When Tom and I move out to our little farm we will meet new people. Down-home country folks, I hope, old-fashioned souls like the ones I described here.

The waiting gets harder every day.

But there is someone else I hope to meet out in that tiny country town. She's a woman who's day-dreamed about living on a farm since she was 14 years old. She's taken myriad countryside drives all the while trying not to covet every farmhouse set back from the road, and instead, rolled down her window in hope of tasting what a country morning must smell and feel like to those blessed country dwellers. 

She's made-up stories about how hideously happy farm folk must be to live on open acres, all the while putting her own dreams shyly on hold because, well, you can't really have what you desire in this life--can you?

And now for certain I will actually meet that woman. When she comes bounding out of her car in the driveway in front of her barn I will rejoice with her that finally--all these 35 years later--the dreams of her countryside drives all came true and she'll live a whole new way only 20 minutes away from her old life. But everything will have changed.

She'll have room to create, grow and run around. There will be no end of work to do--and she will love it all. The art and beauty of it in a place where even mucking out a stall feels like freedom. The creating of a whole new world at the half-century point of her years upon Earth just when she'd imagined her days would continue their mediocrity and slow pace.

She's delighted by the surprise of it all, amazed by the Giver of it and His compassion for her. And that at age 49, one can start over, live better, fuller, and fulfill the dusty dreams long ago placed resignedly upon shelves.

Yes, that woman is the one I am most anticipating meeting out there in my driveway, out in the countryside where--instead of driving away--I'll be staying, calling it Home, and calling it Good.



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