Bills, bills and more bills.
I sat at our kitchen table one Saturday night going through the month’s invoices, trying not to cry. Fertilizer, land rent, fuel, seed, machinery—the costs to put in our crops were high, and they never seemed to end.
My husband Mark’s family had farmed this land for four generations, but we didn’t know how much longer we could keep going. To help make ends meet, Mark worked part-time as a real-estate agent and I worked as a registered nurse.
But between the extra jobs and constantly battling hail, drought and disease to save our crops, we barely had any time to spend with our three boys, Jordan, Jarrod and Justin. Our farm and our family felt like they were falling apart. Lord, how will we ever get through this?
I didn’t know anything about farming before I met Mark—I was a pastor’s daughter. But over the years, Mark taught me everything he knew about growing spring wheat, durum, barley, soybeans and flaxseed.
At harvest time, we brought all our produce to the grain elevator to sell. But prices hadn’t been good lately. It seemed the harder we worked, the worse things got.
Like a few days ago, when Mark got back from a checkup. “Doc says I have high cholesterol,” Mark told me. His was at 250…in the danger zone. He would need medication and regular doctor’s appointments.
Mark’s health…the kids…these bills…
I stared at the papers spread out over our kitchen table. All at once, a Bible verse came to mind, one my dad had loved, from Philippians: Do not worry about anything, but pray and ask God for everything you need, always giving thanks. I took a deep breath.
“Okay, God,” I said. “I’m going to choose to trust you and to thank you for your blessings and protection.”
I called Mark into the kitchen and gathered all the bills into one pile. We put our hands over them. “Dear God, we thank you for all the goods and services these people have provided,” I prayed. “Help us to be wise in our spending, and help us to pay these bills. Amen.”
The prayer calmed me down. Mark was still anxious about his cholesterol. He didn’t want to rely solely on medications. “There has to be some way I can change my diet,” he said. I offered to help him do some research.
I got on the computer and searched the internet for additional ways to help lower cholesterol. One result seemed to pop up over and over: flaxseed.
We grew the blue-bloomed plant, and sold the seed at the elevator, but we’d never eaten it. The next morning I ground the tiny golden seeds and added some to our oatmeal. Everyone liked the nutty flavor.
We tried different recipes using flaxseed and even developed our own. Our favorite was a strawberry flax smoothie, with strawberries, banana and ground flax. It tasted so good, it was hard to believe it was healthy!
One month later Mark came back from the doctor and proudly announced that his cholesterol had fallen seven points! God, I prayed, thank you for helping solve one of our problems…
The next month Mark’s cholesterol was down even more. And a new round of bills arrived. I remembered my promise: Trust God to show us the way.
Grinding the flax for breakfast that morning, I suddenly had an idea. “What if we grew more flax and sold it directly to customers?” I said to Mark. Our internet research showed us that flax was becoming popular with people wanting healthier food. We could market our flaxseed to them. Why continue to rely on the prices we were getting at the grain elevator?
“It’ll take a lot of work,” Mark replied. “Packaging, distribution…” his voice trailed off. I knew he was thinking the same thing that I was. We were already working hard, in jobs that weren’t saving our farm. Flaxseed could be the cash crop we’d been looking for.
“Let’s do it,” Mark said.
Jordan, Jarrod and Justin helped us come up with the packaging and had some great ideas about how to market our product. We got a grant that gave us enough to pay for a website and other expenses. Mark and his dad worked tirelessly in the fields to bring in our first big flaxseed harvest.
Finally on a sunny Saturday morning we loaded the packaged seed into our Suburban, along with a folding table, a poster board listing the health benefits and ingredients for our strawberry flax smoothies. Our whole family drove down to the big farmers’ market in Grand Forks.
The heat was almost unbearable. The breeze felt more like a hair dryer. But our smoothies were just about the best thing for it. People came back for seconds and thirds, and when they did, we told them how easy the smoothies were to make—and how healthy they were. My voice was gone by the end of the day…but our cash box was full.
That night I sat down at the kitchen table to tackle the bills. This time, with a smile on my face. Not only could we cover the bills, but we’d done it together, as a family, with a little help from God.
Turned out that we had the answer to our problems right in front of us. We just needed Someone to open our eyes to it.
Make your own Strawberry Flax Smoothie!
