[title subtitle=”words and image: Jessica Sowards”][/title]
This morning, I woke up in the dark. I’d forgotten to turn the alarm on, but the glowing red lights of the clock peered through the morning darkness to tell me I’d only slept three minutes longer than I would have had I remembered to turn it on. My internal clock is, apparently, precise. My feet slid across the soft sheets and touched my sweet husband’s legs next to me. His internal clock has long since been broken by staying up too late. He didn’t stir, but I didn’t mind.
I’m always the first one awake. Before the boys rise, before the dogs stir, and before the farm starts to come to life, I lie in bed and talk to Jesus.
Years ago, if you’d talked to me about dreams, I would have shared a big one. My dream, for the better part of my life, was to have exactly what I have now. I wanted a farm. I wanted to grow my own food. I wanted to raise my babies with their bare feet in the soil, to teach them the beauty of nurturing life.
It’s been over five years now that we’ve been doing the small farm thing. It was an impossible dream that I could neither force nor even rationally hope for. But I did hope, and in the form of a foreclosure, God gave me a house and a handful of acres. We rolled up our sleeves and learned to build and to grow. There were lessons along the way, some expensive and heartbreaking and others thrilling and wonderful. All of it has been beautiful.
I am thirty-three years old. I’m old enough to have learned some things by experience and young enough to still have so much to learn. This spring, as I’ve celebrated the five-year anniversary of my dream-come-true, something has begun to stir in my heart.
Springtime is special on a farm. New life explodes. In the form of fluffy chicks and bouncing goat kids, with milk flowing and seedlings breaking through the soils, spring screams the announcement of hope and fulfillment. When winter becomes grey and desperate, all of a sudden, the green comes rushing back. Then before I know it, it’s May and everything is alive and thriving. It is the time of year where I am quite literally overwhelmed with the fulfillment of what I used to pray for. And this year, as I’ve spent hours and hours working and preparing my garden, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve made a realization.
I don’t notice the roosters crowing anymore.
For five years my dreams have been primarily contained here on this handful of acres. I’ve planned gardens and fences and breeding lines of dairy goats. I’ve learned, grown, and stretched myself to the limits of what one person can possibly do. I’ve taught, shared and enjoyed this dream infinitely more than I thought I would. My sons have developed a gentleness that stops me in my tracks. When I see them gently place an earthworm into the garden beds or lovingly pat the stretched skin of a pregnant doe, I know this life has produced something precious in them. I am so, so thankful for my life. Truly, it blows me away and woos my heart with a romance for which I don’t have words.
My first rooster crowed on my farm on a warm December afternoon, the first year we lived here. I was sitting at the kitchen table, and the window was open to allow a breeze to flow in. That first crow floated in on the breeze and it might as well have been a brick wall with how hard it hit me. I wept at the table that day, so awestruck at the faithfulness of God. And now, I don’t notice it. At first, when I realized it, I thought maybe it was sad, that maybe I’d failed to maintain an appropriate degree of gratitude or wonder. But the more I ponder it, I don’t think that is the case.
I may live this dream with wild wonder and gratitude, but it is still my everyday life. I may maintain joy in the work of it and handle the hardships with a persistence rooted in thankfulness, but even still, this extraordinary life is mine. It is my normal, and that is ok.
I have come to realize that when dreams come true and become normal, when God sees your heart and meets you there with blessings, it’s an invitation to ask for a new dream.
That’s exactly what I am doing this spring. In the season of new life and new beginnings, as my hands are busy milking goats and sowing my garden, I’m asking God a question, simple and at the same time profound. I’m asking Him, “What do you want me to dream?”
Surely, He has shown me that He cares about what I dream. And so, I’m asking Him to conceive dreams in my heart that I might not be brave enough to hope for on my own. I’m asking Him to give me dreams for my family, for my friends, for all of you. I’m asking for dreams for our nation and for humanity as a whole.
Oh, the things I’ve started dreaming! I’m imagining retreat centers to teach people how to grow food. I’m imagining farm to table bed and breakfasts and a little restaurant with live worship sets and classes on eating seasonally. I’m dreaming of co-ops and community and being able to equip people to go back to the land.
Perhaps those are big things to ask for, but why not ask?
If a once poor girl like me could have the chance to raise her boys to be kind to earthworms and goats, if a country girl like me could teach tens of thousands to garden by way of YouTube and have the great opportunity to become accustomed to the crow of a rooster in her yard, why couldn’t I dream of great and wonderful things?
I want to ask you a question and I want you to really ponder it. Ask yourself this question and really let it settle in the deep places of your heart. It may seem silly, but I believe this single question, if we allowed it to convict us and stir us and strike our imaginations into action, could quite truly change the world: What would you dream for if you weren’t afraid?
To watch Jessica’s garden tours, visit her YouTube channel, Roots and Refuge.
