I know, I know! I’ve been away so long you may not remember why you ever asked me to include you on this crazy Journey to Joy in the first place. But it’s time for a change so I’m back and I’m hoping you are too : )

Last time I wrote we were 3+ years into homesteading in a fifth wheel at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere on my family farm where the last residents left in the 1940’s and my brother purposefully burned the house to the ground. There we permanently camped in an RV trailer, rebuilding, restoring, repairing, replanting and just plain working our tails off starting over in our 50’s with a childhood dream in our hearts. There were lots of fuzzy and feathered mouths to feed, my health and our finances were severely challenged, plus we had our Grandgirl a good portion of every week.

Then everything changed.

Our 100+ year old family farmhouse just down the road went vacant for the first time in its history so we moved in and sold the camper, delighted to have a solid warm place in winter with the luxury of full bath and laundry IN the building living not quite so far from town. But this unexpected blessing required starting all over again AGAIN, with furnishings, gardens, fences and outbuilding repairs. AGAIN! Did I mention AGAIN!!! Then a custody battle moved Grandgirl to Texas. My career entirely disappeared. Our adult kids moved leaving us true empty-nesters at last. My health gradually returned. Then covid hit, reaffirming our passion for relearning old ways and rebuilding old places where many generations would continue to learn to grow and raise and preserve and enjoy food and family and farm and faith together. Even if it’s just the two of us here for now.

So Hubby built a greenhouse! Using salvaged pieces and parts, generations old beams from the farm, we wrapped her in a new shell, then placed atop a string of solar twinkle light plus a fitting crown. From our frustrated desire to lengthen our growing season blossomed a backyard cathedral bearing undiscovered possibilities.

We so easily forget life is like that – as much as we plan or resist, good things, bright things, sparkly new discoveries can arise where and how and when we least expect, often BECAUSE things didn’t go as planned.

So here’s my revelation: IT’S TIME TO GET UNSTUCK. In heart and mind and dreams and writing. Even when things don’t look the way I think they should. Perhaps especially because of it.

It’s time to accept the cleared slate with trust that this isn’t the end of the story. New things tend to grow in empty places. Family and friends will fill this big old house again one day. Garden starts won’t be the only thing blooming in the new cathedral-greenhouse. Maybe baby chicks in the spring. Our first baby ducks as well? Potlucks? Camp-outs? Unknown prayers waiting to be answered… Life is like that.

Across this canvas without all the usual suspects in our daily, weekly and holiday traditions a vision of new strengths and talents and possibilities within ourselves and each other emerges. Priorities resort. New dreams arise.

In writing as in life, it’s a process of letting go this holding ourselves and others to an old expectation of how or when things were supposed to grow or look or bear fruit. Instead making the choice each day to refocus on the beauty being revealed just here within our reach. Today.

Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert. ~ Isaiah 43:18-19

Amen.

Anybody Out There??? first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

I am tired of living in fear, like my goat afraid of the snow, so I’m giving up fear for Lent.

Because…

We can’t meet our destiny if we never get out of our rut.

This time one year ago I made a plan to give up fear for Lent – a clever twist on the annual holy challenge. Then someone I loved died and Lent dawned over all the empty places where she had always been. More losses and fears of losses came. So how do you give up fear from the doorway of so many unknowns? I didn’t. At least not successfully. But one year later I’m still standing and giving it a go again. Want to join me?

I thought it would look like doing one brave thing after another, facing down procrastination, relinquishing control of uncontrollables, getting over myself and getting on with what needs to be done whether I know how to do it or not. Refusing to be hobbled by fear.

But now I realize that no matter the fear the CURE is always the same:

TRUST GOD.

It’s not a one-time decision but many in a row. A constant meditation. Warfare really. Against fear.

It’s using our IMAGINATION to focus on our Big God instead of mirages painted by fear.

It’s trusting…

He is Good.

He is with us.

