For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. Jer 29:11-15 (NOAB)
I signed two documents in my attorney’s office on Jan. 10, 2012. The first document was a purchase agreement set to close within 30 days. The second document, a handwritten note from the seller prompted by complaints about animal odors, had me agree to reduce my “four” large pets by half that number stating that the land would not support them all and move the remaining animals 300 yards from the nearest rental unit on the property. It is worthy to note that an acre of ground is nearly 70 yards squared and easy to see that 300 yards away would place us on someone else’s land.
After losing my farm in 2010 and moving to an adjacent property, I agreed to remove a damaged mobile that had been on the seller’s land, move my own structure there, house my animals on the treed tract of land, developing it with fencing, and have an option to purchase the entire 5.88 acres within the year.
We were a little more than two months out from exhausting the one year option when I received Christmas money to fence additional space for the Brahma Sonny and heifer Holly getting them up on high ground, out of mud and 45 yards from the nearest mobile home.
Two days into the New Year Sonny and Holly were moved to their new areas. But it was the expansion of the baby bull Buff’s space higher up into the trees that drew the ire of another bringing the owner out of retirement and back to Tennessee to get me to agree to the terms of the handwritten note or face eviction.
With a foreclosure in my recent past finding someone to finance the manufacture of my cabin-on-wheels was nothing short of a miracle. Yet now I needed to finance an even bigger chunk, the land on which the cabin sits.
It turns out that 2011 was the best year of my life: I found Jesus, was baptized and took the Walk to Emmaus, committing myself to discipleship and living my life as an obedient child of the Most High.
Just as the Scripture promises, God has a plan for my life to bring me hope and restore me. It took just 15 days for the LORD to part my Red Sea, allow me to walk on dry land to the other side and close on the purchase of the 5.88 acres.
What a Year!!