Ranch Wife Musings | A Worthwhile Pursuit

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on Aug. 13, 2025

After months of tending and cultivating, my garden is beginning to release all the vibrance of its bounty. Peppers nearly a foot long (really!), cucumbers and beans, herbs, tomatoes, squash and a little sweet corn. After months of watering and weeding, picking bugs and pruning, my countertops, crowded with bowls of fresh produce, are finally starting to show evidence of the work that came first. Mason jars of fresh cut flowers, dahlias and zinnias and black eyed Susans and bright pink penstemon, grace the tables and the corners of counters not covered in produce in rambunctious if not exactly artistic displays.

We live in a culture that tends to idolize two things: money and leisure. Granted, money can be the means to leisure, but oftentimes people will run themselves into the ground working a job they don’t even really like in order to have money to have leisure later.

There is an overarching idea implicit in this: It is that work is only a means to an end. A necessary evil. Work and toil are means to status, or money, or future leisure, or power, but have no inherent value in and of themselves. Our culture sees the end as the goal, not the process, or the journey, or the growth and even failures that come before the goal is met. Culturally, we value the result, but often we fail to see the value in the inputs, whatever those inputs are. They are only seen as valuable inasmuch as they are the means to the coveted end.

That bouquet of flowers on the countertop, then, or the bowl of fresh cucumbers, those are the end in sight. Everything else, culturally speaking, holds no significance. The weeding and tending and watering? Simply a means to the end, which is the fresh cut bouquet or the bowl of produce. So, we devalue the bulb or the tiny seed, the hands that planted and worked the dirt, the process of nurture required to achieve the flower. The time and effort are just necessary evils. If we could, we’d rather skip right to the flower, and leave aside the care and tending, the watering and pruning and weeding. We fixate on the end result, rather than enjoying the process as the flowers sprout and grow, set buds, and bloom a rainbow in the garden.

This thought process permeates so much of how we view life. Relationships, families, health, vocation, all fall victim to this mentality that wants the results without placing value on and appreciating the work itself.

We want to experience good health and longevity, but would rather forego the necessary work and dedication and self-sacrifice and discipline, the sacrificing of convenience and personal gratification. If we could have the health and longevity without personal discipline, I think many people would take it. But isn’t there value in the discipline, in suspending instant and constant gratification?  

We want the fulfilling marriage, but we would rather leave aside the relationship-building, the cultivating and tending, the intentional growing together spiritually and emotionally and relationally, experiencing failures and setbacks, learning each other, asking forgiveness, and purposely seeking oneness. If we could have the fulfilling marriage without the work, I think many or most would take it. But isn’t there value and sweetness in the process of growing a healthy marriage?

We want to feel part of a community, a sense of belonging, without doing any communing, without sharing and meeting needs, without working shoulder to shoulder and sharing in fellowship. We want the blessings of community without the beautiful burdens that make up community. If we could have the sense of belonging and the sense of being known without the sweat and the work, I think many or most would take it. But isn’t there value in the sweat and the work, the sharing and meeting needs?

What twisted sort of thinking got us here?

Would my satisfaction in a vase of home-grown, fresh-cut flowers be greater if I hadn’t spent weeks and months nurturing the plants?

Would my marriage be sweeter or my happiness in it be more complete if there was never any need for growth, asking forgiveness, and making changes, in a process that lasts a lifetime?

Would contentment in community be greater without all the messy sharing of burdens and life and sweaty work shoulder to shoulder?

I think the answer is pretty clear.

Because the value is not just in the bloomed flower, or the sweet marriage, or the health and longevity, or the vibrant community. The value is in the work itself, the process of growing and changing.

Some of it might be cultural laziness or human nature, wanting the benefits or results without the work. Some of it might be the helter-skelter life we’ve conned ourselves into, where we see any ask on our time as impinging on the “important things.” Maybe it is our social media saturated culture, where we see and share successes and goals achieved, and live in and perpetuate a delusion of thinking that everyone else is accomplishing that coveted end result, whatever it is, without months and years of work and sweat and tears.

But you don’t get to enjoy the fruits of a healthy community without work put into that community.

You don’t get to enjoy the sweetness of a healthy marriage without work put into that marriage.

You don’t get to enjoy the satisfaction of homegrown flowers or fresh tomatoes without time spent tending the soil, replenishing nutrients, planting the seeds, cultivating the little plants, and tending to them through the growing season until harvest.