He is Able.

He has a Good Plan.

He works all things – even hard things – together for the good.

Whatever the future holds, He is already there too.

As one of my devotionals so perfectly said:

“Sail away! Spread you sail toward the storm

 and trust in Him who rules the raging seas.”

~ J. R. Macduff in Streams In The Desert”

“For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you “Fear not. I am the one who helps you.” ~ Isaiah 41:13 ESV

Amen.

QUESTION: What would you do, how would you feel, and what would you dare to dream if you decided to give up fear for Lent and focus on trusting God instead?

Giving Up Fear For Lent first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

I’ve been meaning to write you for ages but I was abducted by a large grey-haired man with a llama, a little old lady on a scooter loaded with Frappuccino, one yodeling pixie, and 40 fluffy comedians. Remember me now?

Truth is life with my Hubby, mother, granddaughter, and all our fuzzy critters plus building a homestead life while living in a camper provide abundant excuses not to write. Or maybe delay is what happens when God says wait.

Ever feel like the realities of your life hijacked the one you’d planned? But what if some delays happen because God has something better in mind?

Freedom is discovering we’re not late

when God says wait.

I planned to have blogged a bounty of encouragements and finished editing my next book by now. Because surely life at the end of the road would not only feed us body, soul, family and friends but would offer wide open spaces for inspired words to sift onto pages like lovely sparkly bits inside a farmy snow globe, right?

That was the dream before I realized so many living, thinking, hungry, pooping creatures would always keep the waters stirred so much. Muddied a bit as well : )

Now in our third winter on the homestead this season of the freezing fog has come, crystalizing outer and inner worlds as well. In the cold stillness – settling – words have begun to form again at last.

Are your swirling bits distracting you too? Lost sight of important things? Callings even?

What if we’re not failing but simply been told to wait?

“Wait” can mean…

God is waiting for us to surrender to His Plan instead of our own.

Time has not yet come for us or someone else. We’re not in this alone you know.

The stage is not yet fully set with all the players in place.

Harvest only comes AFTER other seasons come first.

Forgiveness may be required. For ourselves, our pasts or someone else’s, and our distractions too.

So let’s believe through the waiting. That something good is being distilled. Be-stilled. Remixed. That something more glorious will be revealed.

Because when God says wait, He will…

Give us what we need as we need it even if we think we don’t need it.

Redeem the time when time does come.

Reveal that we ARE enough even when we’re too weary to DO enough and that is ENOUGH.

And then sometimes there is this …

We’re simply making it harder

than it needs to be.

So let’s relax and trust we will know when it’s time to move forward again. That the meantime is an opportunity to grow where we are planted. Even if we can’t see it happening yet.

Meanwhile, friends, wait patiently for the Master’s Arrival. You see farmers do this all the time, waiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently letting the rain do its slow but sure work. Be patient like that. Stay steady and strong. The Master could arrive at any time. ~ James 5:7 MSG

Amen.

QUESTION: What one simple step can you take to embrace the wait, making room for stillness so that clarity might settle a bit for you too?

When God Says Wait first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

I was being terrorized by a pumpkin! Can you believe it?!?!? Then I had a revelation: to DO ONE BRAVE THING.

Is anyone else afraid of the unknown? Scared of new things? Worried you’ll mess up? Be imperfect? FAIL?

Are you as ready to be done with it as I am?

Last summer we had our first garden on the homestead. Raised pumpkins for the first time so our granddaughter could pick her own. Grew these beauties of brilliant mottled orange with squat bursting shape. She got to carve and share them with many friends.

Now midwinter, the last one lay dying by spreading ugly spot. Decision time – waste him or learn to save his seeds and transform him into new things. But I didn’t know how. I fretted. Procrastinating for weeks.

Ridiculous I know. To be stressed out wasting life in dread of unknown things. On a pumpkin for heaven’s sake!

