The Plain Values Podcast EP #36 – Jerry D. Miller: Getting Through the Hardest Days on the Homestead

Jerry Miller:
It was three o’clock on a Monday morning and I woke up, I heard my sister screaming. I knew there was something dreadfully wrong and the barn was basically fully engulfed. We had cows that had blisters on their backs from fire dropping down, dropping on them. But if we don’t take care and let God take care of the heart within us, that root is always going to be there. And it’s God that brings the renewal.

Marlin Miller:
I had a chance to sit down with Mr. Jerry D. Miller. He is an Amish guy from right up the road. Jerry and I have been friends. I’ve known his family for many, many years. He’s written for plain values for a long, long time. And Jerry is one of those guys that my wife actually says she can listen to Jerry talk for hours. He is just a real treat. He’s such a good guy. And we talked about some hard things. We talked about a lot of good things, but the Lord has taken them on quite a journey. They lost a son many years ago. I believe he was only 15 or 16. Please meet my friend, Jerry D. And if you like the content, if you get anything out of it, I will very humbly ask you to like and comment and smash that subscribe button.
Thank you. This podcast is sponsored by my friends at Azure Standard. A while back, I had a chance to sit down with the founder, David Stelzer, right here at the table. And we had a great conversation. I love the Azure story. They started out as farmers back in the ’70s and I think in 1987, they began a nationwide food distribution company. And guys, they are non- GMO organic. They do it right. They do it so well. And you can get a truck to drop food right in your town. Check them out at Azurestandard.com and tell them Marlin and Plain Values sent you. So tell me about your farm. Tell me about your family.

Jerry Miller:
Yeah. Well, we live on my wife’s home place. It’s my wife, Gloria. We’ve been married since 91. We have seven children. And it’s my wife’s home place, 173 acres of Holmes County ground. So it’s … Until this past year, we did not have a foot of road frontage. Everything was locked in back in there. And it’s very unusual for Holmes County. If you look on a Holmes County plat map, there’s about 1,120 acres between us and 515 that there are no houses. Okay. So the back end of our farm butts up against homes limestone ground that is very rural. It’s extremely rural. It’s one of the last places in Holmes County where a fella can still take a pee and nobody’s watching.

Marlin Miller:
I love it. I love that because I can appreciate that very much.

Jerry Miller:
Yes. So

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. So 173 acres. Are you still milking?

Jerry Miller:
Yes, we are. My son, my youngest son is at home. He’s on the farm. He’s not married. But at this point, he’s running the day-to-day operations. He’s 23 years old. We milk 60 cows between 60 and 70. Jersey cows. We are certified organic and we are grass fed. We market all our milk through Organic Valley. Okay. We have a few neighbors that show up. We have a few people that show up and grab a gallon here and a grall them there, but nothing major. It’s basically 98% of our milk gets marketed through the OV channels.

Marlin Miller:
I thought you were organic. I did not know that you were totally grass fed.

Jerry Miller:
Yes, we are grass fed. No grain.

Marlin Miller:
No grain.

Jerry Miller:
No grain. No grain. To me, I think it’s going to be where the small producer’s going to go eventually, because it’s just so difficult for the big guys to duplicate. Yeah. They just cannot totally graze five, six, 800 cows.

Marlin Miller:
Well, and when you go to the big farms, a thousand head is a small.

Jerry Miller:
Is a small farm. Is a

Marlin Miller:
Small

Jerry Miller:
Farm. Yes. Yes. And we could argue all day about a family farm, what constitutes a family farm. And I know those farms get run by a family. Yeah, they do. But it’s a little bit different from what our farm is. We are just a small family run operation that’s been in Gloria’s side of the family since the late 1800s.

Marlin Miller:
Wow. So seven kids.

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
How many grandkids do you have?

Jerry Miller:
We have five boys, five grandchildren. My oldest daughter has her fingers really full. The oldest one is eight. The youngest, the last two that showed up showed up at the same day.

Marlin Miller:
Wow.

Jerry Miller:
Twins. So she had twins. Yeah. We enjoy them immensely.

Marlin Miller:
Wow. So you were not born and raised on that farm. Where

Jerry Miller:
Were

Marlin Miller:
You born?

Jerry Miller:
I was born about two and a half, three miles east of there, just on the east side of 515, Connor Road 172.

Marlin Miller:
What was your mom and dad like?

Jerry Miller:
I never really knew my dad. My mom was … She was a pillar. She was an anchor in my life very, very much. Dad died when I was four years old. And so I never really … I have a few fuzzy, fuzzy memories of him, but very little. But I have a lot of very, very good memories of mom. Yeah. Yes.

