Dear Teachers

“Let my teaching drop as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, As raindrops on the tender herb, And as showers on the grass.” Deuteronomy 32:2 

I don’t know how you do it. I can’t wrap my mind around the sacrifices that you are willing to make. 

I see you, teachers, five days a week, being the care giver to my children, as well as 20 or so more. I see you adoring the well mannered ones and loving the ones crying out in unlovable ways. I can’t imagine because when I try to think about what you see, my heart shatters. 

Beyond your time and money sacrifices, beyond controlling the chaos that is your classroom, you give of yourself because sometimes nobody is giving to the innocent ones. You deplete reserves that you try to save for your own family because you know this kid needs it more.

I see you battling entitlement, arrogance, and the other defense mechanisms that kids throw up. Some because they are just kids and some because defense is all they know.

Teachers, you walk a fine line of teaching, loving, and sacrifice, without crossing into parental territory even if there may not be a parent over there. You are a target when kids who’ve never been taught respect, right from wrong, or love, are reprimanded for bad behaviors. You are abused by a few kids, a few parents, and never adequately appreciated or paid for what you put into this job.

The reward comes in the form of watching the impact you make, even if only with a few of the students you funnel through. The reward comes because you do something that you love, that you are passionate about. Those rewards are few and far between sometimes, but if you couldn’t see them, you wouldn’t keep doing this. 

I, a parent, need you to know that I appreciate you. I send my kids to school because I am confident that you are doing everything you know how, to take care of my children. Some of you carry the same faith as I, and that brings me comfort. 

I am praying for you.

I send my children to school because my faith is bigger than my fear. I send them because I believe that God has put YOU in their lives so that you can impact them or maybe so they can impact you. Hopefully, both will happen, in good ways.

You shouldn’t ever have to make the choice to sacrifice your life for theirs, but those times have come for some. This world is a sad place and that burden that you bear, to take care of a classroom full of kids, does not go unnoticed. 

I notice. 

I hope and pray that you feel the appreciation, the prayers, the love, and the admiration I have for what you do. I’m thankful for you and for the sacrifices you’ve made. 

You may be the only example of goodness in the lives of some of the kids you teach. You may be an example of kindness to others for a child that’s never received or seen freely given kindness. You may be the example and driving force for a child that has aspirations to become just like you. Each of these children are impressionable, and nobody understands that quite like you. 

I want you to know that while I can’t fathom how you do what you do, I don’t always see what you see, or experience what you experience,

I SEE you. 

I APPRECIATE you. 

I am THANKFUL for you.

I am PRAYING for you.

Keep fighting the good fight. You make a difference. 

Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

Titus 2:7-8 “Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded, in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil too say of you.”

More Than Just Love

"Mawwage, mawwage is what bwings us togevver today. Mawwage, that bwessed awwangement, that dream wivvin a dweam...Wove, twue wove...so tweasure your wove."

I'm sorry. I had to. It is one of my very favorite parts of one of my very favorite movies, and only fitting for a month like February. And if you aren't sure what movie I'm referring to...inconceivable. I'm not sure we can be friends anymore. It is, of course, The Princess Bride. I can't think of the words "true love" without thinking of Wesley and Princess Buttercup. I could write this whole post on movie quotes, but since that isn't the plan, I will restrain myself.

Just one clip:

On my facebook page a while back, I asked everyone to explain love. Guess what, nobody commented. Not one. I will chalk it up to love being difficult to describe and not that nobody loves me. I couldn't even come up with a good explanation myself. But it got me thinking about all that love is.

The Ancient Greeks came up with four types of love (some say seven or eight.) I couldn't find an Ancient Greek to ask for sure, but it doesn't matter because I'm not going to talk about all of them. You can Google it if you're curious. I do want to talk about one kind of love, though. AGAPE love.

Agape love is a noble love. It is selfless, and puts the good of others before ourselves. This love keeps on loving even when the object is unlovable, unresponsive, or just plain difficult. It doesn't have to be reciprocated. Agape love, is the Jesus kind of love. The kind of love that, in the New Testament, Jesus refers to as the "New Commandment." (John 13:34, 15:12,17, along with many others.)

