A Year In Pictures . . . part 4

September 29, 2014 by The Smyths 4 Comments

We have just a few more pictures to share in this series of posts.  If you missed the first three posts, you can find them here:

One Year In and We Won’t Give Up!

A Year In Pictures . . . part 2

A Year In Pictures . . . part 3

We’ve been sharing some “glory moments“, challenges, and lessons learned over the past year (or so).  Our family has been on a journey toward the “old paths” and it hasn’t been easy.  We are, by the grace of Yahweh, attempting to build an agrarian homestead community in rural Missouri.  We had planned to share our journey in more detail and with videos, but we have just been in survival mode over the past year, so the pictures in this series of posts are to catch up to where we are now as quickly as possible.  If people are interested in our story, we would love to share more, but while we are still in survival mode, our computer time is very limited.  Our hope and prayer is to be “surthriving” (joyfully producing most of our needs alongside others for His glory) by 6 years from now.  With Him, all things are possible!

Glory Moment: How can such massive plants come from seeds put in a little Huglekultur bed? If we were to chop up all that mass and put it back into the bed, there would be an enormous mound that wasn’t there before. Truly a miracle!

Glory Moment: Being able to drink from our own spring was such a blessing. We so look forward to the day this drought ends and our spring begins to flow again.

Lesson Learned: When we first introduced our Ancona ducks to our creek, they didn’t know how to be ducks. It was pure joy to see them learn how to swim, dive, and be ducks for the first time. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how many books you read or videos you watch, you just have to learn through experience. We are loving the ducks!

Glory Moment: I love, love, love seeing our Creator at work in the garden! This was an afternoon snack fresh from the garden one hot summer afternoon. Delicious!

Lesson Leaned: Anything worth doing is worth “failing” at. We knew this when we started out on this journey, but we didn’t know how hard it would be. Sometimes you have to fall, fall, and fall again before you finally get it.

The first of many . . . pure joy.

Though we are heated in the fire and hard pressed on all sides, He is at work. Be of good courage and never give up!  Simply believe and trust HIM.

When the baby is screaming, the 3 year old needs wiped, everyone is hungry, the sink is full of dirty dishes, and there is no water, again . . . HIM.  When the goats escape to the neighbor’s for the 100th time, the drakes are fighting, the hens are laying eggs in the pile of insulation, the pasture never gets hayed, the blister beetles are taking over the garden, and the van tire is popped for the 3rd time this month . . . HIM.  On the one side, the “glory moments” keep us believing  . . . and on the flip side, the challenges keep us trusting because we know we live in a fallen world that only HE can redeem and restore.  And yet, most of our time is spent somewhere in-between . . . what then?  HIM.  It’s all about knowing HIM.  That’s one of the biggest reasons we have chosen this way of life.

As I lug buckets of water up the hill from the creek, do I know His strength?  As I walk in the garden, do I know that He has answers to the bug problems and ask of Him?  Only He knows just what experiences we all need to draw us to or keep us in HIM. And somehow His sovereignty and our free will meet in a mystical dance and I just can’t get enough . . . I want to know Him more and make Him known.

 

In the past year, our family has experienced more loses, troubles, challenges, and “failures” than I care to recount.  But we have also experienced incredible “glory moments” that have kept us believing in His promises.  And we are learning to look to Him in all that we do . . . because HE is everything to us.  Thanks for joining us on this journey so far . . . we still have a long way to go.

Blessings,

Carrie   ><>