I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever gone dress shopping. Not regular dress shopping, I mean searching for the perfect dress. A wedding dress or a prom dress. I’m on child #6 and girl #4. I have been dress shopping a few times. I HATE shopping! Even for myself. I just don’t like it at all!
So, you start into the mall with a teenage or young adult girl with a vision in her head about what she wants. Girls browse magazines, they look all over the internet, they get this heavenly vision of the perfect dress – and that’s what they bring with them to the mall. This is one instance where boys were just easier! With girls, you shop what is available to work toward getting as close as possible to the “perfect dress” in their head but in your budget and fits your modesty guidelines. The first store is fun, the second store may still be fun if you ate a big enough breakfast. By the third store everybody needs to eat lunch before somebody dies!
I try to browse different shops in the months leading up to the dance/prom/wedding a little at a time, with that kid, just in case the right dress is screaming out from the rack or glowing or under a neon sign that says “over here stupid”! Since I hate shopping, this doesn’t really happen it’s just a good goal that has never really been achieved.
Either way, there are similarities in dress shopping and farm shopping. Two ideals, two visions of perfect – one dress or farm to buy.
One thing I have learned though, what you bring home does not always bear a striking resemblance to the ideal you start with. I’ve searched the mall and all surrounding stores for hours for an “anything but blue” dress and come home with a light blue dress and a very happy daughter. Sometimes style gives, sometime color gives, sometime budget gives – we have NEVER found the “Perfect dress”. Not even once. But, we have found some amazing dresses and my daughters always looked great heading out the door to the dance/prom/wedding.
ONE BIG DIFFERENCE between farm shopping and dress shopping – there is no deadline to farm shopping!
Somewhere in the general area we are searching, sometime in the next several years, I hope we can find the right farm. So far, we are in the “somebody needs to eat lunch before someone dies” stage. Two very different ideals and one very frustrating search. Just like dress shopping, it isn’t that I can’t find something I like – it’s just that I can’t find something I love, that I can afford, in a place I want to live. My husband on the other hand can find many things he likes, because he just wants a farm.
I would like to say that we are getting together each night and joining in prayer and seeking God together on this whole thing. That would be the right way to do it. It’s a little less perfect than that, well alot less perfect than that. I really am praying for God’s will and direction and I think he is as well. I am asking God for peace when we get to the right farm, direction to get us there or somewhere else entirely if we are on the wrong path. I genuinely care to be walking a path God is leading down. I see no benefit in walking down a path without Him. There are proverbs for that. Something about unless God is in the process, the work of the builders is in vain.
We shall see. I don’t know if the perfect farm is out there, but I do know that God has a plan for our family and our life. I wish He would pull out the flashing lights and hand me the road map! But, for now, I try to learn the same lesson I am always trying to learn – trust Him. Breathe, just breathe Trust Him. And, maybe, for now, just try to keep the tiny little garden from dying. Baby steps
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