the harvest

Harvesting is happening in our home.  Lot of seeds have grown and have produced life ready for  harvest hands... more are being planted.

Lots of little lives are growing and are being equipped for future assignments

We are expectant!

A week from today, Pastor begins tending his new land and adding to the flock he shepherds.  A new home base will begin its establishment.  New seeds will be sewn for harvests not yet seen.

A couple of years ago the Lord invited the Vaughans on a most unexpected journey.  A journey that would change our hearts and lives forever.  Seeds were sewn.  All took root.  All had divine purpose.  All brought life, but all looked very different.

The only tangible proof that remains from that harvest is this little princess.

Toiling over these seeds have been excruciating.  Our labor is far from over.  We have learned so much through the crop of Lincoln, Tucker and Charli.  We have watered with our tears, we have begged the Master Gardner for divine provisions, we have fed our land with The Living Food, and we have asked other  harvest hands to tend what we couldn't tend alone. 

Our seasons have been VERY, VERY long.  Often we have had to bite our lips to keep them from trembling... or to stop us from speaking out of emotion instead of truth.

Most days we just flat out cried... still do... We are a desperate people.

The thing about harvesting is you can't predict the unpredictables, and the farming ones must always stay desperate for the One that waters and makes things grow.  It requires so much patience, so much heart, so much labor, and so much FAITH.  Faith... a seed gift in itself is needed in order for people to not just survive but thrive in the midst of droughts, storms, hail, bugs, weeds... to survive everyday elements.  So much opposition occurs when beautiful life begins to grow.

This particular seed as well as the seeds of her brothers have brought a plentiful harvest.  It has been very costly... just as with all productive seed the fruit was born out of death.  My harvest hands have had to till in the dark, deep soil of loss, struggle and heartache.   I am still farming those fields... just with some different tools.

As we start preparing a new land for new crops we remember the cost.  The ULTIMATE one and our own.  We remember The ONE in charge of the rain and the divine.  We remember our own story and His faithfulness... and we pray even now that God would go before and heal the land we will begin to tend.  As Pastor arrives in Dayton next Monday he will take some of our tools, and hopefully soon we will join him with the rest.  We will lovingly care for the land and wait for the seeds being sewn even today... knowing... again... that we will someday live in the fruit of this moment.

So thankful for harvests and all the harvest hands that make enjoying fruit possible for just as the Good Words says... it takes many, many soil stained hands. 

I do so love good fruit... even when the packaging seems confusing, gross, and ugly....harvesting... tilling in faith...not sight!