Bienvenue!

Why, good evening! Thanks for stopping by. Pull up a chair, and pour yourself a cup of hot tea (not warm. hot. that's important). If you've stumbled across this, I suppose you're probably interested in homemaking and homesteading. Or the real foods revolution. Or sustainable agriculture. Or living in the South. Or Reformed theology. Or pictures of puppies. Or babies. Actually, those are just the things I'm interested in, and I'm not entirely sure that I'll even be blogging about the last few. But if you are interested in those things, welcome. And rock on.


To introduce myself, I am Sarai. A Christian, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a homemaker, a poet, and a tea-drinker. Oldest of three for most of my life, raised in the suburban south, nourished on both C. S. Lewis and Star Wars. To mercifully pass over the monotonous and rebellious years, and pick up at the age of 18, I packed up and left the sultry antique town I grew up in for the halls of a (quite literally) ivy-covered university in New England, sure I'd never return. But, praise God that the best laid plans of mice and men "gang aft agley," as the poet says. The summer after my freshmen year of college, I came home and ran into a boy. A boy who once saved me from bullies on a playground at the age of 5. A strange farmer boy raised by missionaries that infuriated me with his calm assurance in his beliefs, and his uncanny ability to see through my arrogance and into my little lost soul. And so it was that this boy invited me to a home church, and I ran into Someone else. Technically, I suppose that He ran into me (if it's happened to you, then you know what I'm talking about, and it is glorious).


That's the short version. The even shorter version is this: "A man's heart plans his way; But the LORD directs his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). My heart planned a long life of academia, a brilliant career, mindless political activism, vegetarianism, independence, and the joys of being single and single-minded. My God planned something better. And that, friends, is how I've found myself in a teeny town in eastern North Carolina, learning to feed two people on a student's salary while my husband (and yes, this is the self-same farmer boy from above) gets a degree in sustainable agriculture. We rent a small house in this small town and don't have much time or money, but we try to live as simply, naturally, and humbly as we can with what we're given. 




So, why I am writing? I'm writing because my life is 180 degrees from where it was 3 years ago. I never would have believed that my life's ambition would be to be a housewife. I never would have imagined myself baking all our breads, growing yogurt in mason jars in my oven, helping my sweet hubby butcher fuzzy rabbits, and praying for the day when I'll be homeschooling 6 or 7 kids.  But God is gracious, and His design always prevails. If you are like me, and find yourself in a role you were not exactly born into, then welcome! We can learn together. I'm so blessed to have a husband who knows what a man really should be, a church that teaches who God really is, and friends that show me what a Christian life really looks like. I'm grateful for the women whose blogs are helping my on my journey, and I'm excited to share what I'm learning. It's nice to have you along for the ride. :)