So, plant the garden. Cultivate your marriage. Build relationships in your community. And buckle down and do the work.

Don’t lose your love of the process in chasing after the end result. Don’t short circuit the benefit of what is happening now for what you hope will happen in two years or ten years. Don’t fixate on the goal such that the process itself goes by in an unrecognizable blur. Because it isn’t just the end result. The pursuit itself is worth it.

Sweet Fullness

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When Brad and I got married, I knew I needed to do some soul-searching when it came to having children. I had been single a long time, and I honestly think it was God’s kindness to me that He sort of lifted the desire for children away from my heart for those 10-plus years of being a single woman. I remember as a highschooler and college-aged young woman dreaming of having 10 kids, picking names out, and truly having an active desire to be a mother. But as the single years wore on, it was a struggle enough to grow in contentment and confidence that God would provide a husband if and when He chose to do so; I believe it was God’s kindness that temporarily and gently suspended the desire for children and kept it from being another stumbling block.

So when I found myself married to a good man, I knew I wanted to be the mother to his children, but I also had this strange sense of neutrality. Some of it is temperament – I’ve never been the baby-chasing sort. As sweet as new babies are, I never feel compelled to hold and cuddle other people’s babies, and am perfectly content to admire from a distance. But now that I was married? I knew this was something I needed to wrestle with. It wasn’t that I didn’t desire children, in an active sense, but rather that passively there was no active longing. Does that make sense? I wasn’t opposed to children, but I wasn’t actively experiencing a desire for them either. It was as if my years of singleness had sort of muffled the sense of that desire. And as I pondered that, I realized how empty that was.

Too often, I see women on social media or elsewhere, professing to be Believers and proclaiming confidently that they have absolutely no desire for children and that should be fine. Granted, I don’t know their situations, but a common thread in the Bible is God’s love of the family, and His desire for His people to raise families to His glory, beginning in the Garden of Eden, with the command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Procreation is obviously part of that. And my personal conviction is that if God says something is good, we should think so, too. If God commands something to His people, we should take that seriously. We are not victims of our desires.

So I began to pray and ask that God would give me right desires, desires that pleased Him, and that if it was His will that we have children that He would open my heart to children, and remove the fears that gnawed at the margins of my heart.

And it is wonderful how God answers prayers. Before too long, I found I was no longer praying that God would give me a desire for children (because He had answered that prayer and had given me the desires I had prayed for!) but I was praying that He would make me fruitful, and would give me contentment and peace if He didn’t open my womb. Because I also knew that, although I am responsible to cultivate right desires, God doesn’t always satisfy those desires the way we want or expect, and He owes me nothing.

Well, it took my breath away when I saw the two red lines, and took my breath away again when I heard the heartbeat for the first time and saw the baby on ultrasound at 19 weeks. I’ve been living in a state of constant flux between incredible reality and surreality. Nothing had prepared me for how sweet it would be to feel the first quickenings, or how comforting it is to feel the baby move at all hours of the day or night. Nothing had prepared me for the sweet fullness of expectant motherhood. Fears have slipped further and further away.

And I can’t wait to meet our baby girl in November.

P.S. I took these photos for us with a tripod and shutter timer while we were camping in the Bighorns this weekend. Brad was great, and even consented to push the shutter button for me a few times. 🙂

Ranch Wife Musings | No Place Like Home

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on July 16, 2025

In college, I fancied myself a traveler. I have since realized I am much too much of a homebody for that, and conveniently I married a man who “never left the farm,” as they say.

But I was much younger then, and I fantasized about being a world explorer. I had a penchant for foreign languages, and spent 6 weeks in France the summer before my junior studying French at a university in Dijon, gaining confidence in conversational French, and exploring southern France, soaking up all the Mediterranean sun and eating all the fresh (and wonderfully cheap and delicious) produce that could be found at the open-air markets throughout France. It really was a wonderful experience.

I’ve spent extended time with family in Alaska on a number of occasions, spent several days in Whitehorse, Canada, working on a project (another story for another time), and made a southwest road trip a few years back primarily to do a one-day Rim-to-Rim hike at the Grand Canyon. I’ve certainly not not travelled.

Brad and I do enjoy the chance to take our camper out once or twice in a summer, see some new scenery (or old scenery with new eyes), hike, and unplug, stepping away for a short time to be rejuvenated, coming back home refreshed and ready to get back to it with energy and vigor.

