My Grandpa Hoegemeyer, he was a wonderful, if somewhat formidable, man – a weathered farmer and seed geneticist with a brilliant mind and the hardest work ethic of anyone I’ve ever known.  His heart was wide and true.

I remember sitting on his lap as a little girl, there in his brown, plaid chair by the fireplace, him reading me a children’s book entirely in German, which he’d grown up speaking. I remember how he took me out to his perfectly ordered garden in the summertime, showed me – a city girl – how the carrots were hiding there, down in the cold, dark earth and let me pull up as many as I wanted. I remember his rosebushes, in every color, size, variety, planted there around the white farmhouse up on the hill, him tenderly leading me from one to the other, enthralling me with each of their ‘stories.’ I remember how he’d come in from the fields in his blue striped shirt, all hot and sweaty, and how he’d kiss my grandma there in the kitchen, after he’d taken off his boots and washed his dirt-brown hands.

I remember too the time I saw a big, black snake out on the farm, there by the burn pile. And when I told grandpa, he marched straight out to the garage, grabbed his garden hoe with great purpose and hoed that snake up right in front of me. Then there was the time I accidentally walked in on him while he was going to the bathroom – got quite a tongue-lashing and haven’t opened a door without knocking since! And the time my cousins, who were also visiting, were taking a bath. My younger brother and I thought it would be funny to peek in at them and make them squeal, but Grandpa didn’t appreciate that much. Another well-deserved tongue-lashing and then heard him mumbling something about me and my brother needing a good, old-fashioned spanking and Grandma’s voice coming close behind, soft and soothing, reminding him that we were young yet.

I heard stories about my grandpa too, mostly about his ceaseless generosity – how he’d paid for many young men to go to seminary, paid for their entire schooling, without even a thought of being reimbursed; heard about how he provided funds for their small town to put in its own baseball field, there between the swimming pool and the big bridge crossing the Elkhorn River; how, if the church was short on funds, they could always count on him to make up the difference; how if anyone in their tight-knit community had a need, they knew he would help, no questions asked.

I grew up so very proud of my Grandpa Hoegemeyer – proud to sit next to him the Sundays we were visiting, there in the small Lutheran church, those stained glass windows shining their colors down onto our faces. Proud to see the Hoegemeyer Hybrids signs, out in the fields, all across the state, standing by rows and rows of brilliant looking corn and soybeans, representing the decades of hard work and innovation of my ancestors. Proud when Grandpa commented on my good grades in school, for he wasn’t one to offer compliments freely. Proud of my heritage, that though I had only ever lived in the ‘big city,’ I could claim the farm as ‘mine,’ relished in finding my identity there, as a hearty, no-nonsense, living-off-the-land ‘farm girl.’

So the morning I woke up in our city-house to find my mom gone, dad there eating his Raisin Bran and drinking his orange juice at the breakfast table, was a hard one for me as my 12-year-old self digested the news dad relayed. “Mom isn’t here. She went to be with Grandpa and Grandma Hoegemeyer. Grandpa was having some pain in his chest last night, so Grandma called the ambulance. When the ambulance got out to the farm, Grandpa was doing alright, stable, but in the ambulance, on the way to the hospital, he had a massive heart attack. We don’t think he’ll wake up.” And sure enough, by the end of the day, my Grandpa was gone from this world.

My dad drove my siblings and me up to the farm for the visitation and the service. It was the first time anyone I had loved had ever died. And all I felt was numb. Certainly was not prepared to see Grandpa’s body, lying there in the wooden coffin – still, silent, so unlike himself. Sat there at the church, full to the brim with people, singing woodenly, sitting and standing as the pastor requested, but life wholly blurred by the tears I couldn’t contain. Watched as they lowered his body into the ground, down into the earth he’d spent his whole life tilling and cultivating and harvesting, knowing that the seed he had planted in my heart would carry on, wanting him to know that too; that I loved him and had learned from him and would continue to live in a way that I hoped would honor him.

It was a few days after Grandpa’s service – after the whole family had gathered, the herd of sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, employees, friends; after the food folks had dropped by had been consumed; after we’d each had a chance to chose something of Grandpa’s to carry home with us; after the tears had been shed and the stories had been told and retold and the laughter had bubbled out slowly. After that, we left the farm, back to our city-house. And I remember laying in bed one night, heart heavy, my mom sitting there on the edge next to me, and asking her: “Why, Mom? Why did God have to take Grandpa? Why did he have to die?”

