Falling in Love

I've always been rather skeptical of the phrase "falling in love."  It makes it sound like love isn't a choice, as if you're just walking along one day and suddenly trip and fall into this hole called "Love."  As someone who likes to have control, that just doesn't sound like very much fun to me.  I'd rather choose to love, thank-you very much.  Unfortunately for me, I am discovering that sometimes, love isn't as much of a choice as I think it is.  Every time I hold a cousin's new baby, I fall in love with another little human.  Every time I make new friends, there comes a point when I can't help but be concerned if they are sick or I think they are going to hurt themselves, and I figure that's a type of love.  I can't help that.  It just happens.

And then there are the times when I'm on the tractor, looking at the fields and trees and sky around me, and just thinking of the possibility of leaving it all makes me feel sick.  Somehow, long before I even knew someone could love a lifestyle or a job, I fell in love with farming.  It must have happened when I was young.  Maybe it was the time my dad let a little five-year-old me help put the cab on the old Cockshutt tractor for the winter and my hands got "just as dirty as Daddy's!"  Or maybe it was the time I first got to rake hay all by myself because I was finally tall enough to reach the clutch.  Maybe it was in the years of drought and BSE, when everything seemed to be going wrong and farmers all over were selling out and I was terrified that my dad would do the same.  I don't know when it happened, but I fell in love with farming.  Now I'm in that hole, with no way out, and I rather like it here.

The worst part of this "falling in love" thing is that it is easy to just accept it and carry on.  I'm afraid that I will hold on to this love for the farm and set it above all else.  I'm afraid the farm will become an idol that keeps me from doing what God wants me to do.  I'm afraid that one day I'll have the chance to choose to love a man and I will turn away because a patch of land is too important to me.  I'm afraid that I'll hold on to the farm too tightly and jeopardize both the farm and myself in the process.  What if I'm not meant to run the family farm, but I try anyway and run it into the ground?  What if I'm not meant to do the sort of work that farming requires?  What if I get sick, but push through to do the work and destroy myself?  That's a lot of "what if's" and "I'm afraid's".

I'm done with letting love control me so that I only have fear.  I want to choose to love.  I will choose to love the farm for the gift that God has given me.  I will steward the land for as long as I am able and then I will hand it over to whoever is the next one to steward it.  I will choose people over the land, even when it is hard.  I will choose God and His will for my life over all else and pray that He will give me the desires of my heart, which will be the desires of His heart.  I will choose the healthy love that God gives to His children, rather than the love of the world that fills me with fear and angst.  And I will choose to love farming, whether I get to be in the center of it or not.

Harvest 2015