Marlin Miller:
How did your dad pass?

Jerry Miller:
Dad was a deacon in the Amish church. And he was, from what I understand from my siblings, he was a very talented man. But the last three, four, five weeks of his life, he really, really struggled mentally. And nobody really understood what was going on. He was to see a doctor, but nobody understood the gravity or the seriousness of the situation. So dad passed, dad died by his own hand.

Marlin Miller:
I’m sorry.

Jerry Miller:
Which is a special grief. It really is. The stigma that goes with that, and he left 11 children. I was the youngest. I was four years old. My brother was the oldest, was 21. He left a dairy farm, a conventional dairy. At the time, we thought he left a lot of debt. The debt load, I’m not exactly sure what it was, but it was less than $20,000. And we thought we’ll never see the light of day, how that has changed. But with dad’s passing, but in tribute to mom, in all the years that … In my growing up years, I never heard mom speak harshly or badly about dad. She never did. She never threw dad under the bus. And that I think was a big part of allowing us children to grow up without that root of bitterness. We all had our struggles. We all had our things that we … There was a day in my life when I would have rather played softball than eight, but I played softball with a chip on my shoulder because I was going to beat.

Marlin Miller:
You were

Jerry Miller:
Going to

Marlin Miller:
Prove something.

Jerry Miller:
I was going to prove something. I had to prove that I was at least better or equal to what you were able to do.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. I don’t think I can understand what that kind of … I was going to say trauma. That word gets thrown around a lot today, and that’s good and fine. And that’s not the point, but that is hardcore stuff. And the effects are deeper than I can even imagine.

Jerry Miller:
Yeah. Yeah. What totally amazes me about God’s grace is of my 11 siblings, there are 10 of us still alive and everyone has made a positive contribution to society. Not one has really taken the wayward route, and that is simply because of the foundation that dad laid before he died. Dad laid more of a foundation in the 43 years of his life than a lot of men get laid in a lifetime.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Wow. Well, we’re going to come back to that later on.

Jerry Miller:
Okay.

Marlin Miller:
So your mom, obviously 11 kids, she’s a widow now. You told me a long time ago that your … Was it your home barn burned off twice?

Jerry Miller:
Let me start at the beginning.

Marlin Miller:
Okay.

Jerry Miller:
So some of the grief that mom experienced in her life … I had a sister. Her story kind of starts in 1965. I’m a 66 model. And if I do the math, I can hardly see that it’s possible. But there was actually a daughter between my brother and me, which is a 64 model. And I’m a 66 model. So there was a daughter in between there that lived seven days. And she was an Akron in the hospital. And things have changed so drastically, but we were at home as a family. Mom and dad were at home. We were sitting at the supper table when the English neighbor lady showed up with a death message from the hospital that the baby had died. There was nobody at the hospital with her. And looking back, we just can’t grasp that was actually how things were done back then.

Marlin Miller:
Wait. Your mom had

Jerry Miller:
Come home. My mom had come home. They knew that the baby had a heart problem,
But they thought everything was fine. So my mom had come home. Family was at home and the neighbor lady shows up. So mom’s grief, she buried a daughter in 1965. Then in 1971 is when dad got sick. And dad passed in February of 71. I’m sorry. Okay. And that really, really started the journey. That’s when I saw mom. I was the youngest in the family. I was four years old at the time. I did not understand the ramifications of it. I knew there was something special. I knew that it was different, but I didn’t understand. I simply didn’t understand.
But let’s keep moving with the story. Then in 1978, we lived on County Road 172, just north and east of Walnut Creek. And the barn on our farm was what was known as the eight cornered barn, which was a … If you gave people directions, you would always ask them, “Do you know where the eight corner barn’s at?” In the late 1800s, in the early 1900s, there was a hostedler that wanted to build a name for himself, and he built this structure. And it was an eight-sided barn with a peak roof that had no interior posts.

Marlin Miller:
Really?

Jerry Miller:
Everything was clear span. Oh my

Marlin Miller:
Goodness.

Jerry Miller:
It was an amazing structure. An amazing structure. But in the- In

Marlin Miller:
The 1800s, he

Jerry Miller:
Built

Marlin Miller:
That.

Jerry Miller:
1910.

Marlin Miller:
1910.

Jerry Miller:
1910. Oh my

Marlin Miller:
Goodness.

