Susan Says, “Pat Your Belly”

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By Susan Shanklin

Sometimes I feel like Sarah of the Old Testament. I feel like the shriveled, dried-up old lady waiting for her promise. Every day, she feels her empty belly and looks at her old, very old, shriveled, dried-up heartthrob and shakes her head.

“Where is my promise?” she asks. “Where is my baby? Where is my stuff.”

It’s personal. Waiting and waiting. Season after season until her fall turns into winter. Good Lord, Abram has frostbite on his manly parts!

How, oh how, is this going to happen? When is my desire going to come?

Well, for one, Sarah and Abram kept at it. It’s not something you want to visually partake of, but nevertheless, they were trying to make it happen!

If you pray about something or have been promised something, you have to keep track of that desire and dream. You have to embrace it. Cling to it. See it. Know it.

Now, I have dreamed of a white picket fence for most of my 52 years of blissful marriage to my hunk-a-hunk.

When we were first married we bought a 12’ x 50’ trailer. No room for a fence there in the “park,” but we didn’t last there long and bounced around from place to place until we ended up buying a 28-acre farm. We were too young to settle down, and Tom wanted to build a log cabin in the woods. No running water or electricity, A dirt floor which was really a mud floor with a wood cook stove and a loft for sleeping. No picket for me.

Next, we moved on to a commune in West Virginia. Really, just some dopers avoiding work. Tom didn’t want to live with “them,” so we rented a shack with an outhouse and Cooperhead snakes. We lived in a tree house too there, well, a platform in a tree next to a brook. No picket there.

But Tom was an unsettled man. He packed up his pregnant wife, dog, and cat and headed out west in a 1963 Green Ford Pickup we called “The Flying Z.” Really nothing mystical about the “Z.” That’s what was painted on the door of the truck. Ha ha.

We parked the Flying Z in the mountains, plains, and even an orange grove in California. Once, we lived in a tepee, too. No picket fence for me.

We had our first baby in a cabin on the edge of a national forest in Oregon. Doctor Tom did a pretty good delivery there, but no picket fence. The picket desire was there but almost dead.

My Abram was a wondering soul, and we moved on to the Idaho mountains, where we lived under a lean-to tarp. Honest, this is a true story, and I’m leaving many, many parts out!

We were told that we could not survive a winter in the Idaho mountains, so we moved to Tom’s parents’ basement in Illinois … broke … with wandering eyes. We were looking for something but just couldn’t put our finger on it.

Then my Tom finally buys his 10 acres of land in Southern Minnesota and builds a shack, finally, where we raised three babies. By golly, I want a fence by now.

It is there, too, that our search for that “something” ended. We found God.

We found the Forgiver, Healer, Promise Keeper, and Deliverer.

Now, methinks, my fence will fall from the sky because I now have Jesus, right?

Let’s see. We moved to Northern Minnesota, then down to Central Minnesota, then over to North Dakota, and finally back to Central Minnesota.

Houses with little yards and big yards, but no picket for Susan.

But Lord, it’s the desire of my heart, and you said you give your beloved the desires of their hearts.

By now, the dream is just about dust because we moved again 10 months ago, and my little bungalow is barren as Sarah’s belly.

Our latest move was to a 1910 craftsman’s bungalow that had suffered years of neglect, and the yard was, well, as bad as the house.

How, Lord, can you bring my belly to life from dust? How can my dream picket of the heart and mind come to this forsaken plot of land in Scandia, Minnesota?

I didn’t ask for a picket from Tom because there are so many repairs and projects that come before a picket fence, right?

Turn the page! Wipe the lens of your glasses. Tom, my mighty Abraham, built a beauteous white, French gothic picket fence right smack in our front yard! It’s a show-stopper. Crowd pleaser. News outlets are requesting interviews. Just kidding.

What! It took 52 years for your picket? Yep, don’t know why, but now it’s like a blink of an eye.

The town people like. The kid on the bike says, “ Your fence is looking good.”

The new pastor in town says from across the street, walking his three dogs, “That (fence) didn’t take long.”

Ha! I twisted up my face and just stared at him.

All things belong to God and in His sweet time, so just pat your belly and say, soon. Very soon.

Me’s got a fence!

Expect a Miracle! [Audio]

Susan: Pressing into a High Calling

Susan: No Time for a Funeral