That dastardly fear demon. Lurking behind a pumpkin, blog post, tax deadline, new cheese, fat rendering, soap making, meat curing, knitting, quilting, anything never mastered before. Can you relate? Have your own weird list you wouldn’t want to show to your friends? Gut punchers. Life wasters. Joy killers?

The cure? Simple. DO ONE BRAVE THING. Even the tiniest thing. Because sometimes…

Being brave takes action not courage.

Let’s choose to call it an adventure.

Discover what’s possible.

Reach toward the unknown.

Give up fear for Lent.

It’s the only way to grow into our destiny.

Perhaps we are like this pumpkin. When fear wins we stay small, hard, unusable, where glorious color, sweetness and shared seeds are meant to be.

We must choose to be stretched or die small on the vine. Unshared.

To inhabit our full glory we must let go of being small.  

So here’s the challenge: once a day, a week, or a month, let’s step out, stretch, grow. Do one brave thing.

And repeat.

And one day we shall see what we might become.

On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. ~ Zephaniah 3:16 ESV

Amen.

QUESTION: What small thing have you let fear keep you from attempting? Who might you become if you choose to do one brave thing instead?

Do One Brave Thing first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

Have you ever found yourself in a place beyond hope? Me too. In life. Work. Relationships. Homes. Moves. Health. But that’s never the end of the story. So let me tell you one…

We are homesteading in a fifth wheel in an abandoned place built in 1913, deserted in 1948, empty most of 70 years before we arrived. I wish my ancestors knew we were here.

It sounds crazy but the longer we stay the more I see myself reflected in this place. Color faded, marred by storms, missing and sunken parts where fullness and fresh paint used to be. The unlikely recipient of a new beginning. Yet she is beautiful.

In our 50’s, Hubby and I share only a hand full of years together now with pasts marked by gravestones, broken families, swept clean of all we believed would last. Spouses. Health. Jobs. Houses. Places. Things.

Sometimes new beginnings are best grasped with empty hands.

Even though I’d secretly dreamed of living in this place since I was small, when I sensed it finally inviting us to come I resisted for three years. “Impossible!” I’d protest.

Miracles can be hard to believe.

Me – thin and weak from years of illness, the bright fire of a long career in suits and heels gone dark.

Hubby – widowed after 17 years. Need I say more?

This place – the road in a faded two mile rut scratched over windswept hills that sometimes disappeared beneath drifts of snow for weeks at a time with ashes where the house once stood.

Yet she beckoned like a ghost ship inviting us home.

So I compromised. Filled quart jars with wheat and soil from this place. Brought them back to our tiny house in town to watch and see and wait.

Healing came. Slowly. Gradually. Miraculously. In bodies. Families. Hearts.

At first we came to repair the well for the farmer who farmed for my mom. His cows the only souls in residence for years. Their water trough needed kept full. We dug and cleaned and patched. With breaches repaired a silver pool rose up ancient cistern walls sparking a flicker of life in an old dream with some very dry bones.

More years passed.

A new road was planned to make way for the farmer’s bigger tools. A road winter wouldn’t close.

Perhaps the impossible was becoming possible after all.

We prayed. A lot. Sought godly counsel. Prayed some more. And waited.

With the new road carved we came to camp, spending weekends and all our spare time.

Six months later we finally stayed.

Most thought us crazy. To live in such a remote place. In a camper instead of a home. Two miles up a private brown dirt ribbon of a road. With a dream to rebuild, raise food, and share.

With us we brought…

Trust – that through brokenness God Joys to rebuild unimaginable things.

Hope – that walls could be straightened, doors found, roofs replaced.

Faith – that fallen trees would become stately fences where new garden and orchard would grow.

Belief – that barn and coop would once more team with raucous bleats and crows yielding milk, eggs, and meat for shared meals.

Skills – to find and fix and grow.

A dream – that through this place beyond hope new life and new stories would arise.

