Excerpt
Trust God, Love People
Chapter 1Small Beginnings
While the defroster worked to melt the thin layer of ice on my windshield, I gently settled my one-year-old puppy, Bailey, onto his makeshift bed in the back seat. The honking of a horn caught my attention, and I glanced up to see Dave perched in the driver’s seat of the U-Haul, motioning for me to roll down my window. As I did so, he grinned and shouted, “See you in Arkansas!” before pulling forward. With my former apartment in the rearview mirror, I took a deep breath, placed my hands on the steering wheel, and drove off, following him westward.
If someone had told me at my college graduation that I would go on to build a life far from my hometown, accept a job that involved plenty of public scrutiny, and eventually settle on a farm with five children and countless animals, I would have laughed. Never would I have believed that this shy girl raised thirty minutes from the ocean would end up with cows as her neighbors in Arkansas.
For the first two decades of my life, my world consisted of a white colonial in a quiet cul-de-sac in the center of Florida. My mom’s side of the family all lived nearby and spent their days together at our family business— a wholesale bakery my great-grandma founded in 1951. My dad’s mom, Grandma Shirley, watched my siblings and me after school while our parents worked. I’d often come home to find her in our kitchen, humming contentedly while stirring a skillet of seasoned ground beef, sizzling in preparation for dinner. I’d stand beside her, and together, we’d scoop the meat onto freshly steamed rolls, creating “loose-meat sandwiches,” a recipe adapted from her favorite deli during her time living in Sioux City, Iowa. I loved listening to the colorful stories of her childhood in Chicago and how she and my grandpa spontaneously moved to Orlando, following friends toward the allure of the Sunshine State. I can still hear her melodic voice asking about my day as we worked. If my day was long or particularly hard, she’d start singing and clasp my hand so we could dance together in the kitchen, ignoring the simmering pot on the stove. Her deep, hearty laugh would incite my own.
I never would have imagined leaving the comfort of my family and beginning a life 1,200 miles away. And yet, here I was, driving behind Dave in the U-Haul that carried the contents of my former apartment, headed toward an unknown future.
At the time, I was in my early twenties and simply following my heart. For two years, Dave and I had been dating long-distance, and we were eager to live in the same zip code. Just nine days earlier, on Christmas Day, we had been poolside at my parents’ house in Florida, our upturned faces warmed by the sun as we contemplated our future. During that conversation, we decided to quit our corporate jobs and move to Arkansas. Dave had briefly lived in Bentonville a few years before and knew I would love the town’s charm. He also knew that the area was growing, and it was the right time to pursue his dream of building homes with his brother and dad, who had recently moved to Arkansas from Colorado.
The decision to move seemed simple: I wanted to be in the same city as the man I loved. In my naivete, I wasn’t yet prone to overcomplicate the decision to pursue happiness. If we had waited even a handful of years, I might have been wrought with worry and indecision, focusing on logistics and what could go wrong. Thankfully, the decision was clear: Make the move. Follow the boy. Trust.
As we crossed an expansive bridge winding through the Arkansas River Valley, I called my mom to let her know we were getting close to Bentonville and fill her in on the gorgeous scenery around me. The rolling Ozark Mountains stretched as far as the eye could see, a fast-moving river cut through the valley below the bridge, and sparkling water rushed over boulders and rock formations. The beauty of my new state enthralled me. The region reminded me of my childhood summer vacations in the Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina.
Suddenly I spotted a chicken limping across the busy interstate. Around me, cars were swerving and honking their horns. I quickly hit my brakes and screeched to a stop. Now behind me in the U-Haul, Dave veered to the shoulder as the traffic around us slowed to a near standstill. Everywhere, chickens ran in various directions. I was entirely too freaked out to see the humor in the situation: the literal chickens crossing the literal road. Instead, I shouted to my mom, “A CHICKEN! Wait! CHICKENS! There are CHICKENS!” Bailey’s ears perked up, and he jumped onto my lap to look out the window, barking uncontrollably, alerting me to the danger. As I inched forward, I could see that chicken carcasses covered the stretch of black-tarred road before me; my mom yelled in response, “TURN AROUND AND COME HOME RIGHT NOW!”
The conversation with my mom was interrupted by a phone call from Dave, who, knowing me well, was calling to explain—in a deliberately calm tone—that a chicken truck had flipped over ahead.
A chicken truck.
He may as well have been speaking in Mandarin. I couldn’t wrap my brain around what this combination of words could possibly mean. Growing up in suburban Orlando, I had once begged my mom to call 911 when we saw a deer that had been struck by a car. Farm life and growing food were entirely foreign to me. I didn’t understand how or why a truck would be full of chickens. I had never considered where my nuggets had originated.
I soon learned that Northwest Arkansas is a significant player in the poultry industry. This truck had been transporting thousands of chickens to a processing facility when it swerved off the road, landed on its side, and expelled the poor chickens onto the busy highway.
As I watched the confused chickens wandering all over, I broke into tears, imagining their excitement at escaping the packed confines of the truck, racing toward the sunlight and dreams of freedom, only to meet their bitter end on that open stretch of interstate. The long drive had left me alone with my thoughts, and this chicken massacre felt like a flashing warning sign. The spontaneous decision to quit my job, pack up everything, and move to a town I had never even visited suddenly felt crazy and irrational.
As traffic started to move again, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Dave pull back onto the highway. I restarted my ignition, turned on the radio, and heard a local station playing Keith Urban’s “Who Wouldn’t Want to Be Me.” Still on the phone, Dave laughed as we both started singing along.
•
I believe extraordinary, life-altering events are most often disguised as ordinary moments. Looking back on the first day of new-hire training for my first corporate job after college, I can see how it set the course for my future. No, it wasn’t the career move that I had hemmed and hawed and stewed over for months that was remarkable. It was the person I met while waiting in that registration line.
Standing among hundreds of other newly graduated, bright-eyed Corporate America Rookies, I looked around to see if I recognized anyone. I didn’t. I tried my best to appear confident, waiting for my plastic name tag and a three-prong folder containing the agenda for the week. Sweaty-palmed, I felt like the new kid carrying my lunch tray in the cafeteria, desperately scanning for an empty seat next to a merciful comrade.
Just when I felt my nerves couldn’t take one more moment of wondering how on earth I would make it through an entire week of training, a kind voice behind me said hello. I turned to find the kind voice accompanied by equally kind eyes and a warm, gentle smile.
“Hi. I’m Dave Marrs. I just moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, to run the territory there. What about you?”
It was a simple introduction—a few ordinary words followed by an ordinary handshake—yet the energy in the room shifted. My shoulders relaxed, and I felt at ease. If I could be friends with someone as magnetic and capable as Dave Marrs, then maybe I could survive the week ahead.
At the time, I was living in Tampa; Dave had moved from his home state of Colorado for this new job in Bentonville. That first week, Dave and I became instant friends. Our corporate sales jobs required a lot of time on the road checking on the stores we managed within our territories, which led to phone calls several times a day. For a time, we made these calls under the guise of sharing work-related information. But, as the months passed, we started talking more often, and the calls extended from quick chats to longer talks about our childhoods or our hopes for the future. I fell into the habit of calling him as I crossed the Howard Frankland Bridge on my drive home. I would share the humdrum details of my day and describe the beauty outside my window as the slanting rays of the setting sun cast a luminous glow over the bay.