If one has the inclination and the financial and lifestyle flexibility to be able to travel, go for it. But I most certainly do not think travel is inherently beneficial. A lot of traveling is extremely consumeristic, shaped around lack of activity, too much food, and copious quantities of alcohol, all of which are objectively not great for you or your bank account. Done the wrong way, travel is a form of escapism, and can become the means by which the daily grind is reinforced as something to need a vacation from (as opposed to recognizing a need to occasionally recharge and seeing a vacation as the means to that end). The mentality around “vacationing” can promote discontent and dissatisfaction with reality. Social media doesn’t help, as people splash their luxury-appearing vacations all over Facebook and Instagram, making expensive getaways appear as if they are and should be the norm. If that’s how you’re going to travel, I’d probably suggest staying home. It might be temporarily enjoyable, but it won’t make your life – your real life – better in the long run.

But that isn’t the only option. The other option requires discipline in the daily mundane, determining to be content and thankful with the real life you are living.

Because traveling in order to see another culture, international or regional, with your own eyes? Absolutely that can be a great thing! Traveling in order to get glimpses of the beauty of God’s creation in another area of the country or the world? Absolutely. Traveling so that your eyes are drawn in wonder around a landscape or a cityscape that boggles the mind and makes you praise God for His creativity or the creativity with which He has blessed the human race? Yes!

And then, maybe most importantly, traveling so that your heart strings are tugged back to the beauty of the life God has given you? Yes. A thousand times, yes.

Don’t use travel as an escape, a drug to cope with “real life.”

Travel so that your life, in all of its normalness and mundanity, comes into focus in the best of ways. Travel so that your heart longs for home. Travel so that you are forced to remember the little things you take for granted. Travel so that you have no other option but gratitude.

And that takes work, truly. It takes work every day to cultivate a grateful heart, and eyes that see the beauty in the things that you have become accustomed to. It takes work some days to say with genuineness, “Thank you, God”, in a culture that preaches a gospel of restless discontent. If life is hard, whether related to work or family or marriage or something else altogether, we can be tempted to see escape as the best solution. 

But where you are, right now? You’re there for a reason.

While I was out of town last week, I couldn’t stop remembering home, and all those little things I take for granted every day. Our freezing-cold well water. The way the sunrise looks in summer. The chaos of my garden. The refreshment of an early morning walk. The musical creak of a gate. Posey and her calves sneaking in to water. My husband’s lanky form swinging down to the barn, and his “Boys! Boys!” to call the horses in for breakfast. The puppies terrorizing the barn cats.

The day I got back, I sat down by my chicken coop and just watched and listened. The quiet was like music. It wasn’t silence. It was much, much better. It was all the sounds that make up this life I live. The chickens scratching, or clucking to themselves while dust bathing. A couple hens squabbling when a mother hen felt it necessary to defend her half-grown chick. The cats trilling contentedly. A horse stomping in the corral. The breeze stirring the limbs of the pines.

I was home.

And there is no place like it.  

A Partnership with Sun and Sky

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Originally printed in the July/August 2025 issue of Down Country Roads Magazine

A gentle breath of wind stirs the laundry hanging on the line – A row of snap-front shirts and faded jeans, a row of quilts and sheets. Hung out wet and cool, taken in warm and dry, bringing that clean smell of sunshine into the house. And what a privilege to complete that task in partnership with sun and sky. Such a small thing. Yet it isn’t small at all.

They tell us we don’t belong. From their remote offices of steel and glass, shaded from the sun and unable to see the sky, they wag their so-knowing fingers at the rancher, whose father’s grandfather made a living in cooperation with the natural world. But here we are, and here we’ll stay, continuing in that partnership with sun and sky, wind and weather.

In the first summer days of scorching heat, the hayfields change, slowly, then not so slowly. Alfalfa turns from green to purple, and the brome grass turns from green to golden-brown as the feathered heads cure out. The vivid colors fade. That first swath is cut. That first windrow raked. That first bale rolled. “Chasing hay,” it is called, and one by one the area ranchers and farmers take to the fields. Cutting and raking and baling and yarding it up, timing the activity to the perfect streak of weather, partnering with the sun and the sky.

The flower garden is a riot of color, and constant activity. Countless numbers of bees drone comfortably, bending flower after flower under their slight weight, little wings stirring leaves, little legs weighed heavy with golden dust, in a mesmerizing dance of industry and grace. How something as small as a bee can have such a vital role to play is humbling. And how sweet it is to partner with those tiny workers, with something as ordinary as a homey flower garden, to help them feed their young as they help us grow our own gardens. What a sweet partnership, with sun and sky and flying thing.

