Daddy's Grace

The enclosed dogtrot hall in our old farmhouse was our entry, dining room and kitchen. Twice a day during the week and three times a day on weekends, our family gathered at the little table for meals. Breakfast was always eggs (fried, scrambled or boiled) with grits, toast or biscuits, homemade jelly and jam, bacon or sausage. Dinner and supper would have two meats, four or five vegetables, bread and in the evening, dessert. Most of the food we ate was grown, raised and butchered on our land. Chickens for eggs and meat, a huge vegetable garden, beef cattle with one cow set aside for mama to milk, a pond for fish and all we had to buy at the grocery store were the staples... tea and coffee, sugar, bananas and vanilla wafers (man does not live by bread alone because there must be banana pudding), fruit, salmon for Saturday night supper and canned asparagus for mama.
In the summer time we canned and froze vegetables for the coming year while enjoying the “firsts”. The first potatoes were always so tender and sweet with melted butter dripping over them. Sometimes mama would cook them in the new green beans. The first tomato often was eaten standing in the middle of the garden with juice running down our chins as we passed it back and forth or as a sandwich on light bread with mayonnaise or salad dressing. And the first ears of sweet corn, pulled from the garden minutes before we ate, shucked and silked than dunked in boiling water so the sugar didn’t have time to turn to starch... it was a taste of heaven on earth.
The table was set with the four remaining Blue Willow plates that didn’t break when I pulled the china cabinet down on my head at the age of three. Mama lost most of her wedding china and crystal but I did not get even a scratch. She tells me that we both sat and cried amidst the wreckage. As we sat at the table, we bowed our heads and daddy prayed. With his right hand held to his forehead, his eyes closed, he prayed “Our Heavenly Father, We thank you for these and all thy many blessings. Forgive us for our sins, In Jesus name, Amen.” Every day of my life growing up, at home, in a campground or (very rarely) in a restaurant, this prayer of thanksgiving, grace and pardon was the first course of our meals together as a family.
When our children came along, we tried to have our evening meals together. By then supper had become dinner and breakfast had become cereals and toast. Thanks to my parent’s generosity with their big garden and an annual two week trip home in the summer, we ate the same canned and frozen vegetables I grew up with as well as beef daddy gave us. But one other custom remained the same... grace before meals. The words were different but the meaning was the same. Life and the food that sustains our bodies is a gift from God. Taking time to say thank you gives us perspective, helps us take time to savor and taste the goodness of the food and the goodness of God. Asking pardon for our shortcomings and sins reminds us we are not perfect but all can be forgiven if one just asks. The shattered china and crystal of our lives can be mended and made whole when we acknowledge our need.
I was always grateful for daddy’s grace. It was short, sweet and to the point. My hungry self did not have to wait long for the good smelling food and my soul was shaped by the gratitude and grace in those few words of prayer day in and day out. I hope there are still families sitting down to share meals together everyday that begin with grace. Michael and I do. It is a ritual with great meaning for us. Somehow I believe God hears us when we say thank you and smiles a little as we begin to eat, graced and pardoned, pass the purple hull peas, please.

Gambling in the hayfields...

