Ann Voskamp writes about work and worship.

He was 22 and I was 21 when we bought the farm. It was April 26th — 25 years ago this week.

When one of the travelling feed salesman pulled into the farmyard that first spring, he rolled down his pick-up truck window, and hollered to the Farmer: “Hey, your dad around?”“How someone sees you doesn’t get to change how you see your dream.”

“I’m sure he is — over at his farm,” the Farmer grinned and it took that sales guy more than a beat or two to realize that the baby-faced boy, not looking a day over 16, was the man of this land, trying to make a go of this dirt on his own. How someone sees you doesn’t get to change how you see your dream.

We worked 18 hours day and scrounged to buy flats of Kraft Dinner when it was on sale and I picked rocks with a baby strapped on my back and on our second wedding anniversary we got out of the barn in time to see the sunset across the fields and I told the Farmer that’s all I’d ever need: If we walked into the barn before sun-up, if, now and then, we could finish up evening chores and walk out of the barn before sun down.

This is the part of the story where the hustlers tell you that this is the dream that hard work built — but this is not that story, because this world doesn’t work like that.

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