all in

If we’ve learned anything valuable in the last few years it is to trust God.

Philippians 4:6-7, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Our story looked like this: corporate chef & visual arts teacher, full time jobs, work hard play hard mentality. Left the house between 5-6:30 every morning, came home between 4-9 every night M-F. Made time for an adult getaway every winter and a long road trip every summer. Good life, comfortable life, draining life.

We knew something had to change, we wanted to make a better life for our daughter. God had different plans when we weren’t able to give her a sibling. We didn’t want work to consume us where there was no time left for her. Maybe other parents of a single child would understand us when we say we have to be our daughter’s friend as well as her parent, especially when a pandemic was about to hit. There’s a joke, “four people is a family, three people is a child observing a weird couple”.. pretty funny and feels 100% accurate. We decided to start planning a new vision. She was our push to find a balance so we named this adventure after her.

March, 2020. The whole world was scared at this time. It was depressing not seeing anyone, stuck inside our four walls in Beverly, Chicago. We decided to breathe deep with a smile, keep pursuing our dream & continued looking at land. We laid out some butcher paper across our dining room table and mapped out our farm, our house, our restaurant/event center space and decided to look at this pause from life as a gift.

Found ourselves pushed into a corner when it came to permits at every turn. Who do we think we are putting a residence and a commercial property onto one piece of land? No. No. No. Everywhere was no.

One day we got the call. There was a farm in need of farmers and we heard it actually had a greenhouse on the property already (that was so exciting) so we decided to take a look. The rest is history. Let’s just say it was the prettiest greenhouse we’d ever seen.

Wow, if we don’t see God’s work in any of this we are ignorant. When we look back now at those hardships it is so easy to see God’s hand through every piece of it.

It’s funny, when you’re in the thick of something it’s hard to see the whole picture. Looking back at every part of our life, blinded by that consuming emotion, all one can see is what’s not fair or how you should have tried harder or you weren’t good enough. Knowing how a chapter ended, we should be able to look back and smile as we understand how it was supposed to be. God makes no mistakes & His hand wrote our story before conception. We are firm believers in that & it’s so beautiful to see how His story is unfolding.