Our little yard is rimmed with young fruit trees, planted as memorials to important days and as an investment in tomorrow. We have our wedding trees, and our-family-is-growing trees, trees that mark days and loves and in future years we’ll taste again those sweetnesses, fruit in hand. What simpler stewardship than to plant a tree? The apples begin to swell and blush as the days shorten, and in the woods across the ranch chokecherries hang like clusters of grapes on every side hill, it seems, and in every ravine. Many feed the birds, but many find their way into the kitchen and in this form or that they will grace tables in the months ahead. It is stewardship, partnership, cooperation with the world around us to wisely use the bounty.

From ivory towers come criticisms and accusations, rules and regulations, suggestions and mandates – But what do they know? And how could they know? Have they planted a tree? Or harvested a crop? Or watched a calf take its first suckle of mama’s milk? Have they stumbled across a sleeping bull elk in a high meadow, and watched in awe as he shook off slumber and disappeared into the woods? Have they watched the antelope raise their young? Have they welcomed the sun and the wind and the natural order of things?

Feasting on native forage, the milk cow is well-fleshed, her lean frame filled out beautifully under a healthful layer of summer plenty. Her milk is rich and sweet and abundant on sunlight-turned-to-grass – No wonder her calves are as stout as they are. Their summer coats are sleek and glossy, their gentle eyes bright and content as they seek out shade on a warm day and chew their cud. They truly haven’t a care. The beef herd is out to summer pasture, thriving in their self-sufficiency. What a life they live, gently handled, carefully tended, in this partnership with sun and sky and beast of the field.

The hens dart to and fro in the barn yard, sometimes making it up as far as the house and the garden. They are gorgeous this time of year, feathers full and flawless, and their eggs are a marvel as well – Hard symmetry cracks open to reveal a golden heart, the darkest of yolks, dark with summer’s vegetation and the insects the chickens consume, golden like at no other time of the year. The egg basket runs over, and the bounty overtakes the kitchen. Another simple partnership, with sun and sky and barnyard fowl.

How simple, each of these partnerships, each of these stewardships. How intuitive and instinctive to want to be a part of this world we live in, to care for it, to help it to thrive. To live in and amongst, not apart from. To take what we need with gratitude, to cultivate and invest, and to leave our little corner of this green earth better than it was when we came to it. And finally, to leave something for the next generation, something beautiful and beloved.

It isn’t we who have invaded, carving up the landscape to suit our whims and ways. It isn’t we who have razed the woods and hidden the hills beneath asphalt and high-rises, chiseling away at the contours of the land to favor buildings of cinderblock and stone. It isn’t we who have divided and subdivided, trading the warmth of the living land for the coldness of a dollar. It isn’t we who have rerouted waterways and planted lawns where native grass once grew. It isn’t we who have buried fertile ground beneath roads and infrastructure, slowly erasing the beautiful asymmetry of rolling hills and prairies.   

We are stewards. We exist with and alongside the birds and beasts, the land and trees, the wind and the weather; not bending nature to suit our wills but submitting ourselves to nature’s order, partnering, not subjugating, working with, not against. We live here. In partnership with sun and sky.

Ranch Wife Musings | On Whose Shoulders We Stand

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on June 18, 2025

Have you ever noticed the following contrast?

When Mother’s Day comes around, in sweeps the sappy sentimentality from all quarters, religious and secular alike. Church sermons laud the important role mothers play, encouraging mothers to embrace their God-given status and find joy in the motherhood journey. Ushers hand out $5 gift cards for ice cream or flowers to all the mothers. Mothers are showered with admiration and gifts, treated to lunch, and generally doted upon. All the wrongs mothers can commit are overlooked, and motherhood is suddenly elevated to frank heroism by a culture that at all other times actively discourages women from having children and decries motherhood as being demeaning and bowing to the patriarchy (but can’t even define “mother” anyway), while memes circulate social media saying that Mother’s Day isn’t just for mothers, but for anyone who wants to be considered a mother – cat moms, dog moms, anyone. I find it all very confusing.

