mother?”

“Why, of course I’ll get along.” Abbie was outwardly calm and confident, while all the time there was that queer sensation of a wind rushing by – a wind she could not stop – Time going by which she could not stay. Oh, stop the clock hands!

– Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

Before Afton left for fish camp, we hatched quail. It was our third round of quail chicks but our second go at incubating, and as we waited for them to hatch I thought of all the things I might’ve done wrong: the temperature might’ve been off because the cheap thermometers were inconsistent, the heat wasn’t steady the first night, and I didn’t mist the eggs on day 15 like I was supposed to.

What if none of them hatch? I thought. What if it was a waste of time, and resources, and worse – what if I’m just not good at this? It works for some people, sure, but what if I’m just bad at it?

It’s like waiting for breakthrough in anything else. Hold on, let me overthink this for a while, I can come up with a million possibilities of how I could’ve screwed this up and why I might not deserve the success I was hoping for. Stand by. I’ll justify it, it’s okay – I mean, it’s not okay, but I want my heart to be okay with it not being okay because I don’t know what else to do with so much disappointment and I don’t have any other answers for why this isn’t working out.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and all day we waited for those chicks to hatch, but they didn’t.

But I was a day early. The night we got the incubator going, the temperature wasn’t high enough until after midnight – and I forgot to adjust the hatch date to reflect it. So really, I was looking for breakthrough a day ahead of schedule and frustrating myself needlessly.

They finally did start hatching and the incubator rapidly filled with broken bits of eggshell, confetti everywhere. After two days we had nineteen tiny chicks. They walk on folded toes at first from being curled up so long and it looks alarming, but as they walk it out, their toes straighten. Enthusiastic little buddies, fast and fluffy after just hours of seniority, climb all over the panting newcomers, forcing them to roll and stand up to protect themselves. And the conflict is good for them; their bones need the exercise and it sets their skeletal alignment correctly.

We waited a little over 24 hours after the last chicks hatched before turning off the incubator and giving up on the remaining eggs. One chick had died, which is super common and has happened all three times we’ve had quail chicks, and we were down to eighteen. It wasn’t a great hatch rate but we suspected a lot of the eggs were infertile because one of our roosters got injured shortly before we started collecting eggs. So Afton went to clean out the incubator and, lo and behold – there was one more tiny chick, just hatched, still damp, a little piece of eggshell confetti still stuck to its back.

I scooped him up and he was so cold. How he was alive, two days after all the others hatched? How did he have the strength to break out of his hard shell when he was so cold, so late, and the incubator had no humidity left?

But there he was, damp and wriggling in my hand. I immediately held him under the heat lamp to warm him up while Cham found a little box for him.

I wish I had taken pictures for you as he laid there in it, breathing and lolling, trying to get his feet under him. I wanted to but I was afraid; I didn’t think he would make it and I didn’t want another reminder of grief.

Alone in the box he warmed up but he had nothing to climb on to strengthen his neck and get the upright posture he needed. His head bobbled back and forth and his legs skidded on the paper towel, trying to get a grip but rapidly splaying out sideways. Their bones are still malleable, so the longer they do this, the more they set badly and that means the death of a chick because if they cannot walk, they cannot eat or drink. They need conflict and pressure to get strong. They need to develop the right posture so they can stand and walk.

So since he didn’t have it, we created the pressure for him and wrapped him in a paper towel in a tiny cup. We had to do this with a chick from our previous hatch, too, and it works – it keeps their legs under them instead of going out at right angles, and since they want to see out of the cup, they use those tinytinytiny muscles to stand and push themselves up. Their toes start to straighten from the effort, and their necks strain forward to see.

(Why am I going on and on about quail? Because I don’t want to think about our last few days with Afton; I don’t want to think about how he ran out of time to clean out the incubator, or how Mother’s Day was awkward and filled with grief, or how empty his room looks with everything packed up and him not in it, or how Iree’s room will look in a week. So, quail…quail are safe.)

After a few hours in his own box, with the right posture, Afton reported that the little guy was trying to jump out to be with the others. And that’s another thing about quail, they don’t like being alone – as much as they pick at and aggravate each other, they want to be with their buddies. So we let him out and he ran around with the others, several sizes smaller than all the rest, but perfectly flappy and happy.

A couple days later was Mother’s Day, and Afton flew to Kodiak the next day. I wish I had taken pictures of Mother’s Day, or of him before I left. But I was crying and didn’t want that reminder of grief, either.

