Facing the Giant

It was my battle to fight. Alone. Our testy & ever-tipsy neighbor with a hostile, redneck attitude became my giant. Had I known how long and hard the fight would be I would have given up early on but I kept clinging to the only hope I had; the Lord had given us this land. I could fill page after page of the small intricate details that worked out right before my eyes as I clung to the Lord’s hand through the last ten years, but it’s long and tedious reading so I’ll stick to the highlights.

Between the time we purchased our property and the date we actually moved out here, the Giant began to rub me the wrong way on a consistent basis. We’re using the same driveway/easement at this point so we saw them quite a bit. Seems he was always making his presence known on his 30 ft. and if that weren’t enough, he dotted the landscape with his empty beer cans along the way. I go through seasons of time in my spiritual life where I’m an avid, down on my knees, prayer warrior. THANK GOD I was in that mode. I began praying day and night for that guy. I prayed for my marriage, I prayed for the kids, I prayed over the garden, I prayed about every detail of the house we would soon build, I prayed about homeschooling, I even prayed that God would show us which specific trees to cut down! Anything that came to mind, I offered it to the Lord as a prayer. (“Thank you, Lord, for dishwater, laundry….”)

You know what happened? His house burned down.  Nooooo, I didn’t pray for that. So, I did what any red-blooded American Christian woman would do; I  gathered up some of Phillip’s old clothes and other things I thought they would need and took it to them. He quickly bought a new house and much to my surprise it wasn’t near the original home site, nor was it even on the Back 10 at all! Little did we know, he also owned, (or recently purchased) the 24 acres parallel to ours. The new neighbor with the new house were now …..gone.

Or so I thought.

The Old Oak w/ our swings