If you drive five miles west on BB Highway out of Hillsboro MO you will cross through the old Els farm. The property is nestled on the western slope of one of the many foothills in eastern Missouri, just south of St Louis about ten miles west of the Mississippi river. Jennifer’s grandpa, John Els, bought the entire three hundred and twenty acres when he and Pearl moved out from the city in the late 1930s. He built the farmhouse house and the barns with his own hands, brick by brick and board by board. Pearl gave birth to five boys, four of them at home on the farm. Jennifer’s Dad, Ken, is the middle of the five. He grew up on the farm, milking cows, keeping chickens, and mending fences. He remembers fondly the days of dirt floors and outhouses.
Over time, Grandpa John began to do less farming and more commercial construction. Ken’s oldest brother, Gene, who now owns much of the land on top of the hill, eventually took over Els Construction and developed and sub-divided some of the original homestead. When Ken graduated high school he joined the Navy. Upon his return home he went into construction as well. He soon married Kathy and a few years later he built his own house just up the hill from John and Pearl. That’s where Jennifer grew up and where we’ve spent most of this summer while our house is being repaired. From their back porch you can see the three story white barn, the old chicken houses, the cabin in the woods, and the hollowed out mobile homes John used to keep the antique Ford automobiles he restored after he retired. All of his tools, thousands of them, are still in his shop and Ken and the grandkids still put them to good use.
I never knew John and Pearl like I’d have liked to. I’ve heard of their adventures, many of them in a converted school bus that John gutted and turned into a hunting cabin on wheels. I’ve seen the pictures and the antlers that prove that the Els family life was anything but boring. (One picture in particular is of Ken standing inside of the ribcage of an Elk that he had killed and gutted on a hunting trip with his brothers)
When I met Jennifer’s grandparents in 1994, Parkinson’s disease had crippled Pearl, preventing her from doing much of what she was known for. She has mostly homebound by this time, but she was always up for a game of Kismet around the kitchen table if you had some time to stay and visit. John was still able to get around but he spent most of his time at home with Pearl. By 2003 both of them needed constant care and Ken and Kathy spent most of their time making sure his parents were safe and comfortable. Towards the end they started taking turns sleeping over so someone would be near if something unexpected were to happen the middle of the night. Ken has always been the most loyal of the boys and he and Kathy lived out this loyalty at great personal expense during those last few years.
Grandma Pearl was the first to go. At her memorial service in August of 2006 people shared things about her that even Jennifer didn’t know. Jennifer told me how she wished she’d have known those things. She’s got memories of Pearl but she didn’t know her like she wished she had. After Pearl died, John’s heart began to fail and he was resigned to spend days in a wheelchair staring out the window at the land he once cultivated, but his mind was still sharp and his attitude still intact. He spent many of those days sitting at his kitchen table eating and visiting with people who stopped by. The visits were loud. You had to nearly scream for him to be able to hear what you said. John kept a rifle by his chair so he could shoot rodents out the window. In 2007, about a year before his death, I challenged him to a shooting contest. We drew targets on paper plates and hung them on a fence across the yard. Then we sat inside and took turns trying to outshoot each other from the kitchen table. After a couple of minutes the targets were retrieved and the plates revealed that I’d won, but just barely. Grandpa called me a “smart ass” under his breath. I took it as a compliment. Despite his many visitors, John was lonely without Pearl. He died of congestive heart failure in April of 2008. He was more sentimental about Pearl in those last few years and never really forgave himself for some of the things he’d done early on in their marriage.

The Els boys have made an unmistakable mark on the community and the people with whom they lived and worked and played. Most of the folks I’ve met in the times I’ve spent here in Hillsboro have multiple stories about Ken and his dad and brothers. The longer I stay here the more I understand the deep family history of this place and that of the people who live here.

When I traveled to South Africa for a week and a half in March of 2006 I got a taste of African culture, I experienced it as a visitor. Then, that following October, we moved there and bought a car and rented a house. We unpacked and settled our family down for a while. We made friends and began a work and established a routine. Only then did we begin to live Africa, to become part of it’s history. That’s what we are experiencing here in Missouri, only this time it is unplanned and unexpected. It’s a bit strange to wake up day after day in the same house where Jennifer grew up and where she and her sisters spent their days playing and swimming and talking about boys. Jennifer’s mom is cooking meals for everyone just like she did back then and my kids are doing the things Jennifer did when she was little. History is repeating itself. The longer I’m here the more of that history I feel seeping into my being. This isn’t just a visit anymore. Friends and family have gone back to their normal lives and we are beginning to lock into the rhythm of this house. We’ve even made a couple of new friends and Jennifer has reconnected with some old ones. I’m resisting it a bit because I know it isn’t our home, it’s not our rhythm, and we’ll be breaking away soon enough, but it’s been nice in many ways to be part of something larger, something not so temporary.

If I get up early enough I like to sit at the kitchen table alone and read my bible and look through the sliding glass door that proves a view-from-above of the farm and the barn and the garden that I helped plant this spring. Vegetables are popping up everywhere, the tomato plants are yielding buckets of fruit everyday, the trellis that supports the bean vines is buckling under the weight, and the sunflowers at the south end of the garden are over ten feet tall. Across the valley through the cedar trees I can see the top of Jennifer’s sister’s house, about a five-minute walk from here. She and her husband Cameron bought the property from Grandpa John about ten years ago and build the house by hand. At the base of the valley where the creek divides the property is the old milkhouse. Jennifer’s dad converted the milkhouse when Jennifer was a kid so she had a place to board her ponies and horses. As a teenager, Jennifer spent most of her free time in the pasture adjacent to the milk house riding horses. Her most trusted companion was a quarter horse named Merchant. We went down to the milkhouse the other day and Jennifer told me how the stalls still smell like they did then. I can tell she misses those quiet days. She mourns the innocence lost with growing up.

