“How could anybody stand to live way out here?”
That’s what I wondered every time I visited my grandparents out in the boondocks of Parke County, Indiana. I always felt like I was leaving behind most of the things that made life worth living—friends to play with, sidewalks to ride my bike on, stores, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, monkey bars, and good TV reception.
I loved my grandparents and enjoyed building forts in their woods, playing in their corn crib, going fishing with my Grandpa, picking vegetables in their garden, and gathering eggs from the henhouse. I eventually learned to control my gag reflex when my Grandpa cleaned the fish we caught, and to be only slightly horrified at the sight of dead squirrels hanging from the clothesline, waiting to be skinned, cleaned and fried. (Yes, I’ve eaten rodent. Is there a support group for that?)
“Going to town” was a big event when my older brother and I stayed with our grandparents. A small general store seemed like Sak’s Fifth Avenue after several days on the farm.
All that country stuff was okay in small doses, but I was always ready to return to my busier life in the comparatively big city of Terre Haute. It was hardly Manhattan, but it seemed like a bustling metropolis compared to tiny Catlin, where my grandparents lived. (FYI, Catlin is between Rosedale and Rockville. That helps, doesn’t it?)
For many years, I couldn’t possibly imagine myself living in the country. No way. Never gonna happen. I grew up living so close to neighbors that from my bedroom window, I occasionally spotted our elderly neighbor plodding around the kitchen in his boxer shorts. I thought that was normal.
I liked the neighborhood noises of my youth. Lawnmowers, kids playing, adults laughing as they gathered on front porches nearly every evening when the weather was warm, and distant sounds of teens revving their cars as they cruised up and down Wabash Avenue, Terre Haute’s main drag.
Boredom was my worst enemy and it seemed that enemy was much easier to keep at bay with lots of other humans around.
But that kind of proximity and activity now makes me feel claustrophobic and stressed. I still don’t like being bored, but that enemy almost never finds me anymore.
I’d rather see trees and grass when I look out my windows than neighbors in their boxer shorts. In fact, we built our current house smack dab in the middle of our wooded property so we’d never be within eyesight of another house.
My husband grew up on a farm and he’s very happy I’ve become a tractor-driving country mama. I’m sure he didn’t think I’d ever come around, but I did.
In fact, changing from a “city mouse” to a “country mouse” is just one of many pretty radical transformations I’ve undergone in my life. So why does my faith illogically waiver most when it comes to believing God can change others?
I know He can create universes, part seas, and work miracles. I know He changed Moses the fugitive into Moses the deliverer, Saul the Christian-hater into Paul the apostle, and doubting Thomas into Thomas the martyr.
I believe the Bible when it says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will (Prov. 21:1).” And yet I confess my faith is still sometimes weak when I ask God to bring needed change to people I care about.
If you can relate and have lost hope as you’ve prayed for someone in your life, picture me riding my tractor in the boonies of Abbeville County and know this: If He can get me here, God can change anything about anyone. Let’s keep believing and praying.