One Woman’s Story of Faith, Farming and Family in Kansas
If you look up “Caitlin Henderson” online, chances are you’ll come across faith, farming and family. In that order. It’s more than just the name of her website and social media handles, it’s how she sees the world.
Caitlin grew up in the rural town of Anthony in south-central Kansas. Her family was part of a close-knit church and Caitlin was raised with a strong faith. In moments big and small, she sees God’s hand at work in her life. Take, for example, when she met Jake.
“The night that we met, I had just come home from tennis practice,” she recalled. “My parents were in the backyard and there was this gorgeous guy just sitting on a horse. He was sweet and funny, and I just knew.”
It seemed like fate. Jake’s father was best friends with Caitlin’s father growing up and was a groomsman in her parents’ wedding. But Caitlin and Jake hadn’t met.
Jake had left Anthony when he was in middle school. When he was away at college, his father was killed in a car accident. Jake moved back to Anthony to take over the family farm.
Caitlin was in high school when they finally met. She was planning to go to veterinary school at Kansas State University. She lasted a semester.
“God had different plans for me,” she said. “Jake and I were getting serious and I knew we were probably getting married. Jake wasn’t leaving the farm, so I knew that’s where we would end up. If I wanted Jake, I had to go to him. And the farm came with him.”
But the transition wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be. Having grown up in Anthony, Caitlin thought she knew what to expect. But even in a rural community, farm life is very different from town life.
“I thought I knew what I was getting into, but it was a rough transition to farm life,” she said. “It was tough to juggle everything especially after we had kids — the hours and sacrifice.”
She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, but didn’t anticipate how much work the farm was, how much of Jake’s time and energy would be focused on the farm.
“The biggest thing was — and I’ve talked to so many other women on the farm about this — feeling like the farm is the No. 1 priority and you’re the second priority, and struggling to find where you fit in.”
Jake grows cotton, soybeans, wheat and sorghum (also called milo), and also raises cattle. Catlin had a hard time seeing where the family fit in among all these obligations.
“It took a few years for me to really be on board,” she said. “I just had to embrace it. Instead of having to fight for his time, we just had to go to the farm with him.”
God had a part to play in that realization, too.
“I had let my faith fall to the back burner without meaning to,” Caitlin said. “When we had Grady (their first child), everything changed. I wanted him to know Jesus, to know God. I went running back to my faith full force.”
But Jake wasn’t on board. He had a lot of anger and grief surrounding his father’s death. Caitlin prayed for her husband constantly, asking God to show himself to Jake. Instead, God had a message for her: “You’re not being the wife I’ve called you to be.”
“It’s always funny the way God works,” she said.
She was so busy looking toward her husband, she wasn’t seeing what was right in front of her. The realization transformed her.
“I needed to be the wife God was calling me to be,” she said. “That’s when my mind shifted to: ‘Oh, I actually really love this way of life.’”
She found that by living her faith, she changed. Jake saw the effect Caitlin’s faith had on her, and he wanted to open his heart to God. Shortly after Jake was baptized, he baptized their eldest son Grady.
“When he came to Christ, our entire marriage had a peace to it,” Caitlin said. “It’s made us so much stronger in our family.”
Since then, she has come not only to embrace farm life, but to see more of God in everyday moments.
“Whenever I’m on the farm, I’m amazed,” she said. “There are so many things on the farm that I see as a metaphor. All these little things play together and I see God in so many of them.”
One of her favorite examples is a kernel of wheat.
“The kernel has to break under soil before it can start a new wheat sprout. That image is always in my head when I think about faith,” she said. “We have to experience being broken before there can be new life.”
Seeing what God has meant for her family has been incredibly powerful. Instead of being resentful of Jake’s time in the fields, she loves seeing her children (they now have three) flourish on the farm.
“Being out in the open on the farm, having the space where our kids have free range, is amazing — a blessing. They get to spend all this time together and there aren’t a lot of jobs where that could happen,” she said. “Watching the next generation being shepherded is awesome.”
They spend a few months out of the year custom harvesting as a family. Hauling a combine, they’ve driven from Texas to Canada to help farmers with wheat harvest. They love that family time.
“I’ve noticed our kids have the coolest stories to tell,” Caitlin said.
It turns out Caitlin has her own cool stories to tell, too. In 2016, when she first quit her office job to stay at home with the kids, she felt restless, antsy.
“I felt there was something God was calling me to do,” she said.
She told her father she felt like God was calling her to write a book. He suggested blogging.
“It started with documenting our lives, the kids’ milestones, what was happening on the farm,” she said.
Then, after seeing so many fellow farm wives struggle during the tough economy, she wanted to encourage them. She started sharing lessons of faith as played out in farm life.
“I kept seeing desperation. I wanted to try to encourage them,” she said. “I go to the Bible for my encouragement, so I started using my faith and bringing the farm into it. Everything we go through on the farm, there’s a root emotion and lesson embedded in that.”
She framed these lessons through the lens of farming and found they resonated with people from all different backgrounds.
“My husband works long hours and sometimes that’s difficult. I get lonely. I know there are wives in the city who are dealing with the same emotions,” she said. “I focus on the root of the lesson from the farm. When I pull that out, I find that no matter where someone is living, they go through the same challenges and struggles.”
These lessons became the framework for that book she felt God was calling her to write. Faith, Farming and Family: Cultivating Hope and Harvesting Joy Wherever You Are from Penguin Random House is due out later this year.
“At first I didn’t think my story mattered. But over the last couple years, I’ve started to realize we all have a story to tell.”
To hear more of Caitlin’s story, visit her website, or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.
