I’ve been a farm girl for as long as I can remember…whether I lived in the country or not. The love of the land bit me when I was very young and the dream was never far away, even when I lived and worked in a city. This picture was taken at the log house Hubby #2 and I bought after he finished his residency and joined a practice in a tourist town on the Western Slope of the Rockies. 

If you look closely, you can see the semi-arid, desert-like land we lived in. Rain was hard to come by. Lawns and gardens had to be irrigated with water you bought and paid for. And the ground itself was hard packed and needed so much work to foster it into something workable. As I fiddled around with my plantings, I dreamt of a farm in the lush green land of my youth. 

For a number of reasons…not the least of which was being Jewish…my husband didn’t feel West Virginia would be very welcoming. Besides, he was a Colorado boy, born and bred. They don’t transplant well into humidity. So my dream of that verdant farm remained just that…a dream. I did the best I could with what I had to work with.

On this day, I borrowed our neighbor’s tractor and plowed up a huge garden. I worked it, planted it, babied it, and fought the wildlife for my budding plants. Between the deer and the rabbits…it was a tough war. That summer, I left the watering to my husband and my daughter and I went to West Virginia to visit my mom and grandma. On June 23rd, he called me to break the news. It got down to 23° overnight and I lost everything.

I was so disappointed. I vowed that very day to buy all my veggies from local farmers. I made friends with some people who lived on a mesa west of town. I drove out to their farm once a week to buy my produce from their organic farm in person to keep them from having to give a cut to the farmer’s market they frequented. I knew full well from watching my grandparents grow strawberries to sell…there’s a boatload of work in it and you need to get back every penny you can.

When this photo popped up yesterday, I smiled at the warm memories it invoked. I was so young and energetic and idealistic. I was supremely confident my marriage would last the rest of our lives and we were going to live happily ever after. But, life isn’t a fairy tale and time can change even the most committed people. 

I am who I am today, largely because of that twenty-year marriage. It gave me my second daughter. It gave me experiences and life lessons I couldn’t get any other way. Even though things got really, really hard at the end of that marriage, I wouldn’t trade it for anything because of the personal growth it forced me to make.

I look at photos like this and compare it to where I am now in my life. I was thirty-four years old in this picture. I’m soon to be sixty-nine. A lot of water has gone under that bridge. Life has passages we go through….times of smooth sailing and times of strife. I know full well how blessed I am to be right where I am and with my Mr. FixIt. I don’t let a day go by without telling him how happy I am that our paths crossed again and that we chose to live out this adventure together.

On occasion, my mind wanders to the darker sides of life. After having lost Mr. Virgo to a massive heart attack, I am fully aware how tenuous life is…how easily it all could be snatched away. I used to feel anxiety and fear at the “what ifs”. I’ve stopped doing that (most of the time, anyway), because that is not how God wants me to live my life. He tells me in His instruction manual that I cannot gain one hour in my life by worrying. He tells me not to be afraid…that He will equip me with exactly what I need, when I need it. And, He will carry me when the going gets tough.

I have complete faith that He will do what He says He will because…I’ve seen Him fulfill His promises…over and over and over. Remembering that fact instills me with the confidence that I can do anything with Him in my life because He strengthens me. I know that He lives within me and He is greater that he who lives in the world. He makes sure that no weapon formed against me will prosper. These promises have gone a long way toward improving my emotional and physical wellbeing. 

I don’t know how to act my age because, I’ve never been this age before. So I’ll just live each one of the days like it’s my last and enjoy the ride.

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“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”

Proverbs 3:5 ESV