A hint of mystery – that it wasn’t just about us but the lives it would touch, and those who would come after us when we were now the photo hanging on someone else’s wall.

It’s been two winters, 60 critters, and many visitors now. It’s taken more than everything we had to give. Yet she thrives and grows and gathers with each true need always met in some unexpected way. And this is just the beginning of the story…

So take hope. Because sometimes, when you find yourself at the end of the road beyond hope, something extraordinary is about to begin.

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. ~ Psalm 42:5 NIV

Amen.

QUESTION: What if there is a new story waiting for you on the other side of what feels beyond hope? What if it would even bless future generations?

Beyond Hope first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

Have you ever taken something on so far beyond yourself it would be a miracle to see it come to pass? Welcome to my life.

Fourteen months ago Hubby and I began leaning into our shared dream of homesteading by pulling an old camper to the end of the road to an abandoned homestead on our family farm. Five months later, after much research on tiny homes and various small alternatives, we bought a fifth wheel trailer and moved to the farm full time.

No one but cows have lived in this place in over 60 years. The house is gone. The outbuildings falling down. Roofs rotted away. There was power, but not enough. There was a well, but it was leaking and full of dead mice. And there was 2 miles of very rough private road. Yet we both felt called to believe that would be enough.

We have worked ourselves silly but it’s coming along. And it has taken a village.

You see, we’re not rich. Far from it. But we have family, friends, and a free pallet pile. Habitat for Humanity, Goodwill, Facebook, and Craigslist. And a willingness to make do, repurpose, and fix old things to meet new needs.

Step by step, nail by nail, shovel by shovel, ditch by ditch, post by post, project by project, each need has been met as we go.

Like our newly completed garden, fenced with locust trees also planted by my ancestors, we have done what we can with what we have. We have poured all into the ground of this place. What springs from it is up to God.

Oh, the joy of watching new life blossom here. Be it in the smiles of our granddaughter and visitors, the happy chuckle of chickens, the surprise lamb who dances on the picnic table, or the llama who sleeps at our door. It’s all an incredible, beautiful, exhausting, delightful, Miracle.

For which I am grateful every day. Well, except when my hands hurt so bad from trimming, planting, and weed eating that I can’t hold my much needed cup of coffee any more : )

Thank you for strolling down this crazy, dirty, hard, wild, and wonderful road with us, stumbling along the Journey to Joy!

QUESTION: What journey are you on that is so far beyond you that it can only be done with God’s help?

Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you. ~ Jeremiah 32:17

Amen.

Miracle In The Garden first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

Goodbye Porta Potty!!!

When you decide to move to the end of the road, where the only building that has a roof without daylight beaming through is the fifth wheel you’ve bought to live in, you come to savor the luxury of being able to rent a porta potty outhouse. Welcome to homesteading in a fifth wheel!

Frankly, “the facilities” in our trailer are already intimate (I actually have a picture of Hubby’s stocking feet sticking out from under the door – with his permission of course). With limited capacity, sporadic venting, flushing protocols, and often gruesome cleaning requirements, you definitely want a place for everyone else to “go”.

We struggled a lot in the beginning of our adventure with how to address this need. We bantered, researched, and finally prayed about it a lot. It was a joyous day when we rented “a crapper on wheels” and proudly towed it home.

As these things tend to go, it stayed far longer than planned. So when we hauled it away last week under rainbow-painted skies, down the road for the very last time, it not only added $100.00 a month back to our budget, but we felt like we’d been upgraded to the palace!

With a REAL. INDOOR. PORCELAIN. COMMODE.

Goodbye porta potty, hello indoor plumbing!

And because we pour every spare dollar into the homestead, it’s monumental each time we eliminate an expense.

Yes, we still have to hike down the hill to the Laundry-Bath-Meat-Salon – “The Salon”: for the beautification of all things : )

But now we can shower, “go”, and do laundry on the homestead, and let me just say that is HUGE.