Father’s Day rolls around, though, and it is a different dynamic altogether. Church services might give a tiny nod to the day itself, might offer a brief prayer of thanks for all the fathers in our lives, but any sermon that takes place is generally not a celebration of God’s gift of fathers but a warning to fathers that they had better shape up, and here’s how to do it. Fathers aren’t lavished with gifts, and social media takes no break from the campaign against toxic masculinity (which really is usually just a campaign against masculinity, period). Fathers are often the butt of sarcastic jokes, and many run-of-the-mill issues full-grown adults wrestle with are tacitly or explicitly blamed on fathers and mistakes that were made during childhood. 

The dichotomy is striking, if nothing else.

It seems to be a daily thing on the news, hearing about violent crimes, abuses, tyrannies, behind each of which is a man being dragged through the mud, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not. But for every single one of those events that dominate the news cycle, I would guess there are 10,000 men, invisible to all but their families, standing in the gap for their wives and children, for their communities, and for their faith. Men who rightly set the standard for manhood, for virtue and morality, for right and wrong, willing to hold the line against those who threaten the spiritual and physical wellbeing of those they love.

And we need that. We need those men. Desperately.

In a society where many social ills truly can be traced to fatherlessness and abuse by fathers, what we need is more strong, masculine figures, not fewer. More men who take the privilege of their strength seriously. And those men who are exemplary in their roles as husbands and fathers should never be in doubt about their value or importance.

We are who we are because of our fathers. Good fathers give us an example to follow. Poor fathers give a warning about what to avoid. But our fathers make us, and that trickles down through the generations, for better or for worse. Men learn how to treat their wives by watching how their fathers treat their mothers, for better or for worse. Women learn how they should be treated by watching how their fathers treat their mothers, for better or for worse. The importance of fatherhood – for better or for worse – absolutely cannot be overstated.

My dad set the standard of manhood for me. He was a steady, dependable, wise, Godly force in my life through all of my growing up years (and still is), and so much of the woman I became is a direct result of the example set by my own father. His living out of his masculinity gave so much context for my living out of my femininity. So much of what characterizes my faith and my thoughts and my loves and interests are because of my dad. How I view life, how I process information, decisions I’ve made – because of my dad. As an adult, he became the standard for what I ought to pray and look for in a husband, and his example of a loving and kind father and husband set the bar when I was dating. He demonstrated devotion to God, faithfulness to wife, love of children, gentle but firm in his expectations and corrections of us, and always pointing us back to Christ. He, with all of his imperfections and flaws notwithstanding, was my standard of masculinity and manhood.

Then there is my father-in-law, who has been a constant presence in my life for the last 7 years, as the first person on the volunteer fire department to take me under his wing and show me the ropes, and, more importantly, as the man who helped make my husband the man that he is. And I’m so thankful for that. I’m thankful for the honesty and integrity that my father-in-law has modeled to his son, for the instinct to generosity, the work ethic and ingenuity (it is amazing what can be done with wire and willpower), the commitment to family and community, the importance of being a capable and compassionate leader, and that there are more important things in life than the money in one’s bank account. I’m even thankful for the somewhat twisted sense of humor that I now have to suffer with on a daily basis.

And it isn’t too long before I get to watch husband step into his own role as father. Who we are because of our fathers will shape and mold the next generation.

We stand on the shoulders of the men who made us.

A Love that Feels Like Home

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It is amazing how fast everything can shift.

At the age of 30, with no one in sight, I had more or less come to the conclusion that I’d be a loner for the rest of my life, or at least the foreseeable future, and honestly I functioned decently in that capacity. Introverted by nature, and truly trusting in a loving Heavenly Father who knew what I needed – not wanted, but needed – I had learned a level of contentment. As an adult, I had wrestled with well-intended but off-kilter promotion of marriage as the ultimate state for the Christian. Things like, “Marriage is God’s greatest gift.” (No, it isn’t, Jesus is) Or, “being a wife and mother is God’s highest calling.” (Then what about those to whom God doesn’t give that privilege? Did He shortchange those women? Some beautiful clarity from the Westminster Catechism: “What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” Wow.)

I wrestled with loneliness and uncertainty, grew in contentment but never perfected that virtue, and grew in my trust of God, logically and theologically concluding that the “gift of singleness,” at least for the time being, was mine, and I could either thank God for it and learn to flourish in it or try to throw it back in His face like an ungrateful child. As an aside, contentment cannot be circumstantial. If a person can’t find contentment and trust in God in an undesirable state, he or she truly won’t find contentment or trust in God in the coveted state.

