Playing Catch-Up

It’s been a week since I’ve had a chance to update my blog. My youngest sister and her family came to Iowa last Wednesday to visit my husband and me before their oldest kids started school. They left Saturday morning and I had every intention of posting some pictures of their visit along with a few new recipes. And, then I got a migraine. If you’ve had those before, you know they can be debilitating. If you’ve never had those before, consider yourself blessed. Ever since the weekend, I’ve been trying to play catch up at the farm.

Family Visits

I really enjoy when my family comes up here to the farm to visit. It’s kind of surreal, in a way. At times it seems as though I live in a completely different world up here. The climate here in Iowa is a bit different at times from what I’m used to living in Central Illinois. When my family is here, it’s like my two worlds have collided. I recently saw a shirt that read “Just an Illinois girl living in an Iowa world”. And, that’s how I feel. You would think after 20 months of living here, I would feel totally settled. But, some days I still feel like I’m visiting.

When I’m in Illinois, I miss the farm. When I’m here at the farm, I miss my family and the house that I made as my first home. But, it’s those visits that make the time with them that much better and sweeter. This past Saturday as I stood and watched my sister and her family drive away, I started to get emotional. Then, Ryan told me he was going to go move the cattle to a different pasture, which meant he was leaving for a while. I thought I’d be alright, but as I walked into an empty house after three days of four adults and three kiddos, I felt loneliness and I began to cry. (Sorry guys, this wasn’t supposed to be a sappy post.) I guess I wasn’t quite ready to have them leave yet.

Storms

As many of you may know, this past Monday Iowa got hit with a derecho storm. I had never heard of this word before, let alone experienced one of these storms that I can remember. In the middle of the morning, my husband and I were both outside and could see it getting darker to the West. The radar showed a storm coming. There was a big red glob of rain and we were hoping it would come to us because we need rain here at the farm.

The sky continued to get darker, the wind picked up a bit, the temps dropped and I thought for sure we were going to get this storm. But in the end, it barely rained, the wind died down and I could see to the South of us that the storm had missed us. I’ll be honest, we were both disappointed. However, later on in the afternoon, I found out that some cousins of mine in Cedar Rapids had received the brunt of this derecho and had damage to their homes or vehicles, if not both. We also heard that some friends of ours had damage to their property as well not far from our farm.

Yesterday we headed South and saw a lot of the damage that was done to the crops, grain bins, hog barns, etc. My heart hurt for all the families who lost animals, grain bins with grain in them and have fields with corn that is flattened to the ground. While all of that is a livelihood for the farmers and their families, I’m so very grateful that we did not hear of anyone losing their life on Monday during these storms. My cousins lost material possessions, but all of them are still alive.

So, the lesson here is that we need to remember that God always knows best. When you pray for something repeatedly and it doesn’t happen the way you want, sometimes you find out the reason why and see how He protected you. We didn’t know that the big red glob of rain that we saw on the radar would also hold 120 mph damaging winds with it. I have thanked God many times for His safety from that storm. Please continue to pray for all those impacted from the storm. There will be days and weeks of cleanup ahead of them and I’m sure it’s overwhelming.