Soon it will also house a kitchen; a place to process all we will begin raising in the Spring. Then we will fetch the rest of our things out of storage (which by the way, was the last available storage unit in our small town), thus eliminating one more expense. Yahoo!

Everything remains a lesson in “process” rather than perfection. Where nothing happens as fast as planned. But things seem to work out better in the end. Because it’s all so far beyond us, we need God to get it done.

None of this would be happening without His help and the hands and supplies He sends through Habitat For Humanity, donations from our village, Craigslist, affordable help, and two priceless hardware stores.

It’s been amazing to watch how He has Provided for our every actual NEED. Exactly when the actual need arrived (not when we first started worrying about it). In ways we did not expect.

Including the availability of a porta potty on wheels.

I love how He thinks of everything! Even outhouses and perfectly timed rainbows.

Amen.

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. ~ Philippians 4:19 ESV

QUESTION: What true NEED do you have that you could stop worrying about and give to God, then watch where He leads you from there?

Goodbye Porta Potty!!! first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

Do you ever feel like you’re living in the midst of a whirlwind?

That’s been our life since moving to the homestead a few short months ago. I had all the best plans of finally having time, space, and altitude to write more often. But among roofing, building, plumbing, electrical, and water projects, plus all the folks here helping us get them done, companioned with the joy of our three year old granddaughter here every weekend, peppered by an annoying computer glitch that prevents me posting new photos to the blog, I’ve been seriously neglecting you and I’m sorry! But the storm can’t last forever : )

Record rains broken by a bit of snow have had me digging trenches to encourage the run-off to go around instead of through our barn, meat salon, and mud room. We’re tired, sporadically overwhelmed , and regularly cranky. It’s all taking longer than planned. Of course! BUT…

There have been wonderful new adventures. Like adopting three adorable cats and learning to brew kombucha in a wooden keg. We’re in the middle of transforming an old building into our laundrey-bath-meat-salon, adding a mudroom onto the side of our trailer, and learning the art of managing water, dishes, laundry, garbage, and sewer, homesteading in a 5th wheel in winter at the end of two miles of private rocky road.

Struggling with fear, unplanned expenses, do-overs, mice, frozen hoses, and having to use a porta-potty.

Learning to embrace PROCESS, rather than striving only for the end goal.

Opening to the accomplishment of waiting, instead of festering about not arriving on time.

Discovering how to stay yoked together, in the midst of resurrecting a dream.

Daring to expect the good, abandoning the habit of bracing for bad.

Stretching  the limits of belief, strength, resources, and daylight hours.

I’m grateful for winter’s bridge between us and spring when we’ll add chickens, pigs, and goats. Plant the new garden, grapes, and trees. And rebuild fences to protect all those things.

We must remind ourselves to enjoy the truth; that after 40 years waiting for it, we’re finally living our dream. Even though it’s really hard.

Yet things just keep working out. In ways we didn’t expect. And that gives us reason to hope that way will continue to be made.

So from the midst of a world swirled white today, I wish you a safe, warm, joy-filled Christmas. And look forward to sharing more of our homesteading journey here at the end of the road in the new year ahead.

Our lives are evidence… It’s never too late for a new beginning. I pray that gives you hope. That the year ahead offers you new paths and dreams and unexpected blessings beyond your wildest imagination!

Because it is written:

Watch! I’m about to carry out something new! And now it’s springing up— don’t you recognize it? I’m making a way in the wilderness and paths in the desert. ~ Isaiah 43:19 ISV

Amen.

Whirlwind on the Homestead first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

Have you ever felt like God just flipped your pancake? Like maybe all that didn’t come out so bubbly and perfect on the front half, has a second chance to firm up just right on the back?

We recently relocated my parents’ mailbox up the road from the place I grew up to the place we just moved to homestead. Looking at our repurposed mailbox from the uphill side, it reads completely different. Kind of like our lives.

