I Have a Dream

I know it's a day late to title my post like this.  I also know that my dream is not even in the same league of the late MLK, but bare with me now as I share it.  With the economy hitting our little family hard these last few years, we have been known to dream more.  Some days when the job situation just plain stinks, My Man and I like to sit back and discuss our dreams, make more details, plan and just plain pretend.  With dreams like this, it gives us a pinch of hope for pressing on in this struggling economy.  I haven't always had this dream and if you mentioned it to me 16 years ago when I got married, I probably would have chuckled, thinking you were just teasing me.

I want to be a farmer's wife.  I want a self-sustaining farm.  The real deal.  Cows, chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, a huge garden and a big fruit orchard.  I want to spend half my year picking and preserving (well, I already do that now) and then send the Fish Sticks to our road side produce stand to sell to the locals.  I want to eat beef raised by my cows and fresh bacon from my pigs.  I want a barn cat that kills all those nasty, fat rats in my barn.  The perfect thing is My Man wants to be a farmer.  It might happen soon (with the mighty hand of God moving, for sure).  It might not be until the kids are all grown.  It might just remain a dream and that's o.k.

A few months ago when a group of moms came to a play date, I happened to mention how I sometimes fantasize about going back in time to the days of the pioneers when you wash on Mondays, clean on Tuesdays, cook on Wednesdays and everything you bought came from the work of your own hands.  I figured all women felt this way in some sense or another.  I could tell quickly that my companions had just ear marked me as a bit on the nutty side.

So this city girl who spent the majority of her life near the big cities (Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, Singapore, Nashville) has been smitten with country fever.  Maybe one day I will send you a Christmas card with My Man and me wearing overalls holding our pitch fork in front of our big silo.  Maybe not.  We'll see what My God has planned for me.  Until then though I'll just keep dreaming.