From

Blonde. She's turned. Heavy and ready. Harvest close.

I am from dirt fields and Case International tractors and waving fields of wheat, heads hanging heavy in the heat of August afternoons.

I am from the old red brick house under the stretching apple tree with limbs as rungs for bare toes and Cowboys and Indians and slipping high up into gable windows.

I am from the Queen Anne’s lace lining roadsides, gnarled lilac bushes bestowing blooms for Mother’s Day bouquets, and the milkweeds oozing creamy white in July.

I am from “it gets better up ahead, here” and raspberry kuchen for Sunday dinners and dark hair with cowlicks and women who always respond to compliments with what the price tag read.

I am from men with dirt under fingernails and big hands smelling of grease. From women who knew how to wash and kept their lines flapping full in morning breezes. From “early to bed and early to rise…” and “mind your pennies and your dollars will take care of themselves” and there is no mistress like the land, the land.

I am from Good News Bible Clubs on backyard lawns and Stop and Let Me Tell You What the Lord has Done for Me and hayrides and campfires and It Only Takes a Spark to Get a Fire Going and stepping down for baptism by immersion.

I'm from carrots till cheeks hint orange and put pork on your fork, from Ruth and Mary Ellen and plates piled high with tea biscuits and butterscotch squares and Hawaiian dream bars.

From cool midnight dips in rusty watering troughs after sweaty late-night barn chores.

From loading potbelly trucks with wrestling hogs before dawn's first crack and picking stones until after the sun finally dropped down behind the horizon… and beginning again tomorrow.

I am from being a grown-up in a child’s skin, from wondering if little Sister was cold in her coffin, from missing my Mama and from trying mighty hard to meet the expectations of Dad.

I am from You, the God of Redemption, who restores the years the locusts ate up, who writes new stories on pristine pages washed white with the blood of the Lamb, whose business it is to work all things together for glorious good.

So I bow low and look up and give thanks for where I come from: Your good, good hand.

(From the archives)