The front half of my life was just plain hard. Darkly scorched, actually. Sprinkled with adventures blundered into while backing away from painful lessons learned.

But when I stopped making my own way and decided to wait for God’s Plan or die trying, it was like He began a slow, nearly invisible process of flipping my life around.

He’s brought me full circle. To a new life right back where my story first began. Just a bit further up the road.

So we’re one month in now. Homesteading in a 5^th wheel taking up where my ancestors left off 60 years ago.

I grew up downhill from this mailbox. Then stood before it decades later with my dad, him child-like with Alzheimer’s, as he leaned against me in stillness for a good long time, unable to finish the walk back to the house. Now we’ve moved this relic up the road.

It still has my parents’ names cast on top; fitting since that’s where my story began. And now from the uphill side, in the second half of life, we’re all starting over again. Repurposed.

Grateful that God still flips pancakes.

The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. ~ Job 42:12

Amen.

QUESTION: What if we decided to believe and trust that no matter where we’re at, with God’s help, a good flip side is still possible?

God Flipped My Pancake first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.

I’m Pregnant!!! With a Dream

Have you got a dream carried so long, you’ve nearly given up on it ever coming true?

Been through so many difficult things you find it too risky to believe in happy endings anymore?

Ever taken a break to rest because you’re soul-weary, only to discover you’re pregnant with twins?

Okay, so I’m 51 and uterus-less, but I’m pregnant nonetheless. And I’m wondering if maybe you are too…

Truth is, I’ve waited so long in hope, I was afraid to mention the story here. Have you ever felt that way? Struck mute in the midst of birthing a dream, for fear of chasing it away? As if anything God has truly planned for us could ever be taken away.

I took a hiatus from writing to rest, then life turned a bit insane. Hubby had knee surgery, daughter came home sick from college, new transcription work arrived, I went to a writer’s conference, we took a 10-day trip with my mom to check the Grand Canyon off her bucket list, Hubby traveled much for business, I ended up sick for four months, and my mom nearly died. Yet in the midst of it all I sensed something good was coming. Felt God moving behind the scenes.

Turns out, like the over-round cows in our new ancient driveway, I was preparing to birth dual dreams – to homestead and write books.

After many years and forfeited attempts, a way has opened where there had been no way. The opportunity has now come to move forward. We’re taking a leap of faith and accepting it. Eager to see what God plus our sweat will do.

So we’ve pulled two elderly campers to the end of the road on our family farm, to a place abandoned over 60 years ago. I’ve dreamed of living there since I was a little girl collecting chicken eggs at the neighbor’s with my dad. Now we pursue that long-held dream – to homestead, raise critters, grow food, gather folks, and write books.

It’s a process. We still rent a house in town while we work through countless big and small details. We camp on the farm, building roads, removing dead trees, uprooting thistle, and pondering important issues like outhouses, chicken coops, fences, water, and how not to freeze or be marooned when winter comes. And I go there to write as much as I can. That’s where the twin blessing comes in.

After working alone on my next book for seven years, the midwife has finally arrived. At the writer’s conference I met a gentle, encouraging soul with a passion for co-birthing books that shine hope in the midst of dark times. Our work together has now begun.

Sometimes I think Hubby and I, we are Abraham and Sarah – a couple well on in years, being God-taught that it’s never too late for a happy ending. That it’s worth daring to believe in your dreams.

So here’s to being brave and moving forward, by the light we are given each day. One faithful step at a time. Trusting that God is good. And if He wants it for us, He will be sure to make a way.

How about you, you dreamers of dreams…

What if it’s still possible?

What if it’s never too late?

What if God isn’t finished with us yet?

What if…

…He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it… ~ Philippians 1:6

Amen.

QUESTION: What is God developing behind the scenes in your life, making you want to declare: I’m pregnant! With a dream!

I’m Pregnant! With a Dream first appeared on the blog of Joanna Morgan.