Jerry Miller:
So it had a kind of a hip roof. It’s hard to explain exactly how this was built, but the sidewalls kept the peak up. If the peak wanted to come down, the sidewalls had to go out. Okay. Anyway, in the winter of 77, 78, in January of that storm, I don’t know if you remember that, Marlon or not. You’re a bit too young.

Marlin Miller:
Well, I was born in 77, so I would’ve been a little guy and

Jerry Miller:
I

Marlin Miller:
Probably don’t remember. I remember hearing about

Jerry Miller:
The blizzard,

Marlin Miller:
But I didn’t … I was too little.

Jerry Miller:
That was the blizzard years.

Marlin Miller:
Okay.

Jerry Miller:
So with the snow load on the roof, that barn collapsed. Okay. That barn collapsed, and the neighbors, the community showed up and cleaned that thing all away. And there was a lot of push and talk to rebuild it the way that it was, but mom was a widow. Money was tight. Yeah. We were doing a lot with donated labor, and it just made no sense to rebuild it simply for the fact of just for having it.

Marlin Miller:
And it would’ve taken an unbelievable amount

Jerry Miller:
More. Yes. It would’ve taken thousands more to rebuild it the way that it had been.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah.

Jerry Miller:
So it was rebuilt as a conventional Amish post and beam, a barn. That was in 78. Then in 86, we had a barn fire, and that structure burned down. That was in April of 86. I was the youngest child. I was still living at home with mom. My sister and her husband were doing the farming at that time. It was three o’clock on a Monday morning. And I woke up, I heard my sister screaming. I knew there was something dreadfully wrong, and the barn was basically fully engulfed. We got the cows out, we got the calves out, but the horse was all burned. And it was that morning, Marlon, when … I saw mom cry. I saw her cry. I saw her tears mingled with the dishwater more than once. But it was that morning when mom sat on the old concrete steps on the old farmhouse in front of the house, and she just bemoaned her plight.
Why, Lord, does it have to be me again? Could this cup not have been for somebody else? And a neighbor man walks up to mother, puts his hand on mom’s shoulder and he says, “Ah, Verna, we’ll just build you another one. We’ll just build you another one.” And folks that have never helped to carry that cot to the feet of Jesus or have ever laying on that cot and had friends pick up that bed and take them in and put them down through the roof, have no idea what community is and what it means at that time and how special that is, how life changing that is.

Marlin Miller:
There’s something, and man, oh man, I feel even silly even sharing this, but I have learned walking through some hard things with our family and just different things in life as they come. When you get a chance to talk to someone who has actually lived it, something that is the same, and it’s obviously different every time, that’s not the point. But when they can really understand, man, oh man, there’s something special about that type of a connection, and I think I know what you’re talking about. I’ve never lived that kind of story, but I think I get it. To the best of my ability, I think I get it. So the barn burns down. How many horses did you lose?

Jerry Miller:
I forget the exact number. I think it was eight, eight or nine.

Marlin Miller:
The big draft horses.

Jerry Miller:
The big draft horses.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah.

Jerry Miller:
I was the youngest, so I grabbed my Sunday pants. I just came home from church Sundays and my Sunday pants were like mom had taught me to. They were laying on the floor right in front of the bed.

Marlin Miller:
And this is three o’clock and-

Jerry Miller:
Three in the morning.

Marlin Miller:
The next day.

Jerry Miller:
So I was barefooted and had no shirt on with my Sunday pants and I was in the barn. And I can distinctly remember looking up. And as an old barn like that, there’s cracks between the floors, between the floorboards, long before tongue and groove flooring.

Marlin Miller:
Yep.

Jerry Miller:
And I could see flames in each crack and they were dropping down. We had cows that had blisters on their backs from fire dropping down, dropping on them. Wow. And the cows were all in tie stalls and we just went through there and we loosened them and they wanted out of there. But the horses were a different story. The horses were just terrified and we couldn’t get them loose and they just stood there and we couldn’t move them. And finally we had to get out.

Marlin Miller:
Wow.

Jerry Miller:
Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
Wow.

Jerry Miller:
So that was in 86. So in about 12 days later, to the day, 12 days later.

Marlin Miller:
Wait, I’m going to back you up. You were born in 66.

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
So you were 20 years old?

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
Okay. Now keep going.

Jerry Miller:
Yes. So exactly 12 days later, there was a barn raising and we milked in that structure 12 days later.

Marlin Miller:
Are you kidding?

Jerry Miller:
Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
Wow.That’s

Jerry Miller:
Called neighbors and friends.

Marlin Miller:
Wow. And we’re not talking a little red barn here.

