So, retirement, or semi-retirement or whatever you want to call it.
For me, it’s more like missing identity.
When I think of who I am, my life is like a large barn.
When you walk through the door there are booths, tables, displays of times and seasons of my life.
I walk past the gawky, shy kid who ran around the neighborhood and played until the streetlights came on.
Fast forward through high school where I wanted nothing more than to blend in.
Right after the high school table is the wedding display. It’s a bit more complicated as the old life is left behind and a brand-new cow enhanced lifestyle awaited someone who had great expectations. Those expectations were quickly replaced with a reality that wasn’t kind. The close-knit family, filled with family time was traded for busy, dawn to midnight working without connecting for days on end.
The expanding family table looks so different than the previous tables. It’s one of my favorite displays. So much energy was poured into raising four sons. Sports, hunting, raising responsible, caring strong men with tender hearts and most of the time doing it alone. It’s my favorite booth of all.
The becoming more active on the farm blended in with the kids as they got older. And that was more of a forced activity on my part.
There’s a long stretch of fitting into the farm duties. It includes bookwork, milking cows, assisting in surgeries, embryo transfers, delivering calves, raising calves, hoof trimming, field work – merging hay, mowing lawns, creating landscape scenarios all around the farm. Trimming bushes, painting washing, sweeping. I think I could carry on for a few more sentences, but I think you get it.
It was a balancing act of being fully invested at the farm and still busy at home.
Becoming a voice for ag through blogging, having a small radio spot weekly for years, even a few speaking and sharing sessions were squeezed in between.
Then add tables of daughters-in-law joining. A table where I felt least comfortable. I wanted to be that exceptional mother-in-law who was a friend, someone to talk with not about.
As we head around the room, the grama booth is full of playdough, dried up paint brushes, beads scattered on the floor. Barbies stuck in tractors, cake battered beaters, sleeping bags, shopping bags, colored bubble bath, shoes, boots. It’s a booth that is cluttered all the way through.
One by one the lights dim over these tables and booths.
Being concerned and taking care of my parents table is slid in and is moved along. The table gets a little heavier each time it moves.
The main table now is large. It’s overflowing with paperwork. Lawyers and accountants have a seat there. There’s a pile of poopy clothes, tracks where a tractor once sat, a small left-over pile of feed. Very few employees walk by and rarely a salesman stops. The family chairs are a bit skewed – like they don’t know where at the table they belong. It’s really quite the mess. Not only is there physical financial things that are screaming for attention there is relational issues that don’t fit into a nice box that has three steps to success written on it.
It feels like the table gets a little organization and then a huge pile of “more” gets dumped on. And the light above gets brighter causing more anxiety to straighten the piles. But, so much of the heaping mess needs many to sort through and finding common time, energy and thoughts to tackle the looming job keeps the table front and center even though there are booths and tables waiting to join the barn.
I see tables of travel, more time spent with friends, new friends, mission trips, books to read, maybe even writing waiting to be added. They are all worth exploring but the main retirement table is overshadowing.
Along with the booths and tables there is a title that has been over my door when it comes to my writing identity. A Farm Wife. Many have found and followed due to the farming aspect. Now that the farming part is slowing down to a dribble the title over the door feels deceiving. Yet, if I change it who will find me? How will I find me?
My prayer for this new season is to clear off the retirement table. To satisfy the accountants, the lawyers. To arrange the family chairs in a loving circle. Time will tell.
As far as my title over the doorway – it will stay the same. A Farm Wife I am and A Farm Wife I always will be – with many layers.
