Life

My foot is coming along nicely, and in taking it a bit easier this week, I've had some time to assess the progress in more areas than just my foot.  This homesteading endeavor has not been an easy situation.  As a matter of fact, it's been fraught with enough calamity, I've sometimes wondered if this is a blessing or punishment.  I don't have those days often, but it does seem when the Torah reading makes it's annual rotation to Moses missing the Promised Land due to striking the rock, rather than speaking . . . I think of my own frustration and presumption.

I know Abba led me here, there is no doubt about that, but sometimes in the face of calamity, thoughts of failure do cross my mind.  Since they don't come from my spirit, but from external events, I take heart and keep on keeping on.  As a matter of fact, I know some of these things have been tests, Abba told me when one was over.  I also know some of these things have been the way to certain realities He'd spoken to me, but I had been expecting a different path . . .  Most of my articles and blogs about this lifestyle are upbeat and encouraging.  I truly do believe this is what I'm meant to do, so even in the calamities, there's been provision, strength, and comfort.  It has taken awhile for me to understand shalom is enveloping, both a chuppa and a foundation, much like grace.

Some folks seem to move between discouragements with a few bright spots between, and other appear to move between mountains with a valley now and then.  This homestead I've been brought to establish has both all the time right here on the place.  According to the Conservation Agent at the County Fair, the Land of Goshen is the highest elevation in Newton County.   There are also two serious hollers on the place.  Most of my daily living is quite enjoyable.  I don't feel like I have too many "every day struggles" and for that I'm very grateful.  I want to share the serious things today though, for those who are wondering if a struggle is a sign of being on the wrong path.  I'm not speaking for G-d in your life, but sometimes the struggles are not aimed to change our direction, but to strengthen and refine us.

The first year of homesteading at the small place, my husband informed me this was my dream and not his, not to mention it was confirmed that I was also not the woman of his dreams!  The next year, some really bad livestock advice and loss . . . The next year an awesome harvest, but the man who didn't want this lifestyle got sick, very sick, became disabled and that was the end of his disinterested attempt at homesteading.  So while I homesteaded alone, I changed his bandages and served as his physical therapist for a year and a half.  By 2009, I was doing a radio show, had been doing the small homestead alone for nearly two years, when I clearly heard YHWH tell me it was time to move and reminded me of that pillar of cloud, I'd seen earlier.  Sure enough, even though I looked at land in the area closer to the radio station, I was led the opposite direction, the direction of the pillar of cloud.

I really thought I'd own the land a couple of years before actually relocating.  I was very attached to EinGedi, the starter homestead, but that's not what happened.  By August of that same year, I was relocated and establishing this place.  As it turned out, though, it was two years later that EinGedi was sold, and that same year, wrote, "Can We All Be Wrong?"  EinGedi was sold and the book published at about the same time even.  The biggest hit came when my daughter and her fiance read the book and "got on board" kind of . . . Actually, now in looking back, her participation was to bring change on every level.  All kidding aside, by March of 2012, I was ready to buy another place and just give them this place.  It was then, Ruach HaKodesh stirred in my heart the passage in II Chronicles about YHWH leaving us where we forsake Him, and another passage in II Chronicles about the battle not being mine, but belongs to Him.

I got a short respite between March and June, then a broken arm and houseful of guests, with two of them being quite wasteful and rude.  The other four guests were pleasant.  While my arm was still mending, a friend of nearly 20 years suffered a heart attack, so I took a short trip to visit her and help her make final arrangements.  When I returned home, and heard Abba say the name Ishmael, I really wanted to just lock myself in the milking parlor, but I continued to persevere.  It would be almost another month before the situation exploded, but I kept hearing the word, "derision."  Although the experience was quite grievous, there was a level of relief, when I heard, the test was over.  By the end of 2012, I'd broken my arm again and my friend had died.  I needed some time to grieve and recover, which I was given.

Now, I've shared these overwhelming events to share this.  I'm not sure I would have moved out on this plan, as a woman alone in ministry.  I still believed a lot of wrong teaching against women being strong leaders.  Mr. B's choice to not participate in homesteading or marriage was his choice, not mine.  I've since learned a great deal more about the ministry to which I'm called, once I laid down the false teachings about women.  My daughter and her husband have made their choices.  My friend had a long line of heart issues in her family.  I broke my arm twice in town before homesteading.  The point is, life happens all around us.  Bad things are not a sign that we're on the wrong path, they can be, but they don't have to be.  Also keep in mind, bad things happening are not always an attack of the adversary!  Even if the adversary is involved, he has to gain permission when it comes to the children of The Most High.

In every one of these situations, I was kept and provided for, and . . . although they seemed catastrophic at the time they happened, the events in this article took place over a nine year period.  A lot of people have had a marriage go bad, lost a friend, faced a major health issue, gotten injured, and endured a family crisis in the past decade.  Some people have persevered through all that and more.  The spiritual assessment of the Will of our Creator is not necessarily; what happens to us in life, but how we handle what happens in life.