On the Garden Path at 5~Acre Farm: best friends

Showing posts with label best friends. Show all posts

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Love and Marriage, Young and Old

There were terrible storms last night. Thunder rolled over the farm for hours, and lightning flashed constantly throughout the night while the wind roared. The dogs, always distressed during storms, were much more so last night. Once we let them in, it took them quite a while to calm down, but heavy claps of thunder still kept them skittish. John was up most of the night, dealing with the dogs, power outages, and other issues that arose. And the rain came down in heavy bucketfuls. You'd have thought there would be a pretty deep swimming pool in our yard this morning. But as the sun came up, it was evident that there was no damage,
none at all! We are so thankful to God for His mercies!

Although I was upset to hear about the storm damage and loss of life in north Georgia and the mid-west, I was relieved to know that our little farm had come through the night safely. I was also happy to see that the rain had ceased. Today was too important a day to be dampened by rain and storms. Today was the first anniversary of my niece's wedding four years ago, and a huge reception was planned!

Katie Mae and Ando were married on February 29, 2008 ~ leap day of leap year! They exchanged vows at the courthouse, with only their parents attending. Well, although Ando's parents made it, my sister took a few wrong turns four years ago, and missed the ceremony all-together.

Katie Mae & Andy (Ando)

Fast forward to now, the first February 29 (Wednesday) since 2008. Katie Mae and Ando, with the help of good friends, pulled together a beautiful reception held this afternoon at Red Top Mountain State Park in northern Georgia to celebrate their first official wedding anniversary! The theme was purple and white, and it was everything a wedding reception should be: family and friends gathered together, lots of toasts, lots of laughter, music, and dancing. Katie's friends, all beautiful, young women, and all dressed to perfection, would have served as her bridesmaids in a proper wedding ceremony. Today they served the crowd as hostesses, decorating the hall, setting the tables, preparing the food, organizing the events, and doing it all with gleaming smiles and wearing high heels!


Chantal with her son, Gentry, and Katie Mae. I have no idea who the other guy is!

My sister, mother of the bride, wept constantly, she was so full of joy!

Katie Mae and her PopPop

I cried a few times too, thinking of my own hard-won marital happiness, and my father's lost happiness. I miss my mother every day, but never more than I did today when my father stood to toast his granddaughter and her husband and wished them as many years of happiness as he and my mother had known together. That was 62 years for my mother and father.

The two-hour drive to Red Top Mountain this morning was pleasant and peaceful after a night of storms. The afternoon spent with family, friends, and new friends was fun, entertaining, and sentimental.

I danced with my husband today. We don't get to do that very often. My hips ached before the dance was over, but in spite of the pain I danced, and I let John twirl me around the floor. That's the part we love, the twirling, with a flourish! We kissed while we were on the dance floor too. The majority of the people at the reception were young, in their twenties, and although I would kiss my husband in front of anyone, I felt it was very important to kiss him in front of these young people, so they could see love and romance in the old. So they could see, and maybe understand, that being old can still be about having fun, being happy, being sexy, and being in love.

The guests gather

I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures today. Most of mine were blurry or dark, or blurry and dark.There was a professional photographer at the reception, so when the photos become available and get shared with me, I will share some of them with you.

In the meantime, don't forget to relax and enjoy your life. Find something to laugh about, and someone to laugh with. Celebrate something with champagne, and most important of all, kiss your Beloved in public! You'll make everybody jealous!

Tossing the bouquet

Claiming the garter

Saturday, February 25, 2012

It's Good to Have Friends ... and a Puppy!

Kathy has returned home to Chicago, and our house is quiet and still without her here. What else is there to say? Bless you everyone. Cherish your friends. They are true gifts from God!

When God is Living in Us, and Blessings Overflow!

Kathy gets her pedicure!

It's Friday night, and my friend Kathy will be leaving tomorrow to return to Chicago. How I would love for her to stay longer! I will miss her terribly.

Kathy spent a few weeks, before she came here, praying for temperatures to be in the 80s. We didn't quite get there, but temperatures here lingered in the mid-70s for the most part. It was sometimes overcast, and there was some rain, but we also had some nice patches of warm sunshine, which Kathy soaked up sitting in a rocking chair on the back patio, or in a lawn chair out front. I didn't get any photos of this. I wish I had, but I felt it was more important to give Kathy privacy and peace while she was here.

