DREAMING OF: Living in the Country

It’s a dirt road dotted with barns, horses and cows. The stately old farmhouses and nothing but fields of rolling, green fields.

It’s a long drive into town. It’s being surrounded by fields, hills, blue sky and leafy green trees. The joy of leaving your windows open at night and only hearing the snuffle of cows, the chirp of birds and the boom and fire of Mr. John Deere starting in the morning.

There is peace to be found in this place. Where the only chatter at the end of the day is the family playing in the soft green grass of the wide yard. It’s the creak of the porch swing as the sun sets, sending bright, dwindling rays across the land and reminding you how great our God is. How amazing His fingerprints are across this landscape I love.

I’ve always been a country girl at heart. The farther I am from the neighbors, the more country the sounds, the more rural the area, the happier my heart is. The more at peace and the closer to God I feel.

Of course, one doesn’t always get everything they want in life. And sometimes God gives us dreams for a season and a contentedness and peace while we’re there. Right now I’m living in the city. Writing this in a very noise Panera.

You can imagine the difficulty it can be living in a place you wouldn’t ideally see yourself. So I’m in the suburbs. Listening to the neighbor’s kiddos playing ball in the street and the obnoxious dogs across the street play the tune of my rooster in the too-early mornings.

But I’m living another dream in this season: working for a literary agency. Working elbow to elbow with one of the more respected agents in the business. Can one complain while living this level of a dream? Certainly not! Would I claim to be? Never!

But until the day I can live in the country and raise my family where grass and not concrete surround us, I’ll continue to visit my friends who live in the rural areas of Colorado. Drink in the well water that fills my belly with the reminders of the home where I was raised and soak in the unfettered sunshine loving on the green and surrounding hills and red barns.

It’s a dance. A delicate display of willingness to let God work in my heart and soul while living in the city. For letting Him meet me even when I’m not constantly surrounded by the peacefulness of His creation—because you can’t escape it. No matter where you go or what you look at. He has granted me grace.

Somebody I’ll have that white farmhouse and red barn. Or maybe I won’t. But I do know this: His dreams for my life are amazing things. So I’ll keep dreaming. And loving on the country life.