In an odd way, Jennifer and her Dad have a uniquely similar childhood, one that was filled with quiet and animals and dirt. Whenever Jennifer daydreams about her “perfect place” it is a wide-open space with animals and land and a huge family table piled high with fresh organic produce and homegrown vegetables. She loves the sounds of cicadas in the cedar trees and screen doors clapping shut and kids playing in the yard. I wonder why God took Jennifer from this place, one of such relaxed solitude, and put her into a life that doesn’t have so many of the things she has always loved and longed for.

This morning I didn’t get out of bed until 6:45. Hutch was already awake and playing with his birthday toys. I sat in what has become my usual chair overlooking the farm and tried to read and pray while he and Iron Man battled under my feet. My prayer book’s theme for this week is “communion” and included in the selected readings is an excerpt from Henry Nouwen’s “The Life of The Beloved”. In the opening section Nouwen writes, “I would like to talk a little about how to live the life of the beloved. There are four words that I want to use, words that come from the gospels, words that are used in the story of the multiplication of bread, words that are used at the Last Supper, words that are used at Emmaus, and words that are used constantly when the community of faith comes together. Those words are: He took, He blessed, He broke, and He gave.”

Nouwen goes on to explain that all of us who choose to follow Jesus walk with Him in the perpetual process of being taken, blessed, broken, and given. As I look back on the past few years I can see how Jesus has taken me out of situations at times when I lest expect it and how he has been leading me into brokenness and blessing me with experiences that are changing me and somehow blessing others. None of it is my doing or a result of anything good I’ve done. I’m just bread. (Today I’m grumpy tired bread) I’m sure it was God’s best for Jennifer to be taken from her home as well, but when we’re here I can’t help but wonder how.

I wonder what in the world God is up to with us. Why did He choose to have us leave our home at this time, just as we were finally settling down? We were so excited to be in Franklin this summer, to be “Normal”. Why were we taken now? What is it he wants me to learn here? Last week I wrote about God’s “Grace in the Wilderness”, and I’m no less aware or appreciative God’s blessing but I’ve got more questions. My heart is not settled. I feel that our story, my story, is getting buried in someone else’s. That’s the breaking that I can’t find reason for. And I can’t help but be a little nervous about where the giving is going to take place. The last time a major change like this happened in our family we ended up in South Africa and I ended up with MS and Jennifer ended up pregnant. All of it has been God’s best and we’re so much better off now than we were then. I wouldn’t trade the past five years for anything, but I’m still “me of little faith” and I get nervous when I can’t see what’s coming.

I’m looking forward to heading back to Franklin later this week to lead worship at Fellowship and do some songwriting with some friends. I’m also going to spend some time looking for temporary housing for us to live in while our house is being restored. I can’t help but feel a small twitch that tells me we may never move back into that house. It may just be a fleeting notion, I get those a lot. I remember when Jennifer and I were dating being sure that I was going to die before we got married. So I’ve learned to not pay too much attention to the whims of my heart, but still, something is going on. Something is being put to rest, being allowed to wither and die, and something new is coming to life. I’ve been inspired while I’ve been here in Missouri. Inspired to write, to read, to get dirty, and to get off of some of my medicine. But I grieve not having my own space, and time alone with Jennifer and the kids, and my sleep number bed. I miss my Jeep and Merridee’s, and I’m tired of wearing the same clothes over and over again. I’m growing weary of being a visitor.

Even as I sit here complaining I’m reminded of my own words to audiences this year. I’ve been urging people to follow God into the unknown, telling them not to be afraid to go wherever Yahweh leads them, even if it seems extreme. I’ve been imploring people to go “away” with God, to be still, to be quiet, to be “different”. I guess if that’s going to be my message than I’ve got to be that guy: The traveler. The sojourner. Like John the Baptist, who lived his life in the wilderness. I’ve been telling people how great the wilderness is because Jesus is there and He is uniquely close to us when we go there with Him. Why should I be surprised that Jesus is again taking us through the unknown? Maybe our experience will become bread that will be given to others through this. I guess I just need to own it, to settle into it, to realize that this is our story, our adventure, unique to us. That this is who we are and who we are going to be, for now anyway.

Jennifer keeps her books on the floor beside the bed. (She’s right-handed and sleeps on the right, I’m left-handed and sleep on the left. We tried to switch once. It lasted one night.) This morning I noticed she’s reading a book about “The Valley”. She must be feeling the same way I do. We’ve been together a lot but not really alone for long enough to talk about deep stuff. I’m sure being here for this length of time is stirring up feelings and emotions in her heart that have been asleep under the surface for a while. Plus, her Dad, (we all call him Pop Pop now) isn’t doing well. The inflammatory disease that he’s battling is causing blood flow to his legs to be stifled. His legs are getting weak and he’s walking less and sleeping more. This has to be on Jennifer’s mind. Plus, Pop Pop has been a lot more sentimental lately, which lets us know that he’s probably feeling worse than he even lets on. We’re all hopeful that this is just a temporary relapse and not a sign of things to come.

Jennifer doesn’t complain that I don’t have a plan past next week. She’s never really pressured me to have the long-term figured out. I’m so thankful for that. This morning she recognized that I was in a rough spot and has giving me all day to think and process things. This is how we live now: day to day, hour to hour. Our counselor told us to try to live in the moment, to think about the next ten minutes. It’s hard, especially when the system we live in tells us that we need to have our ducks in a row. Sometimes Jennifer and me talk about this and she reminds me that there’s not a retirement plan anywhere in the Bible. She’s right. She usually is. Don’t tell her I said that.