It is literally April in Tennessee (and everywhere else, for that matter). Jerry and I are coming up on our one-year anniversary here, so we've witnessed the progression of all the seasons. Plants are filling out, leaves returning, and I can't help feeling giddy, as if all this lush greenery overflows from the heart of God. It feels like the land itself is stretching, expanding, expressing its joy.
We have healed here. We have emerged from exhaustion and stepped into an existence of moles and wild turkeys and ticks. It is nothing to slow one's car for a turtle or a moseying dog lingering or actually sprawled lazily in the road. I'm liable to call bees "Buicks" here, for some seem that large. One stung me in the neck on Easter Sunday (thank God I'm not allergic), and although I'm not mad at these flying behemoths, I am far more retreat-ready around them.
Jerry and I have more than 70 birds (chickens, turkeys, ducks), two rabbits, plus our two cats & two dogs ... a menagerie, my mom says. We have one less today, as Harley, our eight-month-old dog, killed an ate the head of Smokey, our beautiful gray chicken. (We also called her Jean Gray, after Famke's X-Men character). Jerry keeps telling me death is part of farm life, but I had hoped our menagerie could live in harmony--cats and dogs and delicious birds all frolicking together like in the Garden of Eden. That's the city girl in me, I guess. But I'm learning.
I so appreciate this place. I see God everywhere, and as its beauty fills me, I delight in His creation. For me it's a classroom, teaching me how things are here in the wild (it's less wild than real wild, but far wilder than Chicago or Kalamazoo). I understand and am beginning to accept that I'll see change, growth, and even death. From bee stings and heat stroke and picking ticks from the dogs to garden-fresh vegetables, mountain views, and deer in the forest, this is my life. Not perfect, but beautiful, challenging, and amazingly peaceful. It is home.