When we let go of control, surrendering our normal ways of doing things and letting Him nudge us (or bodyslam us, as the case may be) into doing something different, things start to feel a little loosey goosey. We are agreeing to a fast, of sorts, as we relinquish the way life used to be, and we gain the perspective that comes with fasting because we start to figure out new ways of doing things.

Our kids will find new ways of doing things. And we will, too.

Kavanagh is looking at sea glass and shells, asking where some of them came from and if you can hear the ocean in others. The glass is like us; sharp and broken until we’re worn soft from the tide moving in and out, billowing over us, crushing us against each other. We rub the sharp edges of ourselves against each other, and we no longer fit perfectly together all the time. We need the mortar of time and space between.

We have two hens, Molly and Toughie, sitting on nests of eggs that will hatch soon – Molly’s are due this weekend – and life is plenty full with the activity of new endeavors and milestones.

And Iree is playing that song again, and I stare at the keyboard, letters blurring.

“Good-by, dear!” Oh, stop the clock hands!….Stop Time for a while – until she could think –!

“Oh, Mother, do you think I ought to go?”

“Of course you ought to go.” Head up, Abbie was smiling….

Abbie waved and smiled – waved and smiled – as long as they were in sight. Then she turned and ran blindly into her bedroom and shut the door. And, whether she has driven away in a lumber-wagon or a limousine, the mother whose daughter has left her for the first time, will understand why Abbie Deal ran blindly into her bedroom and shut the door.

– Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

A friend of mine in this same season, texted me the other day and said, “Our family feels so small. And our house feels so big.” She’s right, both are true. We have bedrooms to rearrange, and kids vying for empty spaces. And when Iree moves in a week, I’ll try to take photos… but then again, I might not.

groundwork: when spring seems a long time coming

Posted on by April 28, 2023

It is fully spring: the air is warm, the geese are back, and we put away all the snow gear and broke out the flip flops. Yep, it’s totally spring out there, except…no leaves yet. Not a sprig of new green anywhere. Everything’s still brown, but at least that means the snow has fully, finally receded.

Inside, almost eighty quail eggs are in the incubator in our bathroom, humming along in their little racks, waiting until hatch day in a couple weeks. And in this short, brown space between snow and summer, we’re strategizing fencing and gardening spaces outside: Do we fence the garden, or do we fence the chickens?

groundwork: when spring seems a long time coming -- Shannon Guerra

We had decided on the chickens, giving them a couple of paddock spaces to alternate between so they only destroy half the woods at a time while the other half recovers. But then we had a visitor this morning and now we’re rethinking the garden, because Peter Rabbit is back.

Grrrr. I wonder if we can just fence him…and find him a wife.

But there are other spring things, too. The boys and I planted a bunch of sunflowers and veggies in starter trays, and I’m inquiring about blue, green, and dark brown fertilized eggs so we can hatch those once the quail are done (because, #chickengoals). So yes, it is brown outside but we know other colors are coming, and we’re doing what we can to help them emerge.

Isn’t this what we do? I don’t see progress yet so give me something to do to hurry it along. Waiting is the worst. W-U-R-S-T, worst. We’re waiting for healing or income or favor or direction, and the watched pot is not boiling, the leaves are not unfurling. This season is too long, taking forever, and we have things we want to get to.

Speaking of wanting to see progress in seemingly fruitless endeavors, I’m cleaning off the counter – Legos, Sunday school artwork, the toaster, a bunch of pens and colored pencils. Some headphones. I go round and round this island finding more things that don’t belong here, putting some of them in their right places but most of them in a pile for the boys to put away because it’s all their stuff. SO MANY LEGOS. And books, and magazines, and miscellaneous treasures.

I wipe down the counter. I sit on the couch and finish my coffee. I turn back around to admire the clean kitchen island, and behold, from out of nowhere, a Lego speeder has landed on it.

How did that get there? I have no idea. Why did I bother cleaning in the first place?

What is the point? Are we making any progress, or getting anywhere?

It’s odd because we spend all summer and fall preparing for winter – storing supplies, gathering the harvest, making sure we have the essentials for a storm – but then we spend all winter dreaming of spring, and spring has to be prepared for, too. It’s this circle of learning and growing and failing and achieving, and then starting over again.

But we’re not starting all over, back at the beginning, because each time the cycle restarts, our soil is richer. We remember the things we tried last year, and how they fared (or flopped) and those considerations get added in like so much compost.

