There are two questions this first post needs to address: Who are you and why in the world would you name your website New Tree Farm? Good questions! Let’s dig in.
Who am I?
I am Heather Thorson. I am a devoted Christian. I became a Christian at a young age but spent most of my life searching for what it meant to have a personal relationship with Christ. I had “quiet times” and read my Bible, but never understood it all. My faith was as deep as it could be, I just couldn’t grasp the how in it all. This how came later in life, and since gaining that understanding at last, I am irrevocably and irretrievably the Lord’s.
I am a child of an abusive earthly father. My father made many poor life choices in search of income and worldly success. His choices brought him his goals, but he lost himself in the process. At the end of his life, he was a verbal abuser, spiritually afflicted, miserable, and in a clinical depression which he refused to seek help for because of pride and image. He ended his own life because of that refusal, and in the process shattered mine.
I am a divorced mother of one child: my son. I have made many mistakes and poor choices in my life, but he is not one of them. He is the Lord’s blessing in the middle of my messes. He is my heart’s joy and my most difficult and most rewarding job.
I am a homeschool mother and worker in one of our area’s local homeschool co-ops. My son and I live with my mother.
I am human. I am flawed. I am scarred. I am redeemed.
Why in the world did I name my website New Tree Farm?
The short answer is because I believe the Lord told me to. The longer answer is because it’s a picture of my life for the last decade or so. Years ago, I found myself in the hospital in the middle of an “intervention” of the Lord. I told Him I would do anything if He would let me live to raise my son (he was just over two at the time).* The Lord took me at my word and we started down the path I am on now. The Lord had told me that continuing my life as I knew it would lead to my destruction. So, He and I set on a path of “cleaning house.” I gave the Lord the ax and He went to work. In the end, almost everything had to be removed from my life. I found myself bare and raw, but alive and new.
A few years later, the Lord gave me the phrase “New Tree Farm” in a dream. As I dug in, I saw that I was much like a tree that had been cut down, or coppiced, so that new, fresh life could grow. This is the story of my new life. My tree may not look very lovely, but it is a new, strong tree growing from the rooted foundation that the Lord created a long time ago. It will always be a picture of what I once had to go through, but it will also show the good that has grown from the clean cut of the Master’s hand. I may live as far from a real farm as possible here in Southern California, but this is the place where my new life is tended. This is where I grow to serve the purpose He had for me all along.
“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Jeremiah 29:11
This is where the “new” took root. Now we get to see what grows.
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:18-19
*To be clear, I did not make a “deal” with the Lord in the hospital. At the time I did not care what happened to me. If I had died right there, I would have been okay. EXCEPT, I “saw” what would happen to my son, and I wanted to save him from that future. I promised only what I had to give at the time (my love for my son) and the Lord graciously accepted. Since then, he has given me the desire to survive for His purpose for my life as well as for my son. He accepted what I had to give at the time and then worked on healing me. He is faithful and true.
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