It was an ordinary summer Thursday. I made breakfast for my boys who had been gone for hours, but my recollection of their departure earlier that day was vague since I hadn't even opened my eyes to kiss them both goodbye that morning. (I have a ten-year-old arrangement with Ole Jus where he never leaves in the morning without telling me "bye" and some sweet sugar. Lil Zane has naturally followed his dad's routine on mornings when they leave together.)
I called to see where on the 2000 acre ranch they were located...and Oh how I wish I could somehow depict the Texas drawl with which Lil Zane answered, "We're in the back 80."
Jus has run this ranch long before we were married, so our love story began here and is still being written in the pastures, pens, barns and trucks around this place. Which means I understood when Zane answered me that he meant the 80 acres furthest from the front of the ranch. In the back. It was the farthest point from our house.
Ramzee and I watched the storm clouds roll in as we drove all that way. We passed a tractor mowing our part of the county road, 2 of the hands stopped and talking between their 2 tractors, another hand mowing a yard, a fertilizer truck trying to spread before the rain came. When we reached our destination where Jus was teaching the new guy to plant grass, we had driven over 4 miles.
This is life for us. It was just an ordinary day on an ordinary working ranch, but as I looked around me I realized there is so much extraordinary in the midst of all that ordinary. As with everyone, I often times forget to stop and appreciate all that is around me. I am so grateful to live among His sacred creation but I regularly deny Him the glory He deserves.
On our four and a half mile trek back home I decided to stop and look around. So I did. (Until the clouds opened up and poured.) I stopped on top of every hill, at the turn of every corner and drove the kids completely insane just so I could share my gratitude with all of you. The journey begins where you cannot even see the barely beaten down path in the grass that makes up "the back 80" and takes you through the dirt roads all the way to the barn, which was only about half of the drive.
I know there are few families who do life in such a boundless, vast setting, and I am forever grateful to be doing it on this ranch, with these people...FROM THIS SIDE OF THIRTY.
