Which is the Better Place to Live, the City or the Country?
In 2 Corinthians. 6:17, Jesus said, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”
Therefore, we felt a mutual need to get away from such a place and prayed for guidance. Not having a lot of money, but lots of faith, the Lord led us to the country where we bought a handyman special. It was on a dead end road with five acres, a woodshed, a three-stall stable, and five fish ponds. The land was covered in growth with narrow foot paths that led to the ponds, and we couldn’t wait to clear it off. Even though we’d never lived in the country, all of us were eager to learn.
It was a bit overwhelming the first week of moving in. The old wooden two-story house was covered with cob webs and the only method of heat was a wood burning stove in the living room. The first few days were spent cleaning and moving then we began the task of clearing the land.
The guys approached the massive brush with machetes in hand. My daughter and I dragged the brush away and put it in piles to be burned. We were all working steady when our eight-year-old started screaming bloody murder. I spun around and couldn’t believe my eyes. A big cow had wondered into the backyard.
Of course, we know now that it was harmless, but at the time, we were terrified and ran to my husband. He tried to be brave, but I could tell he was just as apprehensive of this enormous creature as we were. He stomped and yelled at the beast, but it just stood there staring at us and we were afraid of getting trampled to death.
As it turned out, the cow belonged to a neighbor down the street and was actually quite gentle. She was kind of like a pet and apparently was allowed to roam free around the neighborhood. Her name was Sally and she hung around every day as we worked on the land and we grew very fond of her.
One day, our fourteen-year-old had just mowed the back yard and the others were picking up trash. They pointed to, what look to me like an old rag that had been chopped up my the mower with cut grass all over it, and asked me what they should do with it. I told them to just pick it up by the corners and toss it in the dumpster.
They exchanged glances and said, “Mom, cow patties don’t have corners.”
I’d never seen a cow patty before, so how was I suppose to know what it was? And how did they know?
With each passing day, we cleared more and more land until we had uncovered the five fish ponds. We continued to work on the house and yard, repairing doors, windows and planting flowers, hoping to have most of it done when the kids went back to school in the fall.
We would quit work about three in the afternoon to get ready for dinner. After dinner, our fourteen-year-old would take his BB gun into the woods to hunt rabbits and squirrels. The other boys would head for the ponds with their fishing poles and our only daughter would tag along to thoroughly annoy them. We had decided at that time that we really enjoyed living in the country, but we had much more to learn.
It was about a month after the kids had gone back to school when we got our first cold spell. We had been collecting wood and had a good pile in the shed so we started our fist fire in the wood stove. The house filled quickly with smoke. Apparently, the flue or damper wasn’t adjusted correctly. But we got through it and learned from it.
Around Thanksgiving, we experienced three straight days of steady rain. I was just finishing the dinner dishes when our twelve-year-old came ripping through the house shouting, “There’s a river coming down the driveway!”
The house came alive as each of us scrambled out of it to the front yard. Water was rushing down the dirt driveway like a trout stream, flooding the yard. Within seconds we were scrambling up onto the front porch to get out of the water. Standing there, looking out at our quickly flooding yard, one of the kids called from the back kitchen door, “The ponds are coming!”
We all turned and raced through the house to the back porch and saw the ponds rising, coming together and the water was edging its way to the house. “What are we gonna do?” I asked worriedly, turning to my husband. “The whole house is gonna to be flooded.”
“Get everything upstairs!” he said, shouting at the kids. “We have to take as much upstairs as we can before the water gets here. Gather your school books, unplug the television and computer and get them upstairs!”
Within the span of twenty minutes or so, we had taken the most valuable items upstairs when the water rose to the top of the front and back porch. We stood at the windows upstairs, watching and praying for probably an hour, and it never got any higher. It stopped at the porch and never came into the house. It was quite an experience.
We’ve lived here for nearly nine years and have yet to experience that kind of flood again. However, we faced many other issues, but too much to share here. Suffice it to say that I and my family would never trade living in the country for living the city. It’s like two different worlds and we have really grown to like this world.
