Several loops closed in my mind the first day it rained after he installed the rain barrels.

It was Sabbath when they went up, and I had just finished cleaning the kitchen from sourdough biscuits and eggs. I posted myself on the back porch with coffee (or a mimosa, I can’t remember which) and a sketch pad. But all I did was watch him—Clint, my husband—work. Our shop had no gutters; no gutters means no channels for the rain barrels to do their one job. He’s only 41, but I swear he can predict the weather just by feeling it out—like my Grandad could. So, he looked at the garden and little orchard and thought, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.

He's diligent and meticulous, measuring 2-3 times and cutting just the once. He studied the angles, the distances from gutter to platform to landing. The shop has an odd, nuanced slope off the back, meaning sturdying himself on the ladder to hack away an extra notch.

I just sat there, watching his cheerful work.

I was conflicted. One half of me praised God for steadiness in his work. He’s able, humble, and gifted in ways that still surprises me after 16 years.

But that’s when the clash came—I work hard to prepare for Sabbath so that I can rest and be still. These days, I have found that work comes best when it is from that rest, not towards it. And here he was on this wide-open Saturday—laboring. It wasn’t bothersome enough for me to raise words about it since we were fresh to the practice.

Our youngest prayed for rain that night before bed, praying Daddy would have full tanks for the farm. Three days later, she received her answer.

We were doing school at the dining room table, and one of the girls heard it first—fat drops on the roof. We instantly did what every native Texan does when it rains and you have a covered back porch: We took our business outside. I remember the pointing and yelling and laughing at witnessing the first barrel fill up. I took my phone out in the rain to record the sound of it for him. With your ear up to the barrel it literally sounds like a cave with running water in the distance.

And that’s when it hit me. It wasn’t work for him; it was rest. A simple, innocent, glorious response of our daughters delighting in their father’s work and its fruit erupted and now has come to be a standard mark on our farm. Sabbath is a gift given from the Father of all, and it is meant to be spent doing whatever brings joy and rest—their delight filled that gap of my understanding.

My husband is neither idle nor restless. He is neither aimless nor haphazard. He is intentional, thoughtful, and eager to honor our LORD with whatever he is handed. None of these are hard to conjure up or see when you get to know him for even a few moments. But they have been increasingly easier to witness since moving to the farm.

However, it seems as if we are in a drought now with a bleak 10-dayer. One rain barrel is empty, and the other nearly so. There isn’t much giddiness over anything surrounding the deep cracks, browning foliage, and dropped limbs. The girls enthusiastically collect eggs every day, practicing their multiples of 12. But that’s about it.

He struggles with the dry heat but keeps at it—a fall garden, a deeper pond, a pen for the incoming sheep. Our daughters want to go to market with produce and goods, and he’s ever giving them ideas of how to start their own line.

And that’s why our farm is so aptly named: Nondum Farms. It’s Latin for “not yet.” We work as if it is up to us, knowing that it is actually not at all up to us (Philippians 2:12–13). We are not yet home, but we had better plant a vineyard and build a house for the welfare of ourselves and the city (Jeremiah 29) so that creation can continue to groan until all the sons of God have been revealed (Romans 8:19).

The full rain barrels, bumper crops, wildflowers, fat chickens, Monarchs, duck eggs, and fresh peaches simultaneously remind us of the already and the not yet, for we know everything is cyclical and there’s always something to work on.

We know there will come a day when drought and death aren’t even a memory. Until then, we are grateful for our corner of the temporary to cultivate and harvest—and for the ones He gave us to share in that work.