looking into the past

Altering the blog has been hard for me. I miss the warm green lushness of the springtime pictures, how they glowed with life.
I was so hopeful when I first posted a few months ago. It was January and winter was exercising a firm grasp yet spring reigned in my heart. I was looking forward with open eyes and heart, waiting on my Heavenly Father with eager expectation.
A few months have passed now and spring is lifting its splendid head. Daffodils have freed themselves from their long soil bound captivity, the air is crisp, rich with moisture and promise.
My heart is not ready to leave winter though, not ready for life to descend upon the farm that I have left behind. I look at the few pictures that I have of it from our recent visit and all is grey and sleeping. I cannot go back to winter. I cannot go back to my childhood home. I cannot curl up cozy cat style in front of the hearth while my grandmother busies herself in the kitchen. I need to find hope again yet my heart fails within me. Winter was my time of comfort, innocence from details, my refuge from facts and figures, mortgages and business plans. We had a dream then. We sheltered a hope within our breasts which we knew only the great and mighty God could accomplish yet I have let the immenseness of the thing wash over me. Now Lord, wash me in your immensity. Lift up my eyes from the waves and back to your countenance. With your great patient love teach my heart again to trust in your plan. All this impossibility can serve you.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:11-12

Since our visit last month to the farm we have had to face some facts. There are no programs available to help beginning farmers acquire land. Lenders require a fifteen percent down payment on farm purchases. The monthly payment on a loan of that size would be crippling at the outset anyway. Our prayer is that the Lord will use these obstacles to declare His greatness should he see fit to lead us back to my first home. I was a child. I am growing up.

"I do believe but help my unbelief I've seen hard times and I've been told There is a reason for it all" -Alison Krauss