The kind of love the Bible instructs us to have, that Jesus calls us to in 1 Corinthians 13, is agape love. Paul explains it perfectly, but sometimes we miss the forest for the trees. Paul says that we can have all of the greatest things, the most amazing gifts, but without being able to love as Jesus, those gifts mean nothing. Beautiful words, prophecies, voices of angels are nothing without love.

Paul says that we can do all the good deeds, give to the poor, sacrifice ourselves, but there is no profit in the good things without love. All consuming, selfless, unconditional love for everyone. Even if we have all the knowledge and all the faith, faith enough to move a mountain, without love, we are nothing.

Love is long lasting, and kind. It doesn't envy, it isn't boastful, or prideful, agape love isn't rude, selfish, provoked, nor does it think evil. Love doesn't find joy in immoral or unjust behaviors, but it does find joy in truth, even when the truth is hard. Let me tell you what it does. This unbelievable agape love carries burdens, believes in truth and goodness and the like, it hopes even when it feels hopeless, and it endures. Y'all it lasts forever, even when you're working cows and fixing fence.

This love NEVER FAILS. Everything else in this entire world will fail. Knowledge will vanish, tongues will cease, prophecies will fail, but love, twue wove, It. Never. Fails.

We absolutely cannot comprehend this kind of love, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for it. Our human nature fails us so very often, but through Paul, God lays out all the instructions we need to love. God calls us to love our neighbor, love our enemy, love our brothers, love our sisters, love Him, then Paul tells us what love is and what it is not. And we fail. We do it wrong. We are rude and prideful. We find joy in unfair behaviors. We are boastful and envious. God expects all of these things from us, but if we can find just an inkling of this amazing agape love, and hold onto it, it will never fail. God will never fail us because he is totally capable of agape love.

I'm going to touch on one more thing that I have learned. Because of our inability to grasp this Jesus style, agape love, we are incomplete. We have a hole. It is like a black hole, consuming all things in this world and it is never filled, never full, always desiring more, feeling empty. There is something that satisfies it, there is someone that makes us complete. It is not another person. It is not a drug, a vice, a drink, sex, or anything we can acquire in this fallen world.

We were created with a first love. Not Timmy from first grade or Ken the football star from high school. Little Susie isn't it and neither is college Barbie. God should be our first love.

Matthew 22:37-40 "Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

Revelation 2:4 (God speaking) "Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love."

If you have not accepted, or have let go of that first love, you have a gaping hole. You will try to fill It, but it cannot be done. Without this first love you will wonder this world, hungry for something that you will never find. Anything you put into that hole will be devoured and leave you longing for something else. You will never find a spouse, a boy/girlfriend to feel whole. Your children won't complete you. Success is not enough. No addiction will ever fulfill you. All of these things will leave you wanting more.

If you want to feel whole, to be complete, to love with the kind of agape love the Bible calls us to, you have to seek God as your first love. You have to be filled with His unconditional love to be able to feel full and in turn be able to pour it out for those around you. This is just unfathomable for us. We can't understand any of it. Even as I type this, I am awestruck and baffled by this kind of love.

Paul also tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:9-12, "We know in part, and we prophecy in part, but when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known." We can't perfectly understand God's perfect love because we haven't met Him face to face, but when we do, His love will consume us, and with understanding, we will see clearly. That is a promise that I look forward to.

I love each of you. I am able to partially understand what that means because I am filled with God's love. But, I will fail you. I will be rude and unkind. I'll envy and boast and sometimes find joy in iniquity. And I'll be sorry, but I won't be able to help myself because I am full of humanity. One of these days I'll be capable of true, whole, agape love, but until then, until I see God face to face, this is what I'll remember:

"And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is LOVE." 1 Corinthians 13:13

Woman, Why are you Weeping?

At any given moment there are a million reasons to cry. Amirite?

Sometimes we cry and sometimes we overreact a little. Especially women. Hormones are the devil's work. 

Not that men can't be emotional or overreact. This isn't a gender issue. I better throw that in for good measure. 

Jesus wept and once he overturned tables in the temple. Point: He also experienced emotion.

I'm off topic and I've just begun. Hang on, I'm coming back around. 

When Jesus was crucified, He was put in a tomb, a cave, if you will. They rolled a gigantic stone in front of the door to seal it. I figure it took several big strong men to seal that bad boy up. There was no chance someone was taking the body of the "King of the Jews." But there was a twist. There's always a twist.

In John 20 we are told about an emotionally distraught woman who loved her King fiercely. 

