A Full Circle Story

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In 1861, the year the United States went to war against itself, a barn was built in Wabash, Indiana.

My grandparents bought it in 1960, and by the time I came along in 1976, it had become weathered and worn.

Our family took a lot of trips back and forth across the country in a two-toned, blue Econoline van. We saw lots of sites, but this barn was my very favorite monument.

It stood by the road. The siding seemed bent on displaying the law of gravity. Some said it was an eyesore, but the more my grandparents’ barn fell apart, the more beloved it became to me.

People were endlessly looking for ways to get it fixed up, so it would look better.

In that sense, I felt like we had a lot in common, that barn and me.

Pressures to be pretty and popular made school a scary place for me.

That barn became my safe space, where I did all sorts of dangerous things, such as:

Leaping over broken planks, or the spots they’d disappeared altogether

Staring through holes those missing boards left behind, down to the stone floor on the lower level

Climbing a ladder of skinny, rickety corn crib slats – barely able to stick my sneakers in the space between

Awed by vaulted rafters high above hand-hewn beams

Admonishing myself, “Don’t look down. Don’t look down.”

Peeking

Regretting

Gripping tighter

Perspiring from every pore

Scared to go up

Terrified to go down

Horrified to appear afraid

Stretching fingers toward another wooden rung

Feeling nothing to hold

Inhaling hard

Pulling my body across boards covered by decades of dust and bird dirt

Army crawling onto a loft with no rails

Dusting filthy palms upon my shirt

Realizing I’d just made more laundry

Knowing Grandma Woody wasn’t going to like that

Sighing

Stepping forward, knees trembling

Toes to the ledge, a balcony with no barrier

Sensing a strange mix of terror and elation shoot through my core, down my shins, and towards my fingertips

Reaching into the atmosphere high above the threshing floor

Hearing the words so often repeated by the adults, “You kids be careful around that barn!” ring through my ears

Realizing I was being too careful

Inching closer to the edge

Again, “You kids be careful around that barn!”

Quivering

Again, “You kids be careful around that barn!”

Breathing

Calculating

Hearing my cousins down below, “Come on! Let’s Go!”

Trying to pretend not to be terrified

Regretting, my ascent

Dreading my decent

“C’mon, don’t be scared!”

Scared they’d know I was a coward

Lying

Denying fear

Wanting to fit in – to not be seen as a city-slicker

Leaning

Trembling

Taking hold of the rope: scratchy, seemingly ancient, suspended by beams high above my head

Questioning silently, “Who tied this? When? How did they get a rope all the way up there? What if it breaks? Why am I doing this?”

Determining not to think

Stepping off the edge

Dropping

A jolt

Swinging through the air

Hanging

Thinking, “That hay is too far away!”

Holding tighter to the rope

Dangling

Losing strength

Gathering courage

Loosening my grip

Falling through the air

Feeling my stomach leap into my throat as wind swept past my ears

Buckling at my knees

Collapsing in a heap

Surviving

Thanking Grandpa Woody (in my head) for happening to store that haystack right there beneath the rope

Brushing off dirt and debris

Rejoicing

Weighing whether to do it again, or go back to the house

Forgetting all about the previous five minutes

Making another climb

Living to tell about it

Brushing myself off

Dragging straw into Grandma Woody’s well-swept house despite trying not to

Seeing Grandpa Woody

Grinning

I hoped that barn could always be a place I could come to, but that isn’t the way things turned out.

I’d like to tell you the story of that barn

I was at a funeral a few years ago, when someone said to me, “Can you believe it? That barn is like a full circle story?”

She was beaming, and I smiled back, glad for her joy; but absolutely broken-hearted for myself, and wanting desperately to hide that hurt.

In 2019, I set out to write the story of my grandparent’s barn. What began as one book has spiraled into a series. The process wasn’t pretty (I about electrocuted myself sobbing over the keyboard). I’m grateful to know God has all my tears stored.

What’s more, He’s taken the broken pieces of dreams I had for that beloved barn and made them into something beautiful.

I’d like to tell you how that happened and what the Lord did in my heart during the process. My website is right in the middle of reconstruction right now, so if you’d like to read more, please subscribe, so I can let you know when things look more spruced up, and when my books begin coming out.

Thanks for reading what I’m writing,

Jody Susan