Kathy gets her manicure!

Kathy, and her husband, Kalail, came into our lives in 2007, when we met Kathy at the little church we were attending. We didn't really get to know each other then, we just had that Sunday morning "church" kind of relationship that went on for a few months, until I realized one Sunday that Kathy was missing. The deep, comforting "Amen" that she would offer periodically from the pew behind us went unheard for a few weeks before I asked someone where she was.

Disturbing events had called Kathy back to her home state of Illinois. Several people in the church were discussing how to help, and I offered to do whatever I could. I was one of many who received Kathy's mailing address and phone number, but we would discover later, I was the only person who ever bothered to contact Kathy.

Kathy was in her 40s then, and her husband was several years older than her. Kalail had been left behind to take care of things in Georgia, and then head north. No one was taking care of him, including the pastor of our small church, and Kathy asked John and I to check on him and help him if we could. That was when we learned that Kalail had cancer. Stage four colon cancer.

We did what we could for Kalail. We committed ourselves to him and Kathy, whatever they needed. Mostly, he needed someone to talk to, to have that sense that there was a safety net there for him and Kathy. He worried more about her than himself, and, as true love goes, she was more worried for him than for herself. Well, when Kalail finally understood that we weren't making superficial promises, that we meant what we said, I think he took a long, deep breath, and relaxed a bit. We gave him a ride when he needed it, took him out to dinner, gave him a little money, and saw him on his way to Illinois. I wrote to Kathy regularly, and we stayed in touch by phone and email. Though my letter to her were meant as encouragement, I found her letters to me to be filled with faith and trust in God, bearing witness to God's great mercy, and His ability to meet every need in even the worse of circumstances. Kathy and Kalail were always thanking us, even long after the emergency had subsided; but for John and me, our reward was in knowing that they were back together and making it, together. No two people ever touched me so deeply and so significantly as Kathy and Kalail.

My mother was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in April of 2010. I was with her, caring for her when Kathy called me in May to tell me that Kalail had passed away. When he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, he was not given long to live, but it took 6 years for the cancer to finally take him. Kathy, and their love for each other held him here.

Not many of us get to experience a love that can be described as profound. Kathy and Kalail did though. I knew how much they loved each other, how much they had gone through to be together, how hard they fought the cancer and everything else that tried to come against them almost constantly. Through everything, Kathy's and Kalail's faith led them, strengthened them, encouraged them, and carried them with praise and thanksgiving to God flowing from their lips, with acute awareness of the blessings that God was continually pouring out on them, and with "exceeding great joy" in their hearts.

And even after Kalail was gone, Kathy still praised God, still saw His hand in everything, His purpose in her life, and His plan for her laying itself out before her. Such faith I have never known.

So, when Kathy and I were emailing each other over the holidays, and I saw this incredible woman growing exhausted from working three jobs, and the devil still chasing her with struggles (though her testimony is full of God's deliverance), I asked her to come visit us and let me pamper her for a while.

John and I struggle with finances, like everybody else. Money has to go a long way here to get and keep the farm in shape, and there is a lot of expensive work for us to do this year. But our priorities aren't always about money and the things we want when we see someone in need, whether that's a financial need, emotional need, or the need to be pampered.

We pinched our budget and bought Kathy a plane ticket. We scrambled to turn our storage room into a decent guest room. I filled a basket with creams and lotions and candles that I thought she might enjoy, and put fresh yellow tulips in her room to brighten it. Kathy slept on a new mattress (that she still thinks she can slip in her suitcase and take home), enjoyed plenty of good food and treats, got tons of rest, visited a gym to go swimming and sit in the sauna, and today, was treated to a massage, facial, manicure, and pedicure, followed by an ice cream sundae! She won't quit thanking us, and I keep teller her to shut up!

Kathy is flying home tomorrow. I don't want her to go, but I have to let her. I know she'll be back for (I hope) many more visits in the years to come. I don't know what it is about her that makes me love her so, but I do. Well, maybe it's God. Maybe it's God doing something that only He can do, that can only be fully understood by Him. But I know this. I know my home, and my life have been blessed by Kathy's visit this week. I am renewed in my faith by the witness of her faith.

