In college, we could go to the movies for $3 a ticket, and for Christian college kids, this was really the best entertainment option since drinking was out (for most of us most of the time) and so were cities – our college town had a post office – that was the town in its entirety.
Given that my meals and board were covered with loans and a few grants and scholarships, I really didn’t have to worry too much about spending money. The $25 I withdrew from the campus business office on Fridays usually carried me through the week, even with a movie a weekend.
I was blessed to have enough. As I always have been. I have never wanted for anything physical I needed. Not even for one minute.
So it still strikes me as odd that I feel that financially on the edge, that tiny slim edge of hope. Hope that we’ll have enough to pay our bills, hope that we’ll have enough to build our barn, hope that we’ll have enough to help our parents when they need us. . . . Hope for enough.
By all measures, we have so much more than most people in the world. We sit in a position of extreme privilege in every way. I am privileged enough to really have a “room of my own” in which to write. We own a house and land. We have enough to buy feed for our animals in this time when they are not yet making us any money. We have enough to build a barn – a large barn – and buy organic milk.
We have far more than enough.
Yet, for the last six months, I have been striving hard to get more. More clients, more work, more money – that’s the bottom line there, more money. We can always use more; we have big dreams for God’s Whisper Farm. But we have enough. More than enough.
Hope is, as Dickinson said,
. . . the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words . . .
I so often feel wordless as we live this farm dream, as I work with a new client, as I sit down each morning to write these posts. But each act is a task of hope, and I take rest there and feel myself lifted, held up, safe.
Still, each moment in this wide-open version of a dream-filled life is a risk of sorts. It’s easy to let the fear and anxiety lead the way. It’s simple to let the whisper of hope get silenced by the shouting of “how” and “stupid” and “irresponsible.” Hope is not a big thing. It’s a pebble, a pearl, a trinket, a reminder.
Hope lives best when it’s small, a wire stretched between back there and up ahead. I can walk that wire – shaking with each step because I am fearful – or I can put each foot down, steady with my gaze ahead and watch the feathers woven in my soul lift me up.
I feel like flying, confident that faithfulness not only buys movie tickets but barns and dreams, too.