Gary laid down the hay last evening in the high barn field. Tonight he will cut the hay in front of mama’s house. We have had so much rain that the hay is heavy, high and juicy. It will take some time to cure. The weather report shifted in midweek from a high percentage of rain to widely scattered showers so we gambled on those showers falling elsewhere. Michael will tedder (or stir or fluff, depending on where you live) the hay Friday to make sure the hay dries all the way through. With some luck, we will bale on Saturday and maybe Sunday. Our hay ox will be in the ditch and we will work until the hay is up. Then we have to cut the remaining fields the next weekend. We will bale Gary’s fields as well as ours.
A hay baling alert has gone out to friends and church family asking for help. This is hard work and more hands make the load lighter. James has already called checking on the schedule. His back prevents him from lifting so he drives the truck, my old job. I cook a farmhand meal and keep the workers in water. In the midst of all the sweaty, hot, muscle straining work, laughter and joshing abound. God gave men more upper body strength and in hay baling season, I am grateful for that. Slinging hay bales uphill, stacking bales five high on the trailer, unloading and stacking the bales in the barn requires muscles that I do not enough of. I can do it... it just takes longer. So I cook and drive and keep the water flowing, grateful for all who come.
Farmers are Gideon gamblers at heart. Every year they plant their crops, raise their animals and hope the market will pay enough to pay expenses and have some left over. It takes a prodigious amount of hope and determination to put all that you have... time, energy, money, trust, love and hope... into your crop then wait for harvest. Like Gideon laying out his fleece and checking it to see if it was wet or dry, farmers put it all on the line and pray.
This hay crop is no small matter for us. Last year we had to buy hay several times because the drought cut our hay yield drastically. The leaning barn was just a little over half full at the end of the summer. This year we spent money up front on fertilizer, gambling the rains would come and the sun would shine when we needed it to. Feeding cows takes a lot of hay, at least eight bales a day in cold weather for our little herd. It doesn’t take long for that to add up. Eight bales a day times seven days times four weeks times seven months is 1568 bales. This year we hope to get two cuttings with the largest yield in the first cutting.
Nothing like a barn full of hay to help me sing my thanks to God. The smell is intoxicating... fresh and earthy. The pale green neatly stacked bales are a stocked pantry for cows and the deer that roam our fields. Barn cats tunnel through the bales and have a shelter from cold winter winds. Memories of friends who helped with the harvest warm my heart as I pull those bales down to feed the cows in the autumn and winter months. As a farmer’s daughter and now as farmer and farmer’s wife, I know how that farmer in the New Testament felt when he surveyed his overflowing barns. There is such satisfaction in seeing the result of hard work, faith and hope piled high in a barn, a guarantee against the harsh times of want and need. His mistake was forgetting to be grateful, not giving credit where credit was due. We plant and harvest because we have been given much... the land, the good weather, life and health to enjoy it, friends to share in the work, laughter and love. Our Gideon gambles pay off in so many ways because of the graciousness of a giving God.
An old hymn we sang when I was growing up says it best. “Bring ye all your tithes into the storehouse, All your money, talents, time and love. Consecrate them all upon the altar, While your Savior from above speaks sweetly, Trust me, try me, prove me saith the Lord of Hosts and see if a blessing, unmeasured blessing, I will not pour out on thee.” So we will be baling sweet hay this weekend, God willing, and I will be singing my gratitude to the One who blesses me, fills my barn full and overflowing, graces me with “friends who are family and family who are friends.” Amen.

Weddings... Family Affairs

Rufus went to bed early last night. He was dog tired. Suzanne and Rick got married on the deck yesterday and his day was full of pats and snacks, children and merriment. As a matter of fact, my day was full of the same. Friends and family gathered round Rick and Suzanne tp celebrate the formal public recognition of the love that has sustained them in the past years. The service was personal with beloved children singing and dancing, stories of Rick’ daughter, Christine, and Suzanne’s son Christopher who died but were present in bittersweet memory, sisters and brothers, remembrances of parents who are no longer with them and a father who is present in body but mostly absent in mind. A beautiful bride, happy daughters who were lovely bridesmaids in yellow, a proud (and pooped) groom, a hay ride around the farm, food and drink a plenty and unending sunshine on a day that had an eighty percent chance of rain... it was a perfect wedding. When I remember this day, I will remember the laughter, the good humor, the feelings of joy and the shining faces of all those who gathered to bless this family.
I always loved the story of Jesus going to the wedding in Cana. He had been to John his cousin and been publicly baptized. He had called his first disciples. Then he went home for a wedding. His mama must have told him he had to come home for this one. It was probably a family member getting married and in the fine old tradition of families worldwide, you show up for weddings and funerals. And when the happy family ran out of wine, she went straight to her son and said “Fix it.” Jesus put up an argument but it was a weak one and she paid him no mind. Turning to the servants she said, “Do what he tells you to do.” They did and Jesus produced the best wine of the party, his first public miracle.
For years I have wondered what Jesus had done to produce such certainty in Mary of his ability to fix this embarrassing situation. Somewhere, somehow, she knew she could trust him to provide a solution for this problem. He didn’t let his mama down. His first miracle recorded in the Gospels is not one of healing, or peace bestowed or wrongs righted, but a celebration rescued from public humiliation because his mama told him to.
This would not be the only party Jesus would attend during his time on earth. He was fussed at by religious leaders for eating and drinking with sinners, kind of like Baptists dancing in public or being seen going in to the liquor store on Saturday. It was unseemly at the least and against all the rules for the right kind of religious people to party with those folks. He should have been busy saving their miserable souls or righting wrongs or doing something meaningful, not partying. Jesus knew the value of a good time, laughter and love wrapped around those of us who live in a world full of sorrows and loss. Weddings remind us that love is the final answer to all the questions that come when life is not perfect. And anything that comes our way is accepted with grace and gratitude because we are loved and are not alone. No need for a wine (or beer) miracle yesterday. We had our miracles of love, laughter and sunshine and it was more than enough. Our cups of thanksgiving overflow. Thanks be to God.