Cast on Good Soil

This week’s Shop Notes is a little different.

Usually, I like to gather my thoughts and write from a place of greater clarity. I like to shape out the ideas I’ve been circling around—why working with your hands matters, how it’s rooted in both the history of our country and the deeper makeup of the human condition. I return often to the fact that this nation was built by people who worked the land, built with their hands, and understood both nature and the nature of man at a level few of us possess today.

But this week has felt different.

And rather than writing my way around that, I want to honor it.

For over a year, my wife and I have been praying about buying a building in the little town nearby. We read The Circle Maker together and printed out a photo of the building, circled it, and prayed over it every time we saw it. I can’t fully explain the draw. It was never some grand historic landmark. Just an abandoned factory in a town of maybe 140 people. A simple workshop that had passed through the hands of different local entrepreneurs over the years.

And yet, it stayed with us.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. But persistently.

It felt as though it held some key to the next stage of our lives.

I’ve written before about the importance of putting down roots. About involving yourself in the community where you’ve been planted. About building a life not in abstraction, but in a real place among real people. This building seemed to represent that to me in a tangible way. A place to work. A place to grow. A place to offer something back to the people next door.

So we kept praying.

And eventually, after months of prayer, fasting, planning, and wrestling, we bought it.

You would think that would have brought relief.

In some ways, it did. But not in the way I expected.

Much of my work right now is in wholesale—quietly making things for other companies while FarmSmith finds its footing as a “new” maker with its own voice, products, and direction. That work has been the lifeblood of this season, and I’m grateful for it. But if I’m honest, the consistency of that work has not given me the confidence I thought it would.

And after the building purchase was finalized and we began the work of cleaning, repairing, and preparing it, my heart cry shifted.

Before, it was all prayer and hope directed toward something known: Lord, is this the place?

Now the question has changed.

Lord, now that we’re here… what do we do with it?

That question has brought with it a surprising amount of fear.

Not dramatic fear. Not collapse. Just that low, steady ache of uncertainty. That sense that now the thing is real, and with reality comes responsibility. We are here. The keys are in hand. The work has begun. We are meeting neighbors, sweeping floors, making plans, hauling debris, and doing all the practical work that comes with preparing a place.

But the relief I expected has not yet arrived.

The hope has not fully landed.

Instead, what I feel most clearly is that we are in the middle.

And the middle is a strange place.

It is more uncertain than the beginning because at the beginning, everything is still mostly dream. The beginning holds possibility without much weight. But the middle is different. In the middle, you are committed enough to feel the cost, but not yet far enough along to see the fruit. You are no longer imagining the journey of your life. You are on it. And somehow that can feel even more fragile than standing at the edge of it.

This, I think, is the sneaky in-between.

The part no one talks about enough.

The place where you know you are moving, but you cannot yet say with confidence what is growing. The place where fear starts whispering from every side—that you are doing too much of the wrong thing, not enough of the right thing, not moving fast enough, not good enough, not clear enough. On and on it goes.

And still, the direction from the Lord seems to remain the same:

Keep going.

Not a five-year plan.
Not some grand explanation.
Just enough light for today.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34

That verse has been ringing in my ears.

There is a kind of mercy in being forced to live one day at a time. A kind of trust that can only be formed when tomorrow refuses to come into focus. I have no elaborate way to explain that away this week. No polished conclusion. No clean framework to wrap around it.

Only this:

Being trustworthy in the middle may be one of the hardest things I’ve had to do yet.

To keep showing up. To keep moving. To keep your hand to the work when the fruit is still out of sight. To keep your heart soft when fear wants to harden it. To remain faithful when your feelings are offering no reward.

That is hard work.

And if you are setting out on the journey of your life, I’m sure you’ve felt it too.

That gnawing tension of wondering whether you’re missing it somehow. Whether you’re overcommitted in one direction and underdeveloped in another. Whether your efforts are enough. Whether you are enough.

But if your heart is postured toward the Lord, and you are putting yourself out there in faith, what could be better than that?

The precariousness of building a business is, in many ways, an act of faith from beginning to end. But staying steadfast before you see the fruit—that feels like a different kind of faith altogether. A deeper one. A more stubborn one.

Maybe even a godly stubbornness.

That is what I hope grows in me in this season.

We have cast our seed out.

I pray it has landed on good soil.

And together, we will see what grows next.