Buying Broken Things – A Granny Doll and God’s Whisper Farm
When I was about 4, my mom rented a stall in a the big red barn that sat behind the corner market and across from the Ingall’s grocery store. We came on what must have been a Saturday and sat with all the other flea marketers to sell the extra things we had in our life. 
While I was walking among the stalls, I spotted this stuffed pillow dollar, the one stitched from two pieces of cotton fabric and stuffed. On both sides, there was a bright, vivid image of a granny (specifically, an older woman, who I thought looked kind of like my dad’s mom, Granny). Most of the pillow was red with pieces of green, and yellow, and blue, so it was odd, even to me, that I ached for it so badly – I was still strictly in my baby pink stage at that point. But fall in love I did, and I trotted back to my mom to ask for the money to buy it.
She said, “No,” at first, but I begged and begged and begged. Finally, she gave me the dollar – a dollar I realize that had probably come from selling something that day, a dollar we probably needed for food – and I bought the doll from the staff across the barn.
When I carried it back to my mom, clasped tight to my chest, she said, “Andi, it’s not finished yet. See, there are safety pins in her side. When we get her home, I’ll stitch her up for you.”
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Six months ago, I moved into this farmhouse. This 750 square feet that I wanted SO BADLY. The 10 acres that spoke to me when I saw them in a real estate photo almost a year ago exactly.
When I moved in, the place was broken open and held together with the house-size equivalent of safety pins . . .It was standing but not yet what it was made to be. My father, his friends,and I worked hard, and I moved in just 5 weeks after buying this place. And for the past six months, Dad, P, our friends, and I have cleared pasture and cut trees that were left when the land was timbered a couple of years back. I have picked up more than a kazillion pieces of broken glass.
My mom isn’t here to stitch up this place – although I ache with the wish that she were – but we are doing it, making her proud with God’s Whisper Farm.
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Today, some dear friends are helping me stitch up the farm, too. These people are some of the Whisperers, the folks who are speaking their love into this place with time and gifts and prayer. Today, this week, they are helping me launch my book God’s Whisper Manifesto by sharing their thoughts about what they found in its pages. You will find their links below, and I hope you will visit their pages to read their experience of this place through my words – and while you’re there, check out their websites in general – they are all building their own dreams on those pages.
I carried that granny doll with me for years. She lived on my bed or on a shelf until I moved just before high school. We gave her away then, and my prayer is that someone claims her – she’s more worn but more whole now – that someone sees her, loves her instantly, and wants to keep her close.
Just like I did with God’s Whisper Farm.
If you have reviewed or written about God’s Whisper Manifesto on your website, please share the link here. . . and readers, please take a few minutes and visit these links. I think you’ll be glad to find some great new folks to read.