His personal gifting for promotion and sales persuasion gave us a vision of farm life as a glorious and wonderful adventure. Daddy believed in his idealistic dreams and could enthusiastically bring others along with him. I so loved and adored him! However, I’ve had to deal with my own illusions and the pain of disillusionment, of loss, and disappointment.

My budgie bird went first. Someone placed her cage on a stack of boxes in the house when we first moved in. The cat and her kittens went into the barn. Somehow the cat sneaked into the house, got the cage open, and ate my bird—easier than finding mice that first week! Besides being a killer, this cat seldom let us catch her. We were so excited that she would have kittens, but after they came, she kept hiding them in the hay loft until they grew big enough to run away, which they all did. In the process, I discovered my allergies to both hay and cats.

I did love that big Irish Setter named Lucky and drug him all over the farm. However, my Dad hung a prize ham in the front porch to cure and one night Lucky squeezed through the screen door and helped himself. When Lucky disappeared, my parents said he followed my Dad to the woods and didn’t come back. I waited but he never did come back. Some time later Dicky and I were playing behind the barn and digging in the manure pile with shovels, for whatever unearthly reason, and discovered familiar red fur. I knew then why Lucky never came back. My parents just told me, “Lucky wasn’t lucky.”

That spring a box of fluffy, yellow, peeping baby chicks arrived. We were so excited! Mommy put a heat lamp over their pen and they all snuggled under it together. However, I soon learned those cute baby chicks can become cannibals! They peck at each other and when they see blood, they all peck on the bloody chick until they kill it! They also get quite ugly when feathers begin to replace that soft yellow fluff. Then in fall, Mommy chopped their heads off.

A neighbor gave us two ducks. My duck was all yellow and fluffy and Dicky’s was black with a yellow ring around his neck—just the cutest, funnest, and most wonderful play things! After a rain, the ducks just loved to play in the puddles on our circular dirt driveway. Then one day someone drove around the driveway and accidentally ran over my duck. So many tears! We even bought a few full grown geese, but they were scary because they would chase us with their wings spread out and loudly honk at us. They mostly chased Dicky who learned to run really fast!

We also bought two pigs. Mine was white and Dicky’s was black with a white collar. One day when Daddy worked on the fence in the pig pen, Dicky stood guard at the small open gate. Suddenly my pig made a dash for the opening, ran between Dicky’s short legs, and carried him out for a very scary piggyback ride—backwards! Not long afterward, my pig ate fish garbage, which poisoned her. I watched Daddy bury her in the field. While eating dinner one evening Dicky asked, “What kind of meat are we eating anyway?” Without looking up, I told him, “You’re eatin’ your own pig!” Such was farm life and we were learning not to attach.

Farm chores were not as fun as I first imagined or as Daddy had described. Cleaning out the chicken house definitely was not fun! Gathering eggs became scary business because the old hens didn’t always want to leave their nests and pecked at me. One time, just as I pulled a hen off her nest by her tail, she laid an egg and I caught it in my basket. That was kind of amazing! As great as it was to eat fresh peas and carrots in the garden, weeding it was hot, dirty, buggy, and boring.

One summer day Dicky and I imagined the fun of sleeping in the barn, inspired by the rusty old metal bed frame and springs left in there. Our parents, surprisingly allowed us this adventure. Beyond words with excitement, we got all our stuff together to camp in the barn that night. Daddy came to say goodnight, blew out the lantern, and went back to the house. At first we were too excited to sleep, but finally settled down into the growing darkness. Far out in the country, it is very, very quiet. . . that is until we hear mice scurrying or more probably rats! How dare we even touch the floor with our bare toes, much less run for the door?! . . . But we did!

So many things I cared about either died, ran away, were eaten, or shot. The vision and glory of gathering eggs, farm chores, or animal attachments disintegrated. Yet in spite of loss, I grew to love the farm. With my conservative Mennonite heritage and a mother whose favorite words were discipline and obedience, God knew my need for freedom. Besides farm chores, the farm gave me freedom to run and play, climb trees, play in the drainage ditches, explore, create, make forts, ride my bike, and even make roads in the dirt with Dicky—all with complete outdoor-girl abandonment.

Greater losses were yet to come. Yet, disillusionments in this life must come so our illusions fall away and we can fall in love with what is real. I think God redeemed these early losses to instill within me the realization that everything in this world is temporary and He alone is eternal. Through Him I live and move and have my being (Acts 17:28). He is the ever-living bedrock that never moves, leaves, or changes—always predictably gracious and loving, disciplining, correcting, instructing, yet compassionate and comforting. He is my Constant and He is no illusion!