“Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.” Author unknown
Change to me is variety…you know, the spice of life. Growth and improvement are usually products of change. However, I’m finding it difficult to surrender to an upcoming change.
Long before I was even a twinkle in my momma’s eye, my grandfather began farming land in Nolensville on Clovercroft Road. When I was a little girl, my parents built a home on an acre lot just beside the farm. I spent many days walking back and forth between my house and my grandparents’ house through the pasture between our houses. My grandfather would take me out on the tractor and we would drive back on the farm and tend to cows, look at hay and talk about everything under the sun. We would drive to the top of the highest hill on the farm, park the truck and get out and walk. I don’t even know that we were looking for anything in particular, but being up there seemed like I was on top of the world.
Several winters there was enough snow for bunches of us to pile in a car and take our sleds to the top of the hill. There were no fences to stop us at the bottom of that big hill (go to “Fences” to appreciate this comment). We would sled until our legs were too tired to carry us back up to the top of the hill.
My grandparents’ home was part of the farm at the time. As a child, if I were outside, I could always hear a tractor, my uncle’s loud truck or his motorcycle echoing through the hills. There was a bull housed in the lot next to the home where an electric fence marked his boundaries. There were calves in the barn, and cows would line up twice a day for milking. In the summer, the hay was baled and there were barns stacked full of square bales at the bottom of the hill.
In 1988, when my uncle was killed in a car accident, things changed around the farm drastically. Within 3 years, my grandfather was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and the farm was where he wanted to go each day. There wasn’t a lot of farming going on anymore. In 1992, he died and shortly after that, the cows and all of the farm equipment were sold in his estate auction. The farm had changed from a constant operation to nothing. Eventually, it was rented out, which is the state of operation today.
The farm has changed multiple times since I was a little girl, but now I see a change coming that is next to impossible for me to swallow. The farm is going up for sale.
I find it no coincidence that my quiet time just yesterday was written referencing Psalm 24:1, “The earth and everything in it belong to the Lord." My grandfather was faithful to work the land to provide for his family. We are merely managers of land that belongs to God. "Be willing to surrender what you are to what you could become." As much as it pains me to think of letting it go, I realize that God must have another plan.