Mary Magdalene went to Jesus’ tomb and found the stone rolled away. She frantically went to find the disciples and tell them that “they” took Jesus’ body and she doesn’t know where it is. She assumed that someone had gathered enough people to unseal the tomb and take Jesus' body. She had to find Him and she needed everyone who loved Jesus to help her.

They all ran back to where Jesus had been laid and found His burial linens folded in the tomb. With that discovery, everyone left except Mary. She faithfully sat outside and wept. She felt like she had lost Jesus. She was grieving and confused. 

Once again, she looked inside the tomb again where she saw two angels. That would be a shock wouldn’t it? She's in denial so she keeps looking thinking that her mind is decieving her. That He will be there next time she looks up, but instead she sees angels. They asked her why she was crying, to which she replied, “Because they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him.” 

She can’t find Jesus, y’all. And that is a distressing thought. She lost her Savior, her Lord, her Love. 

There are lost people in this world desperate for Jesus. They are trying to fill that void with anything. It is a black hole of nothingness aching to be filled. That void has one puzzle piece that fits and until they find it, the hole remains. You can try to fill a hole like that with addiction, with people, with anger, lust, hate, false hope, but it is all consuming and it will not be fully satisfied without the one piece that fits it. That piece is Jesus Christ.

There are saved people in this world desperate for Jesus. They’ve lost Him. They’ve lost sight of their Savior because of grief, sadness, depression, sin. This home away from home has cast a shadow too deep to see. Too much focus on the world has distracted them. 

As Mary turns, Jesus is standing there, asking why she is crying. And in her shadow of fear, grief, and confusion she thinks He is the gardner. She begins to beg Him to tell her where they’ve taken Jesus.
He says, “Mary!” And as the shadow lifts. Her Jesus is before her, raised from the dead. 

How often are we desperate for Jesus? We’re searching high and low, and yet He stands before us. We just can’t see Him for all the junk we have going on in our lives. We blame people for "taking" Him. We are angry with Him for leaving. We need a little reflection to see that He's not gone anywhere. We are letting our emotion and love for all the wrong things cast a deep shadow.

Jesus is right in front of us. He never left. We just got confused and a little lost but if we clear our own thoughts, the world's lies, we will see Him. 

Have you lost Jesus in your life? Been there, done that. But I found him. I found him in the little things, in the big things, in His word, and on my knees, I found Him. He’s waiting for you to realize he isn’t the gardner, He’s the Savior that never left you.

Finding My Identity In A Dry Desert

Change.


Let’s talk about it. I didn’t want to at first. I am getting old and set in my ways, but I realize that the only thing that stays the same is that everything changes. Well mostly everything.


I’ve changed. I started Diary of a Dairy wife in March of 2014. This was my first post, "In the Beginning..." and I kind of laid out my insecurity and lack of direction. The truth is, I felt God telling me to write. He was telling me to just put my toes in the water and He would be right there with me. At the time I was chin deep in agvocating. I was trying to be a good farmer’s wife, a good mom, a good Christian, and an excellent advocate for agriculture. I was taking opportunities to grow my communication skills and learning more about agriculture everyday, beyond being immersed in the dairy at home. I felt God telling me to write for other people. After years of insecurities and telling God that I wasn’t cut out for public writing, I gave in and started.


At the time I had a hard time identifying myself. My identity was totally tied up in who I was to everyone around me. Don’t get me wrong, it still is, so is yours and everyone else’s. The problem was that I was “just” a farmer’s wife, “just” a mom, “just” trying to be a blogger, and out of that, Diary of a Dairy Wife was born.

The mistake I made wasn’t in my “justs” it was in what God was calling me to do. He was telling me that beyond all of those lowly titles, I was His. He wanted me to write for more than agriculture. My mistake was in the negotiation of who I was and where I was going.

I’ve never been a consistent writer. Try as I may, I haven’t found the balance. A few weeks ago I found myself in a place where I was sad, angry, broken, scared, defeated, discouraged, and I had totally lost who I was supposed to be. You see, I’ve spent the last couple of years seeking God more. In His word, in words He’s given others, and just in my heart, I’ve searched. When I found myself in this desert, I knew that God hadn’t brought me there, I had stumbled there on my own. When God asked me to start writing and stick my toes in the water, I did, but I did it my way. I did what I wanted and over the next almost 4 years the water that I had stuck my toes in, was slowly drying up to become dehydrated. It was my desert.