Jerry Miller:
No. We’re talking a 130 or 140 foot straight wall, block wall, and there were enough masons. There were enough masons laying block on that wall that they moved the string every couple minutes.

Marlin Miller:
As every course went

Jerry Miller:
Up. As every course went up. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
Oh my goodness.

Jerry Miller:
But then that was in 86. Mom died in 2017, in February of 17. Mom died. My mom passed away. But she was here when my brother-in-law, Al, married to my sister, Susan. He was 43 years old, and that happened in 1990. I think it was 96. Al was on his way to work. He worked at Klein Lumber, had his bike in the morning, he was on his way to work, and was talking with a neighbor man about buying some hay that they were making that day, had a heart attack and rolled over dead right there.

Marlin Miller:
On the bike?

Jerry Miller:
On the bike. He was standing there straddling the bike and talking with a neighbor churchman and fell over dead. Mom was with a group of widow ladies in Hartville at the flea market that day. So I went with a driver up to Hartville to track mom down to bring her home. And that was quite a meeting, Marlon. Mom just couldn’t believe it that it was again, because again, her- 43 years old. Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
The same age as …

Jerry Miller:
Same age as when dad passed.

Marlin Miller:
Wow.

Jerry Miller:
And then mom was there when our son Kevin died in a farm accident, but she was an absolute pillar. Marlon, all the times, all the times that … And then the tough times that mom had, but I distinctly remember it was one evening I was 16 years old and we talk about faith and we talk about the hands and feet of Jesus, who they are. Who are they? Yeah. But I was 16 years old and I was consumed with this thing called sports. I love to play ball. I love to play softball. Well, I planned to go away with my buddies one evening and I knew mom would not approve. I knew she was not in favor of it. And somehow, as mothers do, she found out during the day. They sniffed those things out. And she talked to me a few times during the day and she said, “Jerry, I don’t want you to go.
I don’t think it’s wise that you go. ” And I was stubborn and that evening I got dressed and as I walked up out the front door, mom met me, she was sitting on the old rocking chair just inside the front door and tears were streaming down her cheek and she said, “Jerry,” said, “I can’t do anything to keep you at home, but I want you to know that you’re going directly against my wishes.” She completely ruined my evening completely.

Marlin Miller:
You went.

Jerry Miller:
I went. I went- I’m

Marlin Miller:
Sorry to laugh, but yeah,

Jerry Miller:
I’ve

Marlin Miller:
Never done anything like that, by the way.

Jerry Miller:
I’ve

Marlin Miller:
Always listened.

Jerry Miller:
I’m sure you have.

Marlin Miller:
I’m kidding.

Jerry Miller:
But that was the last time that I completely and totally just went against mom’s will.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah.

Jerry Miller:
Totally ruined it. I made a lot of mistakes.

Marlin Miller:
Oh, man.

Jerry Miller:
But the power of a praying mother is … We can’t underestimate that. And I can’t thank mom enough and dad for what they did for us as children. Yeah. Things went the way they did and there was a lot of rough spots, but I look back and I have a lot of good memories.

Marlin Miller:
We’ve been publishing Plain Values for almost 13 years now. And about a year ago, the team and I decided to put together a compendium, a best of, if you will, of our favorite stories, the most impactful stories of all those years. And invited is what we built out of those conversations. It is 194 and four pages, and it is absolutely a thing of beauty. We do a monthly gathering here where we just simply open our doors. It’s called Porch Time. And the story of how Porchtime came to be and how our family was invited into that and how we are inviting you and every Tom, Dick, and Harry, anybody who wants to come can come and hang out at Porch Time here at the office in Weinsburg. So it was such a natural fit to use the home of the founder of Porch Time and to call it invited.
You can find it on plainvalues.com on the shop page, and you can now consider yourself invited. When you look at where we are today as a culture, as like the state of the family, what do you see? What goes through your mind?

Jerry Miller:
I’m going to go back to mom for just a second, Marlon. I want to finish her story then. Then maybe we can tie that together. When mom had a stroke in the last nine days of her life, and we knew she was dying, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that situation where you have sat beside the bed of somebody that you know is going to die, they’re going to pass in the next couple of days, and there’s still some things you’d like to ask, but to approach that difficult subject of asking a person, “Are you dying?” “What do you think about dying? “And I desperately wanted to ask mom some stuff yet, and I didn’t really know how to approach it, but I asked her, I said,” Mom, “I said,” Looking back over your life, she was handicapped physically by then, but she still had her mind.
“I said,” Mom, your life and everything you experienced in life, was it a long time? “And she said,” Ah, Jerry, I had such a good life and it was just a few days.

