A Farmer's Wise Words

My dad didn't say much, but it was enough to change my life.

by John Buentello




It had been a week of one endless chore after another on the farm for my father and me—making repairs on the house, trying to get the meager little patch of ground ready for planting, and digging a new well to replace the one that had become contaminated. By the end of the week, we were exhausted, ready for a day of doing nothing.

My father packed us a lunch of jelly sandwiches and fresh apples, and told my mother that we were going to spend the day inspecting the hill. The hill was a sloping run of ground behind the farmhouse, the beginning of a range of hills in Texas that ran several miles to the north.

It was a favorite place for us to escape to; a spot where we could relax and talk.

This particular day, there wasn't too much talking going on. We trekked up the hill in relative silence, commenting on how hot it was and how much farther we had to go before we could break for lunch.

When we finally arrived at our favorite clearing, I was ready to just lay back and go to sleep. Instead, I couldn't take my eyes off our house—so small from this vantage point.

There have been so many changes for our family, I thought. Things have always been tight, but this has been an especially hard year.

I felt good about finally being old enough to pitch in and do my fair share of the work. At the same time I also wanted to be reassured everything was going to be all right. I wanted to know that what I counted on in my world wasn't threatened.

Dad must be thinking the same thing, I thought, glancing at him. Yet he seemed perfectly at peace sitting beside me. All I could see was a year of worry, a year of back-breaking work trying to hang on to what we had.

Dad's secret to happiness
"Dad," I asked as he handed me a sandwich and a slice of apple. "Why aren't you unhappy?" His answer was important to me.

"What should I be unhappy about?" he replied.

I looked back down at the farmhouse again and shrugged. "Everything, I guess. There doesn't seem to be anything we can count on anymore. We can't count on the weather. We can't count on being able to sell everything we grow. We can't even count on the water coming out of the well. Everything is changing."

My father nodded and stared out at the sky beyond the hill. He didn't say anything, just sat there mulling over the things I'd said. Finally he looked at me.

"I know what you mean. Sometimes I feel like things are changing so fast that I can't keep up."

"I feel like that, too. How do you stand it?"

With a knowing smile, he pointed to the sky. "I remember. I remember that even though everything in the world seems like it's never going to stop changing, there's one thing that always stays the same."

"What's that?"

"God's love for us," he said. "That's something that's always there. That will never change."

That was Dad's secret, I realized. No matter how crazy the world was around him, he knew the one truth that would never change: God loved him.

Since that day I have tried to live by that truth. There have been many changes—both good and bad—in my life since that afternoon on the hill. But I often think of that day with my father. For a day set aside to do nothing, a lot happened.