And my Mom spoke then of God’s sovereignty, His beauty. How He sees the world in a way we cannot. How He is good even when pain comes. How the world is broken and death swoops in, but how He wants only Life for us. How we cannot understand His ways, and how that’s ok. How we have to be ok with not understanding sometimes. And then, the words that hit my 12-year-old heart with utmost force: “We need Christ, Julie. We all need Him. None of us can make it through life, through death, through any of it apart from Him.” And those words, then, there (though I must’ve heard them before, in church most every Sunday as I was), they stuck with me, meant something to me, kept bouncing around inside my spirit in this peculiar sort of way.

Fast forward a few months now (and bear with me, as this next part of my story will likely seem wholly unrelated to the previous bit). I was on roller skates, there at the roller rink with my church youth group, doing the limbo – you know, where you have to go under the horizontal, wooden pole that keeps getting lower and lower, closer to the ground. And quite unsurprisingly, after having just skated under the limbo stick, I fell awkwardly onto the white, linoleum floor. Utterly humiliated, as most any almost-teenager would be, I tried to jump back to my feet unnoticed, but when I attempted to stand, my left arm wouldn’t cooperate. Looked down and saw in horror, a bone protruding near my wrist, then felt the pain for the first time. Cried out. A lady there who happened to be a nurse made a make-shift splint out of cardboard from behind the snack bar in an attempt to stabilize my arm. My youth pastor drove me to the nearest hospital, called my mom, who met us there.

I was brave through it all. Put on my tough, ‘farm girl’ face, determined not to show weakness. Battled the intense pain, the IVs, the operating and recovery rooms, the casting. But when the flurry of activity was over there at the hospital, and the doctor gave me the news that I couldn’t play my cello for at least 6-8 weeks, likely more, I wept. And wept. Which seems insanely comical now, looking back nearly three decades later, but at that time, my cello was my love, my social life, a good chunk of my identity, really. It was the only thing I felt good at. And to have to give that up, even for a time, caused my 12-year-old self to crumble. Caused the questions to begin pouring out of me yet again: “Why, God? Why take away my ability to do the one thing I love? Why, when the pain of Grandpa’s death is still fresh, why bring more suffering to me?” Cue here more talks with my Mama. Her, ever-patient, repeating the same words of comfort and grace and promise to me over and over and over again (usually at bedtime when she, no doubt, would have rather been catching up on laundry or reading her book or sleeping). But looking back, I see now the hard, rocky soil of my spirit was being plowed up here, in this, being readied for the Seed.

So jump with me another month ahead in time then, my arm still in a full cast and sling, friends’ names scribbled across it haphazardly, along with little hearts and smiley faces, drawn in love, in an attempt to lighten my load. It was a Sunday morning, me sitting there with my family in a pew at the church I’d grown up in, been baptized in. The pastor had just finished his sermon. And truthfully, I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to his words, couldn’t even tell you what text he’d preached from that day. But I did hear him loud and clear as he spoke next, querying if any of us there wanted more of Christ, wanted Him to reign in our very selves; asked for folks who needed prayer, who were limping along in life, to come forward right then and there to receive Him at the altar.

That strange churning began in me again at these words, urging me to stand, to go forward, to move toward Him. But my ever-shy, too-quick-to-blush self argued back – “You can’t go up there, in front of all these people! You would make a fool of yourself! You can pray by yourself, at home, in peace. Not here, not like this.” But before I could consciously make a choice, decide what to do for myself, I felt my body rising, knew my legs to be moving steadily up the center aisle there, full pews on either side, the pastor smiling at me as I came. He prayed for me then, Pastor Steve, I think it was. Quietly, but with a fierceness that made a lasting impression. So full of hope and conviction. He approached the Throne for me, with me, beside me – the Peace and Beauty of Christ flooding in, in a way it never had before, but has now many times since.

And so, my Grandpa Hoegemeyer, the one who so faithfully bred and tended and harvested living things those many years – the work of his weathered hands, his life’s vocation, his love, his death – they prepared me. And as He readied the soil of my life, made it fertile ground for sowing, as He broke me open wide and as I wept and questioned and cried out with the pain of it all, I knew my own need then. Knew how I couldn’t make it through this broken wilderness without One to tend to me. Knew I wanted a life of Life, not of death – a life of fruitful harvest, of abundant generosity, of fierce love and devotion, of faithfulness to Christ alone in all the seasons – come what may.

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