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Barnstorm
February 15, 2009
Most of my life, a barn has stood a few dozen yards from my back
door. As a small child, I learned to ride a tricycle on the wooden planks of the
chicken coop, sat on the bony back of a Guernsey cow while my father milked by
hand, found new litters of kittens in cobweb-filled hideaways, and leaped with
abandon into stacks of loose hay in a massive loft.
As a young girl, I preferred to clean stalls rather than my bedroom. The
acoustics in the barn were first rate for singing loud and the horses and cows
never covered their ears, although the dog would usually howl. A hay loft was
the perfect spot for hiding a writing journal and reading books. It was a place
for quiet contemplation and sometimes fervent prayer when I was worried: a
sanctuary for turbulent adolescence.
Through college and medical training, I managed to live over twelve years in the
city without access to a barn or the critters that lived inside. I searched for
plenty of surrogate retreats: the library stacks, empty chapels within the
hospitals I worked, even a remote mountainous wildlife refuge in central Africa.
It is hard to ignore one’s genetic destiny to struggle as a steward of the land
through the challenges of economics and weather. My blood runs with DNA of wheat
and lentil growers, loggers, cattle ranchers, dairy farmers, work horse
teamsters, and flower and vegetable gardeners. A farm eventually called me to
come back home and so I heeded, bringing along a husband (from a dairy farming
background himself), and eventually there followed three children.
It hasn’t always been pastoral and sublime on the farm. It’s a lot like life
itself.
Recently, a sudden southerly wind hit our farm one winter night, powerfully
gusting up to 60 miles an hour and slamming the house with drenching rain as we
prepared to go to bed. Chores in the barn had been finished hours before, but as
we had not been expecting a storm, the north/south center aisle doors were still
open, banging and rattling as they were buffeted in the wind. I quickly dressed
to go latch the doors for the night, but the tempest had already done its
damage. Hay, empty buckets, horse blankets, tack and cat food had flown down the
aisle, while the horses stood wide-eyed and fretful in their stalls. A storm was
blowing inside the barn as well as outside. This was not the safe haven a barn
was meant to be. It took all my strength to roll the doors shut, latch them
tight, take a deep breath and then survey the damage.
It took some time to tidy up the mess. The wind continued to bash at the doors,
but it no longer could touch anything inside. The horses relaxed and got back to
their evening meal though the noise coming from outside was deafening. I headed
back to the house and slept fitfully listening to the wind blow all night,
wondering if the barn roof might pull off in a gust, exposing everything within.
Yet in daylight the following morning, all was calm. The barn was still there,
the roof still on, the horses where they belong and all inside was even tidier
than before the barnstorm. Or so it appeared.
Like my sturdily built barn, I’m buffeted by the sudden gales of mid-life. My
doors have been flung open wide, my roof pulled off, at times everything blown
away, leaving me reeling. More and more often, I need restoration, renewal and
reconciliation. And so I set to work to fix up my life with all the skill I can
muster: setting things right where they’ve been upended, painting a fresh coat
where chipped and dulled, shoring up rotted foundations. If only I can get it
done well enough, with sufficient perseverance, I surely will recover from the
latest blow.
But my hard work and determination is not enough. It is never enough. I am never
finished.
The only true sanctuary isn’t found in a weather-beaten barn of rough-hewn old
growth timbers vulnerable to the winds of life.
The barnstorming happens within me, in the depths of my soul, comforted only by
the encompassing and salvaging arms of God. There I am held, transformed and
restored, and grateful beyond measure.