Yes, as Kathy keeps saying, she has been very blessed this week. But somehow I think I have been blessed even more.

We'll miss you Kathy. Don't stay away too long!

John and Michelle, and 5 Acre Farm

How We Came To Be

John was born and raised in Georgia by parents who lived incredible lives of their own, and passed on to John a rich family history from both sides. He was a die hard Boy Scout, and later, spent 17 years as a Troop Leader. He earned a dual Agriculture/Agricultural Engineering degree at ABAC in Tipton, where he also started the college's radio station. After college, John served on nuclear submarines in the Navy, where he once saved the lives of his shipmates, and, rumor has it, did many incredible things in the service of our country. He married and had a family, and after the Navy, worked briefly with the EPA before opening his own HVAC-Refrigeration company. John was inventive as a child, and that carried over into everything in his life. He is a fixer of severe mechanical problems, and an inventor of all kinds of things that improve on or simplify existing machinery, equipment, and ideas. His inventions are unique, and some of them may some day aide humanity, save lives, and save our planet if we can get the right people to listen.

My dad was career Army. I was born in France, and introduced, at a very young age, to the Virginia countryside, where we raised rabbits and chickens. After dad retired, we moved to North Carolina, his home state, where we spent many years on the coast, near Wilmington. Here, we had a garden, raised cows, pigs, chickens, and ducks, and fished commercially. Our freezer was always full of fresh Spot and shrimp, and oyster roasts were a weekly event! As a young adult I lived with my family in the mountains south of Asheville. Here too we had a garden, raised cows, pigs, chickens, and ducks, as well as geese and peacocks. I worked for many years with an arts council, Christian organizations, and other non-profits. I helped train missionaries, researched/wrote grants, produced professional documents, edited newsletters, and wrote a lot of publicity materials. I already had two Associate degrees, but in my late 30s I finally completed an undergraduate degree in English/Art History. For 20 years I was active in community theater, sang solos with a community choir, and danced with a show choir. Treasured memories! I moved to Georgia in late 1998, and married my first husband in 2002. I was 45. Eighteen months later, I was widowed.

John and I first met in 2000. After I was widowed, and John was divorced, we found each other again. Of like minds, spirits, and goals, our hearts came together quickly, and we married in 2005. Each of us has undergone Elijah House training, and we were both ordained into ministry in 2006. I have been a Christian counselor and prayer warrior for probably 30 years. John and I live to put God first in our lives, and in our dreams for this small piece of earth of which we are the caretakers.

We call our place "5 Acre Farm." John's father took this barren, overworked field from a larger parcel of farmland in the mid-70s. He fenced off about three-quarters of an acre for the house, and added plants, flowers, and trees. Elsewhere, he transformed the property through years of hard work, adding an apple orchard, peach trees, pears, two fig orchards, grape vines, and a greenhouse. John and I have been trying to continue his father's work on this land, adding to it with our own hopes and dreams, and our late-in-life efforts. Not a day goes by that I don't feel great respect for John's father, for the man he was, for the work he did here, and gratitude for the bounty we reap because of his hard work.

John and I are in our 50s, just starting life together, but with age and health trying to work against us. We aren't ready to sit down and take it easy. We have a goal to become self-sufficient by growing our own food (meat and vegetables), and getting off the grid. The challenges we face in doing this are age, health, and finances. John's inventiveness is being strongly applied, as is my gift for budget stretching and frugality. Our strength? The love we have for each other, and the trust that we are working inside the will of God.

One of the things we ask ourselves now and then is this: "Is it worth it?" I never had children. John's son has set his own path with family and career. There does not seem to be anyone we can leave this property to who will continue the work and the dream; one of John's grandchildren, perhaps, but they are very young right now, and do not yet notice or care.

So, is it worth it (all the work and expense) if there is every chance this land will end up in the hands of developers after we're gone? Well, our answer to that question so far is always "Yes, it's worth it." It's worth it to us, because of what we are accomplishing here in our lifetime. It's worth it because what we grow here we share with family, with friends, and with our community. And not just what we grow, but our faith and philosophy, our hopes and dreams, and our very desire to leave at least our little part of the world better than it was when we found it. We are living - consciously, and deliberately - a lifestyle that expresses who we are and what we believe. Does anybody care? Why don't read our blog, leave a comment, and let us know.