Marlin Miller:
“And how old was she?

Jerry Miller:
She was 82. And Marlon, when I think of that, when I think of that and the faith that sustained her and the undergirdings of the church and the neighbors that carried mom to Jesus many, many, many times, that is the kind of faith structure that we so desperately need in our culture today because we can’t no longer … We have raised a generation of people that no longer are they willing to put their hand on somebody’s shoulder and say,” We’ll just build you another one because it takes too much effort. It takes skin in the game. It takes doing … Being the hands and feet of Jesus is what it takes.

Marlin Miller:
“What do you think that … How

Jerry Miller:
Did we get there? Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
How did we get there?

Jerry Miller:
How did we get there?

Marlin Miller:
We got

Jerry Miller:
There- What is

Marlin Miller:
Missing in that picture?

Jerry Miller:
Well, how much time do we have?

Marlin Miller:
As much as you’re …

Jerry Miller:
To me, Marlon, because my worldview … Some people would say my worldview is maybe very narrow because I grew up in a small sliver of the most beautiful country that this Lord made in Holmes County. So a lot of my worldview is based on experiences. This is what I saw, this is what I experienced, and this is how I view things. But as a family growing up at home, it was long, long before the cell phone days. It was long before we ran to the neighbors to make a phone call. So at any given time, I could stand in the front yard at home and there were seven, eight, nine teams of horses in the fields working the fields that I could see from at home. And you’re wondering, how does this tie in? Well, it ties in. We have lost our connection with what we call mother earth.
There’s a reason we say mother earth because we have left our ecological nest and we’ve traded it for a nest of technology and it has failed us miserably.

Marlin Miller:
Do you think that’s tied in by design? I mean, God put Adam and Eve in a garden

Jerry Miller:
And said- God did not put Adam and Eve on the earth and turn them loose. He put them in a specific spot.

Marlin Miller:
Right.

Jerry Miller:
He said,” This is the garden, dress and keep it. “And there is something in man that longs to see the connection with the soil.

Marlin Miller:
The dirt under the

Jerry Miller:
Fingernails

Marlin Miller:
And-

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
Yep.

Jerry Miller:
Yes. Marlon, if you take your children into the garden and you plant a seed, you put a seed in the mother earth, okay? That seed itself does not sprout. That seed dies and what do you have? Resurrection.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s this perfect picture of life as a whole.

Jerry Miller:
It’s life as a whole. We have completely lost that vision. Then we went to package foods,

Marlin Miller:
Manufactured-

Jerry Miller:
Manufactured foods. All

Marlin Miller:
The

Jerry Miller:
Gunk. We have allowed the food scientists from McDonald’s to tell us this is how chicken tastes. Our bodies, we are the first generation that has literally grown up on fast food, and may I say it? Readily and completely available porn in our pockets.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Well.

Jerry Miller:
And it makes a huge difference on how people think, what they do. Yeah. Now we have a group of people and I’m going to just lay it out. This is how I feel. Now we have a group of church people that are believers. And myself, I hate that word. They need to be doers. There is no way that you can be a believer without being a doer. And if you’re not willing to put your hand on the neighbor’s shoulder and say, “We’ll just build you another one.” You’re not a doer.

Marlin Miller:
Okay. All right. I want to get this right. You hate the word believer.

Jerry Miller:
Maybe that’s too strong a word. Maybe it is.

Marlin Miller:
And I think I understand what you’re saying.

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
But what you’re getting at is you have people who are disengaged.

Jerry Miller:
Yes. Yes.

Marlin Miller:
From living out their

Jerry Miller:
Faith.

Marlin Miller:
Yes.

Jerry Miller:
Marlon, it is so easy to be a believer. It’s so easy to be a believer.

Marlin Miller:
If there’s nothing else.

Jerry Miller:
But they’re so incredibly difficult to be a doer.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. And see that … Oh man, Jerry, that ties in to many, many conversations I’ve had with friends who have come back from the mission field and come back to a church. In fact, we just had a family at our place the other night. And this guy said, he said, “I’ve been struggling because it seems like … ” And obviously we don’t know the heart. That’s not the point. But the actions and the works, not to become a legalistic focus.

Jerry Miller:
But the actions and the words, Marlon.

Marlin Miller:
They matter.

Jerry Miller:
They matter.

Marlin Miller:
They matter.

Jerry Miller:
They matter.

Marlin Miller:
And this guy’s point was, he said, “Everybody is so self-consumed.”

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
And I thought, that’s a really good way to put it.

