We put in the walnut trees the week before the wedding. Thousands of sticks tucked row after row in river bottom dirt. It takes faith to plant an orchard; faith to grow a family. Trusting in God and the seasons, sun and rain, joy and sorrow, reaping and sowing: these laws of life that never leave us.
Yesterday, I talked with a woman married a long while. We smiled over the fits and starts and endless unfolding of our walk as wives and mothers.
She has a beautiful family, four grown children succeeding in this world, a husband well-respected and well-known from a family well-respected and well-known. It’s the little known that touched me, the whispered confession of this woman’s heartaches. Her storms: A parent with Alzheimer’s. A daughter with a shattered love affair. A husband who broke a promise, and yet it all works itself out.
Putting in the orchard wasn’t easy. Pulling together a wedding at the same time about did me in. Farming remains an ever-present challenge. My dad spends long days on the tractor. My mom, the boys, Scott and I weed continually. Puncture vines are the worst. Those must be pulled by hand in the orchard, bagged up and burned to kill the dagger seeds, and yet it all works itself out.
I call Cami and ask about her new marriage. Smiles fill her voice, and a bit of sadness too. Drew is the best, but must work long hours. She misses Lacy and her little brothers. The one room apartment is so quiet. Nothing like the big, rowdy house wrapped by new orchard. I ask when she is coming home. Gently, she explains she is home. Where Drew is, she is. “You taught me that, Mama.”
We talk about the years when her dad was in the Army. “It must have been lonely for you with your husband always away,” Cami says, now knowing.
“Yes, but I had you. And then your sister, and then Luke. You kids kept me busy.” And I think about those difficult years as a young wife. The dagger seeds of self dying so slowly, pulled by humbled hands, such hard work, and oh the tears.
And my life today, an orchard in full bloom. Four little boys producing perseverance, three older kids still humbling me. Evenings now blessed with time on the porch swing with Scott. Something we never had while young.
To think an orchard of sticks can eventually bring a harvest if one works hard and God is good.
God is always good, it is the work in question. The human factor. The farming of a family through seasons of storm and sunshine. Drought and rain. Do you know it is the storms that most shape the trees? That send roots deep into river bottom dirt and twist trunks into strength?
The Bible says:
“A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” 
Galatians 6:7-9. 

* certain details have been changed to protect a friend’s privacy.