The Quest for a Mile

I wrote this a while back, and it's been on my mind a lot lately, and I thought I'd share. Kind of been having a string of bad days, and I've got to recenter myself. Sometimes, the best way to do that is to focus on your goals, and remember why you are striving so hard again.

Thanks for all the support, guys. Kind of really need it right now. Thanks.

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My husband Phil and I are wanting to build a house on our beautiful land that just so happens to be so very far away than where we currently are living. The house is the dream -- a very distant dream that sometimes seems so teasingly close that it hurts. When I close my eyes, I can see it so clearly...

When I see it in my mind, it is early morning, because when Phil and I camp on the building site, this is the time of day that I can pretend that we do, in fact, live there. A fresh sunrise coming up right over that distant hill, and cool dew is on every leaf and blade of grass. The air is fresh and wet and green, just as it should be on a country farm. And there is our house: a farm style log house, with three dormer windows and a wrap-around porch causing a sleepy-looking roof line around the front. On that wrap-around porch I can already sense the destiny of sipping ice tea on hot summer nights, watching the fireflies and slapping at mosquitoes. I can imagine frosty winter sunrises over a hot cup of coffee, and firey autumn sunsets full with the confetti of fall leaves. Outside the house crickets chirp and cattle low, and inside the house there is laughter and the sound of little feet. There are soft places to fall, hard chairs to pay bills, things to clean and things to cook, but outside of every window is the farm that God gave us, and inside every room is love. Our house is denim and sunshine, a strange mixture of reality and fantasy.

I can see Phil and the kids playing football in our front yard, with the dogs playing both referee and linebacker. I can picture yelling at the kids to not climb that tree or don't jump out of the barn, full of anger and relief and laughter all at the same time. I can see us, the whole family, walking with our fishing poles, barefoot down the stream, ready to relax next to the fishing pond and maybe grill what we catch for supper that night. I can picture playing hide-and-go-seek with the children, giggling and running and ducking behind tree trunks, and perhaps having secret locations be given away by curious kittens or calves. I can almost see the kids camped out in the treehouse, with the flashlights shining like dim light sabers, cutting through the dark summer night. I can picture myself painting in my dream studio, blaring my music and creating beauty. The kitchen is warm and blue and sparkly and smells like crescent rolls or pumpkin pie. And all the pet animals we will have! -- cats, dogs, horses, cows, donkeys, goats, pigs, chickens, rabbits! It simply wouldn't be a farm without these things, and little baby animals that need bottle feeding, even on snowy mornings.

I can see all these things so clearly ... if only imagination could bring things into reality, then the house would exist. But then I open my eyes and look around at the little trailer that is so far away from the farm, a place where our stuff is but is not quite a home. It is achingly distant from the farm and the future and the kids. These days will be endearing in the years to come, and even here there is happiness and love, but it is not the dream.

If home is where the heart is, our home is on that little hill with the sunrise and the dew, even if that is all that is there right now.

Posted in: farm, home, kids, the dream on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at at 1:03 PM