So I threw myself into my work, whatever it was, and after a few years of volunteer firefighting, search and rescue, becoming EMT certified and getting my National Outdoor Leadership School Wilderness First Responder certification, I found myself pursuing my paramedic education and then employed as a firefighter-paramedic for the Rapid City Fire Department. It was new and exciting, it was challenging, it was satisfying, it provided camaraderie and a level of security, and it was finally something I could picture myself doing years down the road, if that was what God had in store. I grew in physical fitness and stamina, mastered the art of keeping my head down and doing my job, and pretty swiftly earned a level of respect from my coworkers and officers.

And then everything shifted. Into my adrenaline-laced life of lights and sirens, IVs and EKGs, life and death situations where death was a key feature all too often, 24- and 48-hour sleepless shifts, a life that I was embracing but never really felt like it was embracing me back, into that life came a familiar face and form. A face and form that had caught my eye over the years. A comfortable and comforting presence, brotherly, humorous, companionable.

I think of the first handful of days we spent together. Our first date to the Gaslight Restaurant in Rockerville – I remember telling my mom ahead of time that I honestly wasn’t very excited. I’d been disappointed enough times before. But something here was different. He picked me up at my cabin, the old-fashioned way. When our meal was served, he took my hand and said a simple prayer. He treated me like a queen. And we sat in his truck in the driveway in front of my house and talked. For two more hours. This was different.

We picked chokecherries together at his place, a few days later, and he grilled hamburgers. The best burger I’d ever had. And we talked. For hours. He hugged me before I left. And I didn’t want to let go.

We cemented a leaky stock tank a few days after that. “Boy, I bet you’re impressed,” his dad quipped, when he brought out the bags of cement. “I volunteered,” I quipped back.

That familiar face and form brought peace and certainty, and within 11 days – 11 days – I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would be this cowboy’s wife.

His sweat-stained cowboy hat, snap-front western shirt, and dust-covered boots; his lanky figure and his easy, swinging gait; his wide, straight smile flashing bright in his brown, sun-leathered face; large, gentle hands that just about swallowed mine; and behind his thick glasses a pair of eyes almost too handsome that just about disappeared when he laughed. Everything shifted. I felt like I was home.

For two introverted, self-sufficient, independent individuals in their 30s to suddenly be confronted with “their person” and no shadow of doubt was nothing short of a work of God. He had planned this, and He was bringing it about. We realized and verbalized often that “we are better together.” And we both knew. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.

We got married 10 months later on a beautiful June afternoon under a blue sky with just a bit of rain, after 4 months of dating and 6 months of engagement, and we are now looking back on 3 years. Three blessed years. Three tough years. Three incredibly good years. Three growing years. Three years of becoming more and more the people that God wants us to be in the life in which He has placed us. I’m not the person I was 3 years ago, thank God, and neither is he. Isn’t that amazing? It isn’t all roses and sunshine. But it has been so incredibly good.

Years of loneliness put into perspective the petty and selfish desires that are the root of so much marital conflict. Painful relationships highlighted the sweetness of what God had given us. We had been given a partner for life, and as quickly as 10 months of dating and engagement went, or the first year or two of marriage, there was a mutual feeling of “always.” Like we’d always been together. Like we’d always been married.

I left a life of Nomex and tactical boots and embraced a life of blue jeans and muck boots. I left a life of constant adrenaline and trauma for the steady, peaceful volatility that is life on a ranch. I found my person. And everything suddenly made sense.

Memories from childhood, simple longings in a little girl’s heart, an unexplainable affection for the Black Hills, strange homesickness driving past places I didn’t even know and had no idea would become my home as a married woman: everything made sense.

God has given me such a gift in my husband. He is a flawed man with a perfect Savior, who loves his Savior and loves me. He is my provider and protector, my support and best friend. He is home.

Early in our marriage, I remember Brad laughing as I trotted out of the house wearing a short little nightgown and sandals with a calf bottle in hand to feed the calf waiting at the gate below the yard. “You belong here,” he said when I got back in.

And what a life he has invited me into with him. What wholesomeness and wholeness. What a life he has given me. I am more myself now than I was 3 years ago, or 5 years ago, or 10 years ago. What a life God has allowed us to build together. What sweetness when you find a love that feels like home.

It took awhile. And it was entirely, wonderfully worth it.

“God bless the broken road, that led me straight to you.”

Happy anniversary, my love.