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
If this is as far as I see, I’m not going to see the widow that needs help. That’s right. And the kid that’s without a family. And sleeping on a government building’s bench.

Jerry Miller:
That’s right. That’s right. I had an experience about two years ago, Marlon. Wow. This goes back to the farm. And we’ve lived on the farm there since 03. So I’ve traveled this woods path. It’s a path down through the woods. I’ve traveled many times. And for some reason, I never noticed that on the one side of the path, there was a tree that we call the tree of heaven. And if there ever was a misnomer, it’s a tree of heaven. It should be the tree of hell. So it’s a highly, highly invasive tree. And this thing was already, it was already 10 inches at the base. Okay. But I had my chainsaw with me the day that I saw that thing and I was like, “I’m going to teach this thing a lesson.” So I girdled that tree. Yeah. And by girdling, I cut all the way out around it.
I did not cut it down, but I gurdled it and I figured, boy, I took care of that thing. Two

Marlin Miller:
Rings or one?

Jerry Miller:
Two rings. Two

Marlin Miller:
Rings.

Jerry Miller:
Two rings. Took care of him.

Marlin Miller:
Yep.

Jerry Miller:
Okay. It went about, this happened in the fall. It went till the following fall and I was deer hunting and I walked past this tree. And we talk about roots and James talks to us about the root of bitterness and all the things that we experienced growing up at home with dad and with the hardships that mom went through and the deaths that we experienced, how easy it could have been to take the path of bitterness. But these things that we believe are choices that we make, they’re choices. But if we have a root within ourselves, that root will eventually fruit, good and bad. Eventually it’ll fruit. It’s just simply a law that God has instituted that’s the way it’s going to be. It went about a year and I went down past that tree of heaven again. And you know what? That original tree was dead, but man did it have a bunch of babies.

Marlin Miller:
It shot roots up. It

Jerry Miller:
Shot. Roots up about 25 feet away. There were roots. It was sprouting.

Marlin Miller:
Oh my goodness.

Jerry Miller:
Because I didn’t take care of the root.

Marlin Miller:
And it just pushed out new

Jerry Miller:
Ones. It just pushed out new ones. So we can take care of our problems, but if we don’t take care and let God take care of the heart within us, that root is always going to be there. And it’s God that brings the renewal, but we cannot separate. I don’t think James, when he wrote his thesis, I’ll call it thesis, on works and grace, he never expected that Christians would sit down and take it apart.

Marlin Miller:
It was just the way it was.

Jerry Miller:
It’s one and the same.

Marlin Miller:
Yep. Yep.

Jerry Miller:
You can’t take it apart. We can be believers. We can believe all we want, but if your belief doesn’t do anything, it’s sure not worth much.

Marlin Miller:
And it does have to beg the question, is it even real?

Jerry Miller:
Is it even real? Is

Marlin Miller:
It even real

Jerry Miller:
At all? Is it even real? Is it real?

Marlin Miller:
Wow. So let’s go back. You said something driving over here that I don’t think I could agree with it anymore than I do. And I want to peel back a bit of that onion. You said that we lost our moorings. I think you said

Jerry Miller:
We

Marlin Miller:
Lost our moorings when we lost the connection with the soil.

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
Right?

Jerry Miller:
We did.

Marlin Miller:
So I mean, goodness gracious, there are so many things. The industrial revolution and all of these things, people moving into the cities and-

Jerry Miller:
Yes. When Henry Ford invented the time clock, then time became money. Now we measured time by minutes and seconds or money by minutes and seconds because now we got paid by the hour.

Marlin Miller:
Instead of?

Jerry Miller:
Instead of working from sun up to sundown and a person was free to develop those relationships with his neighbors because by taking an hour off, didn’t affect his paycheck.

Marlin Miller:
Right. It was on the farm.

Jerry Miller:
It was on the farm. They were tradespeoples. They weren’t necessarily farmers, all of them, but they trades. And this concept of working by the hour was not. Imagine that, Marlon. Imagine the difference once time becomes money.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Community.

Jerry Miller:
Changes

Marlin Miller:
Everything.

Jerry Miller:
Community goes out the door.

Marlin Miller:
Yep. Yep. And because … Oh my goodness. I mean, Jesus is talking about you can’t serve God and money.

Jerry Miller:
Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
I mean, money is a huge topic in the Bible all through. He

Jerry Miller:
Talks more about money than he does about heaven and hell.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. So he … I mean, my goodness. As men, we have to take care of our families. We do. We have to do those kinds of things, which is all good. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Jerry Miller:
But I think as Christians, as believers, as doers, we have to be intentionally counterculture.