And that’s good to keep in mind because this afternoon I’m reading to the kids and this is our…(hold on, doing the math…) nineteenth year of homeschool (WHAT) and I’ve been scouring our library again for good books for 3rd and 4th grade. The books aren’t hard to find; we have a houseful of them. The problem is that I have been teaching 3rd and 4th grade to one kiddo for about that many years straight and it doesn’t feel like we’re getting anywhere. We have a similar problem with another kid who’s in her fourth year of second grade math. How many easy readers of great quality can you find, and assign over and over and over, until we’re ready for the next level? How many different second grade workbooks can we go through before the concepts finally stick enough to move on to the next grade? The answer is as long as a piece of string.

I have these two little boys though, and there’s freshness here because all the favorite old stories their siblings have read to tatters over the last nineteen years are new to them: Little House, the McGuffey readers, Paddington Bear. Finn sits next to me reading aloud as I stitch granny squares, and we go round and round and round as he strings the words together.

I have been through this book five times already and I know these stories. For almost two decades they’ve been the same words, but the kids reading them are different and I am different, too, sitting here listening to them. I just keep stitching these squares, and they are also the same thing over and over, just variations in color. The stack of squares is slowly accumulating.

We blame kids for constantly asking “Are we there yet?” but really, this is one of the mantras of adulthood. Are we making any progress when it feels like everything is still brown and bare? Are we doing this right?

Later it’s Reagan’s turn, and I wait for her to read her verse aloud. Her pauses take forever between words because she approaches each one as though it’s brand new, never been seen before, practically in a different language. And it might as well be, even though she’s been through this book twice now. There’s nothing else I can do while she’s plodding through it, because if I turn my attention away, she’s even slower.

Seconds between words. Loooong strings of seconds in this long, long verse that she’s not even halfway through. I hear the boys upstairs playing in their room, and wonder what they’re doing.

Pray for her while you wait, God says. You’re an intercessor, remember? This is what you do.

I have been praying for her for eleven years. I have prayed in circles, round and round, a lot of the same things but with slight variation. I know we’re getting somewhere, I’m just not sure where it is. It reminds me of the citrus trees in my office that I’ve been told may never bear fruit – they’re taller and taller every year, but still, no buds or blooming. I grabbed the shears yesterday and pruned them anyway, believing for the impossible and working toward it. And one of these days, maybe I’ll have lemons or limes to show you.

But sometimes the timing and progress of things starts to mess with our identity, tweaking our attention in the wrong directions. When that happens, our perspective gets out of whack as we think the slowness means things it doesn’t: I’m a bad gardener, I don’t know what I’m doing, I can’t win for losing.

We think we know who we are, but we don’t understand what God is doing with us or why He’s allowing certain events or what the delay is all about.

I am a mom. A special needs mom, a homeschooling mom, a mom of many. When the kids are doing well, I think I’m doing well. When the tomatoes and lettuce are growing, I think I’m a pretty good gardener. But when the spinach bolts or the rabbit cleans out the broccoli or a kid makes lousy choices, I’m back to looking at bare earth, and chewed branches, and I wonder when fruit is coming. I wonder if I am being the me I’m supposed to be.

So what’s going on when things still feel the same, like we’re thrown right back to the beginning?

The Lord is saying, Stop looking at the branches and the dirt, Love. Look at Me. Eyes on Me.

I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

– John 15:5

So many times I have looked in the wrong direction and put my identity and value in outcomes and output, rather than remembering that I am a vessel the Spirit flows through. When I look toward where I expect fruit to be, I kink the flow. But when I look at Him, I am a conduit He surges through, irrigating infinite gardens yet unseen.

A wise friend explained it this way:

“…my heart needs to expand and firm up to carry more of God’s goodness to others…[but] He’s just pouring water through the channel and every day my heart is subtly increasing in capacity to care in ways I never imagined.”

– Katie

When we’re abiding and surrendered, here’s what the slowness really means: While we are waiting and preparing, He is preparing us. We are becoming more able, more equipped, more filled.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

— 1 Peter 1:9

Our reach is deeper and wider. We’re not just stitching in rounds, but in fractals. He is doing the work in us for expansion.

We do not make blankets, we make stitches…but the stitches make blankets, when you stick it out long enough. We look ahead to harvests, and different colors of eggs, and hutches full of quail. All these things, still unseen.

Now faith is the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen….And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him.

– Hebrews 11:1, 6

We prepare for warmth in winter by making granny squares in spring. And in all of our preparing, He is preparing us.

We know what’s coming. The testimony of every year declares itself when spring unfurls, leaves bursting out everywhere, and we see how He’s shown up and brought victory.

Are we there yet? No, maybe not. But He hasn’t left us going around in circles on a flat plane. We are going in spirals, upward.