Check out this great article . . . Thanks Jeanine!
Babies Know: A Little Dirt is Good for You
The latest scientific findings support that we were created to live on the earth, intimately connected with nature. It used to be that the more we’d find out, the more we’d have to worry about. But now it looks like much more balance is emerging. To me, that declares God’s love and tender care for us, that he created us out of love, and created us to live on this most glorious, beautiful, dangerous, challenging and serene planet. Things that we find out through the latest scientific research, like dirt being good for babies’ immune systems, speak of God’s motherliness. I know that my joy in watching my kids get into the mud, into the dirt, into the land, and my joining in with them, is an experience created by God, for me, in the image of His own joy. And I now know (though I’ve always known, intuitively) that there is very little risk in allowing them to follow their instincts outside! This brings me such peace, such a sense of the freedom that God wants me to have all the time. I want to live in it! Never leave that peace and freedom! To me, these are the features of a life, closer to the land. Trusting the wisdom of the generations that were here before me, learning the skills to survive with little and making the most of abundance. This is what I would be seeking in living a homestead life. The older I get the stronger the urge and the more intense the longing. I feel like that would be where real life, with God, would begin. More quiet, at times in need and struggling, praying in new ways, living with big questions, no answers and seeing God everywhere, outdoors, in my longing, in the faces of my family, in my cold and in my warmth. But who the heck willingly seeks out a higher level of adversity in their life? I know it would be worth it, in my depths, but society’s voice is a loud force in my brain, one that exerts much more influence over me than I would like to admit. And if I’m honest, I do not have the strength nor the will to pull and persuade a strong man and three children to join me in that adversity. Or do I?
3 Comments
You might surprise yourself!! Every step that we take towards farm life the more I fall in love and the more the “things” pass away as just small things. Nowhere will be perfect this side of heaven and there are pluses and minuses on each side. But man I am with you, there is an inner longing for the return to using and living off the land. I am not totally there but, I am stoked and thank God for each step!!
Thanks for the encouragement, Janell. I just watched the movie Into the Wild last night, there was so much in it that magnified my yearning!
Jenn…great entry. This was an awesome article.
I know whenever Hudson would get sick, and it was a nice day outside, my thoughts were always to have him go outside and eat mud. Instincts. God is so awesome.
P.S. Ladies…throw away those gardening gloves, we need that mud too !