Marlin Miller:
To still make the time. To

Jerry Miller:
Still make the time. Now we have to be intentional to sit on the porch. We have to be intentional to go visit the neighbors. We have to be intentional to take a cherry pie to a family.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. It is. It’s so interesting. Lisa and I have talked a lot about how … When my dad died, there was about a year where we were really intentional about visiting

Jerry Miller:
Uncles

Marlin Miller:
And aunts and spending time with mom. I’m the oldest of three, and that’s where my focus was, was on mom and spending time with the family. And I remember telling my wife, “I don’t ever want this to change. I don’t want this to end.” Because it was sweet. It was good. It was real.

Jerry Miller:
It was real.

Marlin Miller:
It was healthy.

Jerry Miller:
It was healthy.

Marlin Miller:
And I remember saying, “I don’t want this to stop.” A year later, year and a half, I guarantee you life kind of gets back in the flow and I stopped and I quit. And it’s amazing how that happens to all of us. It

Jerry Miller:
Does. And

Marlin Miller:
All of a sudden, you don’t even see those uncles and aunts and your cousins and all of those things barely at

Jerry Miller:
All. And with that, Marlon, life happens and we can’t get stuck in one spot in life. Life happens and people grow and people change, but I’m amazed myself when I now look back and I see how some of the neighbormen stepped in and helped us as a family. Now I find myself as an adult and I find myself in a neighborhood where suddenly I’m the person that’s trying to carry the flag. Suddenly I’m the person that is trying to fill a void in somebody else’s life. Yeah. And that’s what we need to do. That’s what we need to do.

Marlin Miller:
Wow. Oh my goodness. There’s a lot there.

Jerry Miller:
That’s what we need to do, but it all started. This whole thing of complete disconnectedness started with the industrial revolution and taking people out of the countryside into the cities and completely disconnecting them from the soil. The Bible tells us, “Dust thou art and dust thou wilt return.”

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Is there a way to get

Jerry Miller:
Back

Marlin Miller:
There?

Jerry Miller:
Oh, there is. We have to be intentional in getting back there. We can even do potted plants in our apartments. Most of us at least have a balcony. Put a tomato plant on the balcony and allow your child to pick a red tomato. Yeah. And us that are living in the country. I know we can’t all farm. It’s not possible that we can all live on 170 acre farm and milkday cows. I realize that. But there’s very few of us that cannot allow our children the satisfaction to reach under a hen and get an egg. It does something. There’s something different. I look at my grandchildren now and they come home on the farm and they wear muck boots just exactly like dads, except they’re just teeny little things. And they can’t walk through enough cow patties to make it …

Marlin Miller:
They love it.

Jerry Miller:
They love it. Yeah. They can’t get dirty enough. But I try to just say, “Hey, get dirty. Get some cow poop on your hands. It’s not going to kill you.

Marlin Miller:
” Yep. Isn’t it interesting that all of these allergies and all of these ailments have come in

Jerry Miller:
To

Marlin Miller:
Play-

Jerry Miller:
20, 25, 30 years.

Marlin Miller:
And so prime example from our family, our oldest son went through a spell where he was absolutely the most germaphobic thing I’ve ever met in my life. And he went nowhere without a big jug of sanitizer.

Jerry Miller:
Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
Jerry, he was sick all the time.

Jerry Miller:
Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
He was sick all the time. And I forget who it was, but somebody said, “If he’s living with sanitizer, that could be the issue.” And we just said, “Hey, do us a favor and take it easy on it. ” He got better. He quit getting sick

Jerry Miller:
And

Marlin Miller:
It changed everything when he wasn’t sanitizing every single thing all the time.

Jerry Miller:
Yeah. You can’t sanitize yourself to health.

Marlin Miller:
It’s amazing.

Jerry Miller:
You can’t do that. It’s not possible.

Marlin Miller:
How do you see us getting as a culture, as a country? Do you think we can find our way back to common sense in health, in family, in relationships, in being real, in maybe getting off of social media?

Jerry Miller:
There’s people and individuals that are going to opt out, that are going to have the common sense and they’re going to have the chutzpah to get it done. But Marlon, when I walk into … I’m just going to lay it out. When I walk into the local Walmart and I look at the palor, the continents of people, the shape of people, I am horrified. Yeah. We are a sick, sick society, largely because we’ve chosen to live life our way, not God’s way, largely because of that. We have chosen sickness. And I know I’m skating on thin ice. Excuse me. There’s a lot of people that could argue. They’d argue all day. But the hard fact is we are not a healthy society.

