When the kids were little and we needed a babysitter to go on a date, it took effort. And, just when we found a great babysitter, they graduated, got married, got a full-time job, the works. Since we weren’t geographically close to family, we always had our feelers out for good sitters, and we are so grateful for the wonderful people who watched our kids.
After we found a night that worked for someone to come, inevitably something happened. An irrigation ditch flooded. We got snowed in. The kids got sick. The dog got hurt. Usually, though, the cows got out.
Of course, that wasn’t every time, but it was often enough that we have memories of getting dressed up to go out to eat and getting a bit dirty chasing some cows back in the pasture because a gate was left open. At the time, we were leasing ground near a recreation area, and people didn’t think anything of opening a gate and not closing it again. We still had a date, but more than once, it was spent chasing cows.
Making plans is sometimes different than executing plans.
We’ve made a lot of plans in our lives that didn’t come to fruition. They were sort of like prayers that got answered differently than expected, but I’m so thankful they weren’t answered in the way we thought they should be when we first prayed them.
Did I think that at the time?
No, I did not. In fact, I’m sure God thought I sounded like a toddler asking the question, “Why?” over and over again. I’m learning to trust that His answer is a good answer, even if it isn’t the one I wanted in the moment.
Shortly after our first daughter was born, we moved to a ranch that turned out to be a complete disaster. The owner didn’t understand cattle production – to the point that he would steal calves from their mothers to pair them with different cows. The reason? He thought they looked “better” together. No joke. When an explanation was given as to why that would cause problems, he didn’t care. When he thought a calf’s coloring matched better with a different cow, he tried to change its mama. He did this with several pairs.
When we interviewed, the cows weren’t calving yet, and the man seemed nice. So, we made plans to be there for a while because it was closer to family. Needless to say, we didn’t last long there before we found a different job.
Plans changed.
Plans dependent on other people and their actions are more susceptible to change. We can control ourselves (well, usually), but we can’t control others. The plans we make on our own tend to come about, but still, there are wild cards in life.
The Good Book tells us that many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
Recently, we’ve been studying what it means to make plans while letting God have the eraser. Ranching requires planning. So much of ranch life is annual: the calf crop, the selling, the haying. You can’t make it in agriculture with a simple weekly or monthly goal. Those short-term goals are good, but they don’t make for long-term success. When you’re in a position of leadership or management of any kind, planning is imperative. How do we want the next year to look? What are our five-year goals? Where do we see the ranch as the next generation of leadership takes over?
Why am I talking about this right now? Well, we’ve been talking to others and have recognized in ourselves patterns that equal surviving, not thriving. And I don’t think this has only impacted agriculture. Our world has shifted in the past few years. Can we trust the economy? What will happen to our government? We wish we knew the answers to these questions so that we’d feel stable in our decisions.
While there certainly are issues, we are invited to trust. We can hold tight to the Prince of Peace and practice peace when it seems like storms are raging. We also have the privilege to study past markets, cattle cycles and trends, all of which are great indicators on where to put our focus. We might not know what cattle prices will be three years from now, but we know supply and demand are currently effective. We know prices are likely to drop as supply is met. So our long-term goals might sound something like, “In 10 years, we’d like to grow our herd size by 20 percent.”
Our short-term goals might be something like, “We’ll take advantage of current market prices for our calf crop and sell our culls this year. When prices drop, likely in two to four years, we’ll buy more cows. Until then, we’ll make sure our fences are tight, our hay crop can support an increase in cattle and our water supply can handle growth.”
None of us know what the future holds, but making plans will help us see goals come about. It will help us get a date night, even if it doesn’t turn out as expected. Flexibility and trust are part of the planning process.
What goals do you have for the coming year? The next five years? Ten years?
