Do We Dare Dream?
Written by Jana Schmitt
We’ve spent the last six months living in a tiny camper in western North Carolina. It’s tight quarters for sure but Darron and I are motivated as we daily attempt to shape the 12-acre farm we bought last year into something that at least partially resembles our long-term vision.
We’ve been coming to this part of the Blue Ridge mountains for the past 11 summers, gradually staying longer each time as it pulls us with an undefinable tug on our hearts, but this will be the first year we’ve spent more time here than in Texas.
Our days are a mix of the physical and mental labor of building a tiny house, planting and tending gardens and general upkeep of the land. We dream and we strategize and we pray for wisdom as we attempt to steward well this piece of earth. Darron juggles his architectural practice, working in his tiny “cloffice” (closet/office) we set up in the camper. Our son and daughter-in-law, having fallen in love with this area too and making the move a year ago, have paved the way for new friendships and a thriving church community.
My thoughts and emotions vacillate between absolute awe that we get to live in this beautiful place and a near panic, usually at 3am, when I’m overwhelmed with questions and doubt and missing my grandkids and our Texas family terribly. Asking myself the same questions Cyrus and River asked us the last time we were with them. “Why do you have to go back to North Carolina? Why do you need to build another house? You already have a house.” Why indeed.
I wrestle with these questions often. The truth is, I have more questions than answers. Life in this season seems to be driven by two opposing belief systems. I believe in the value of multi-generational living, in families living close to each other and grandparents invested in their grandkids’ lives. But I also believe place matters. Having lived most of my life in the Dallas metroplex and sprawling concrete takeover of the suburbs, I feel desperate to be immersed in nature, to seek out a life lived richly connected to and in awe of this magnificent creation.
I feel God’s pleasure when I drive these back roads dotted with old tobacco barns and Christmas tree farms and wildflowers, the rivers and creeks winding lazily through the forested mountains. I sense His nearness when I dip my bare feet in the chilly water of Elk Creek or pop a sungold tomato into my mouth from the garden, when the butterflies swarm and the leaves drop and something in my soul says “you are home”.
What I want to do more than anything is to share this feeling, this space. To let it ignite something in others the way it’s rekindling the flame in me. I want to be a gatherer. What does that look like in terms of this 12-acre farm? Will it be a business, a ministry, our personal home, an Airbnb getaway, a place for retreats and workshops, a family homestead or a working farm? We’ve discussed all these and more. Maybe over the years there’s a way to do it all. Only God knows.
Most evenings we end our work days sitting outside the camper with a fire in the solo stove, a glass of wine and an audio chapter of Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark or The God of the Garden. Often we’re left speechless by the depth in which his words resonate with our own longings. He explains it like this:
“I was stirred by a longing to care for the land under my feet, to work in partnership with the earth instead of in opposition to it, to learn the names of the birds and the flora and fauna, as well as the names of my neighbors, and to shepherd some corner of this planet for the sake of the kingdom. As far as it was in my limited power to do so, I wanted to mend the world, even if it was just a few acres of it.”
I can’t explain it any better than that.
The 3am doubts tell me we’re in over our heads. It’s too much. No one will come. That we’re abandoning people we love for an illusive dream and our purchases have spread our family 1000 miles apart and maybe we’re fools.
Here’s what I do know: as followers of Jesus, we’re called to make the invisible visible. To me it seems like the most natural way to do that is to cultivate beauty in the spaces we’ve been given and to gather in those spaces … around tables, firepits, grassy yards or sandy beaches… to invite and welcome and love as He loved. This is how we showcase the kingdom.
At the core of it all I suppose is a homesickness for heaven. Until then, as the hands and feet of Jesus we embrace the invitation to be co-laborers in ushering in the kingdom. On earth as it is in heaven.
