For the Farmer and His Wife, Seasons of Sacrifice

It was 11 pm and I was just getting finished with the dishes from dinner. I was wiping down the countertops when I heard the crunch of the gravel underneath his truck tires. I walked to the door in time to see his headlights come up over the hills of corn.

It had been a day. My girls had been disasters from the moment they woke up, I had burned the lunch that I was supposed to bring out to the fields, I had laundry coming out of my ears, and I hadn’t had a single moment alone in weeks. We were only half way through with harvest and I was already running on empty. I had given so much of myself and I was going to let him hear all about it the moment he came through the door. Because really, what kind of stresses had he endured all day? What was it that he had given up?

I wiped my hands on my apron and walked down the hallway towards him, ready to let him hear all about the misery of my day. But the closer I got to him, the more my heart softened, and as I began to open my mouth, I paused. There stood my farmer. He shut the door behind him and dropped his bags to the ground. He was covered in dust from hat to toe; he kicked off his shoes, removed his hat and wiped his brow. He leaned back against the door and closed his eyes.

He was absolutely exhausted.

He looked over at me out of the corner of his eye; it was like he could hear the guilt creeping into my heart. We stood there in that hallway and just held each other for a few minutes. “I love you,” he whispered. How foolish I felt in that moment; foolish and fortunate. What a parody for this tired farmer’s wife.

I know I’m not the only one who’s felt like this. Katie Pugh is another tired farmer’s wife just like me; another wife who has recognized the beauty in the hardship of sacrifice. And with that sacrifice comes trust; a trust that goes beyond the day in and day out, but a trust that understands and sees one another’s sacrifice with gratitude. For him, the sacrifice is not just found in the long hours, but in the frustrations of machinery breakdowns, unpredictable weather, grain prices plummeting, and missing his family terribly.

Friends, fellow farm wives, we have the task of single-handedly being committed to our homes and our family during planting and harvest seasons. And while being faithfully committed in this way, we are also faithfully committed to our husbands during the busiest seasons of their lives and have the ability to give them trust with ease. May we continue to hold down the farmhouses well while our men are in the fields and be the wives that we have truly been called to be… Trustworthy in seasons of sacrifice.

“The heart of her husband does safely trust in her…” Proverbs 31:11