I'm carrying a bin full of cabbages back to my cart in the blazing afternoon sun. Sweat pours out from under my wide-brimmed hat. Only six weeks left, I tell myself. I can do it. The vegetable garden is at its peak, and my husband and I are deep in harvest season on our half-acre organic farm. I think of what my mentor used to say, in his thick Texan drawl: "It's like nature's workin' against us."

Since I was a teenager, I wanted to live on a homestead — preferably off-grid — tending to plants, animals, and children, all while building a beautiful home with my own hands. I believed that if I lived in tune with nature, nature would reward me with an abundant life. But no one understands how it feels to watch pests, disease, and extreme weather threaten everything you've worked for — unless they've farmed themselves.

What I didn't expect was that gardening would eventually lead me to the greatest gardener of all: God. It was only after years of tending soil and battling weeds that I came to know His truth — and when I heard we live in a fallen world, it made sense of everything I'd already felt in my bones. But it also made sense that this isn't the end of the story. God isn't going to leave His work unfinished. And the glimpses we get of that coming restoration, of heaven breaking into the everyday — they aren't earned by the labor of our hands. They're a gift, given through the Holy Spirit.

That is why I paint images of the land and our homes — signs of hope and beauty in challenging times.

It's a reminder that all things beautiful will last. That simplicity can also mean abundance: a loaf of bread, a pie shared with friends, a late night holding your newborn, fireflies watched from the front porch.

Come and enjoy a quiet moment of simple joy with whichever painting is calling you closer.