As I trod through my self-made sand dunes I could hear Him calling. It was like walking into a dark, uninhabited house, feeling my way through the total absence of light, chasing a voice coming from a closet in a back room. As I got closer I could see a sliver of light, also known as hope, a drop of water on a parched tongue, coming from under a closed door. I knew what I was headed for, but I didn’t know how to get there or what would be waiting for me. I heard the call and felt desperate to find the source. I prayed and pleaded for some sort of revelation. That revelation came the day I talked about earlier. It came through all of those negative emotions and touched my heart and at the same moment, I reached the light.

God asked me to write for Him, not for myself, not my way or the highway and that selfishness took me straight down the path of dryness. I finally got so dehydrated and desperate that I, somewhat angrily, asked Him, “What do you want from me?!” And He said, “To do what I asked you to do in the beginning. To write for Me. To be who you are for my glory.” And so here I am.

That’s not to say that I won’t continue to write about agriculture or my family or my farm. I will, but I will do it His way. I understand that some of my readers are here because I’m a “farm” blogger, and I still am a dairy farmer and a dairy farmer’s wife, this just isn’t that girl’s diary anymore. I hope y'all don’t tuck tail and head for the hills, but I’ll understand if this isn’t your journey.

It’ll take me some time to develop. I’m winging it. I'm Googling and YouTubing how to do all this in my free time...whenever that is.

I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how to do this. What to name this. How to tell y'all. It’s been brain numbing in a way. I think I know, then I second guess myself. Then I pray. I got some motivation today, though.

This morning I was reading in Galatians. Paul wrote that book. Do you just love him? I do. He is a favorite. Paul was Saul and he was a terror. He thought he was doing right, but he was doing it all wrong. God came to him in a literal vision of blindness, and straightened Saul right out, and becoming a new man in Christ, Saul became Paul. He was a sinner saved by great grace, just like me. Saul walked through the dark house and found the light. He was a hot mess that God turned into a hot mess with a bad history and a bright future. Paul, in his brokenness from his past, became a great leader that God used to influence the masses. I can’t get enough Paul, y'all.

Anyhow, in Galatians 1:10-13 Paul says, “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

I am no longer "just" the dairy wife. I have grown my identity and I will will do my best to be a diary wife that is a bondservant of Christ. I will write with the words given to me. I won’t seek to please men or myself, but I will seek to please God.

I want to add something to my already lengthy post. I am not scholarly, nor am I theological. I’ve never formally studied religion and I don’t read every commentary that anyone has ever written. I read God’s word and God speaks to me through his words. When I desire better understanding, I will research what a verse means. I will read commentary. But guys, God reveals to me what I need to know. He shows me how His words apply to my life. And anytime I write, I ask Him to guide me, to lead me, and to speak through me. I want to be a tool for Him. Not my will, not my way, not my words, but His.

I’m going to fail. I’ve already failed at this. I’m not perfect. I’m not the “go to” expert on anything Jesus. I’m just a sinner saved by God’s grace. I’m just a person trying to let God pour into me so much that He overflows into the words that I write.

I’m probably doing this “rebranding” thing all wrong, all out of order, but like in life, I’m just winging it. You’ll see my name change (hopefully) in a short time.  I don’t know what will show up in your news feed after facebook changes algorithms, but if you want to keep up with me you can click to follow my page as well as “like” it. Until the change is approved, on facebook I will be “Diary of a Dairy Wife.” If all goes as planned, you’ll get a handy notification that says, “A page you follow has changed its name.”

****UPDATE: Facebook would not allow my name change as it might "mislead current followers who have liked your page." While I have no intention of misleading anyone, I will just continue to use Diary of a Dairy Wife page name and this blog address until I make further decisions about how to move forward. I'm just gonna continue to do what I do on here. I apologize for putting the cart before the horse. I just got a little too excited. ****


I hope you’ll travel this journey with me and take the fork in my blogger road that I should have walked four years ago. I don’t know how much it’ll change, but I wanted to lay it out for those of you who take the time to read. I’m prayerful that your life and spirit are touched even though I’m stumbling around like a lost toddler. Change is hard, but this is one I look forward to.

Bless y'all for putting up with me!