There Is A Season

Jim and I just celebrated 15 years of marriage.

The week before we got married

a hail storm wiped out all grass and leaves on a large stretch of prairie.

I chose to fight the season

and plant flowers.

A week later, grasshoppers ate every ounce of green.

It was 1996.

That winter we had the worst blizzards in decades.

Then the snow stopped.

The rain stopped.

My kids learned to sled on bare ground:  dead grass and cactus.

We began to dread the sight of clouds.

Clouds no longer meant rain.

Clouds meant lightning.

Lightning meant fire.

In 2006, our 10 year anniversary year,

my parents saw a century of pine trees burn up in one night

and then evacuated their home waiting until it was safe to come home.

 

Some in their community had no homes to return to.

  

A week later, my husband was called to a fire.

Clouds were brewing up

and my sister-in-law and I loaded up our 4 kids and sat on a hill top

to watch lighting and spot smoke.

All my life I had been taught to

get off hilltops and highspots in lightning storms.

Drought turns that on idea on its head.

Hair standing on end

radio antenna buzzing . . .

I don't recall how many strikes we saw,

how many spots of smoke rising.

The next spring it started to rain.

Seasons.

Hard to believe we have hay like this.

{Click above for last year's hay season.}

I have never seen the prairie look like this.

The wildflowers and the grass look like it must have

when the pioneers came in their covered wagons

in 5-10 feet tall grass.

I didn't really believe it.

I didn't believe that Harvey Dunn's painting

The Prairie Is My Garden

were based on a possible truth of the prairie

until now.

Seasons.

Drought was our season for 10 years.

Now, wildflowers paint the prairie

and grasses tower over my kids' heads.

 

In Ecclesiastes chapter 3, it says,

To everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven . . .

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Also He has put eternity in their hearts,

except that no one can find out the work

that God does from beginning to end.

I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice,

and to do good in their lives,

and also that

every man

should eat and drink and enjoy

the good of all his labor --

it is the gift of God.

Copyright 2011 Jodene (Jodi) Shaw.