Marlin Miller:
No. It’s amazing when you start paying attention.

Jerry Miller:
Yes. Yes.

Marlin Miller:
I agree.

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
I agree.

Jerry Miller:
If you have people, young folks that now grow up and they don’t know anything different besides sitting on the sofa and playing with their doodle machine, they don’t know fresh air, they don’t know birds, they don’t know animals. Sunlight. Sunlight. Our national forest land today in our western states, those huge chunks of land that Roosevelt set aside for public use gets less use today than it did in the 40s and the 50s. Really?

Marlin Miller:
Nobody goes.

Jerry Miller:
It’s too much effort.

Marlin Miller:
Oh my goodness.

Jerry Miller:
It’s too much effort. The trails, the trails that they built with the … Right after the war in the New Deal, that was part of the deal. Some of the Amish boys helped do that. They built trails in the Galatian National Forest. They built trails in like the Frank Church Wilderness Center, wilderness area. It’s the biggest wilderness area in the lower 48. Those trails were built by boys that were sent out by Roosevelt to try to revive the economy, try to give people jobs. A lot of those trails are in complete disrepair and nobody cares because people do not have the … To me, when I was growing up, to be outside and be in nature was huge. It still is. I love it.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. That’s where you want it to be.

Jerry Miller:
That’s where I want it to be. Now it’s completely different.

Marlin Miller:
And all they do is they sit there.

Jerry Miller:
They’re a bunch of crickets.

Marlin Miller:
Oh, man. It is. And

Jerry Miller:
We’re going to tell ourselves that it’s not going to affect us as a society. Who are we kidding?

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Yeah. I wonder.

Jerry Miller:
It’s even going to affect Marlon the next generation of Christians.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Oh, it already has. Hugely.

Jerry Miller:
Because we become a generation of believers and not doers.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. And we sit on our phone and-

Jerry Miller:
We sit on our phone and life is easy.

Marlin Miller:
If

Jerry Miller:
Somebody

Marlin Miller:
Needs something, we can send them a check or actually we don’t even do that anymore. We don’t even write checks anymore.

Jerry Miller:
We just live for the next chicken nugget.

Marlin Miller:
Wow. Jerry, okay. How can we pray for you guys? I know that your family has walked through quite a few health challenges lately.

Jerry Miller:
We have. We have. And as I look, Marlon and I talked about the root of bitterness and our son, Kevin, died in a farm accident. That happened in 09.

Marlin Miller:
He was 15?

Jerry Miller:
He was two weeks 15.

Marlin Miller:
Okay.

Jerry Miller:
Two weeks 15. He was no longer a child, but yet he was not an adult. He was at that tweener age, that age where you … Yeah, very special age. And that was one thing for us. As parents, that was devastating. That was one experience. And at that point, people would ask us, which is easier? A child that dies suddenly in an accident or a sudden death or a child that suffers from health issues and then slowly deteriorates and you watch them pass. Neither one is easy, but I am any more of the persuasion that a sudden death is easier than watching a child die. We never had to answer doctor questions. We never had to make doctor decisions with Kevin. When I found Kevin that Sunday morning, he had tipped the skid loader. I knew immediately that he was dead. I knew he was gone.
Happened on a Sunday morning, changed life completely. Changed life completely. He was our oldest son. He was my farm hand.
Yeah. I never hope that a parent has to experience that. But now as the years roll on and we have a daughter that’s not healthy and we have a son that’s not healthy or deals with health issues. Our daughter, Lisa, has autoimmune diseases. She’s had three surgeries. She deals with MALS, what they call MALS, POTS. MALS is a medium arcuate ligament syndrome. POTS is posterior orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. These are all things that are linked to her system that … There’s a lot of things in your body, Marlin, that you have no control over as far as they’re just automatic. Your kidney, your liver, your things just happen automatically. They just do their duty because they’re God given, they’re God designed, and they do their thing. And once POTS is this thing that your thermostat no longer regulates your blood pressure and your things go crazy.
And that’s what Lisa deals with. Micah is more … His is called C3 glomerulone nephritis, which is an extremely rare kidney disease. And the doctors definitely feel that the two are somehow genetically related. We don’t know for sure, but we’re kind of that persuasion. So watching a child suffer is a special agony in itself.
Wow.
Yeah. But you go to that and I go back to that tree of heaven and all those roots that are underneath there. And I watched my mom live her life and I watched her die. And she was able to tell me after her life was over close to the Jordan River, she was ready to cross. She had a good life. I would really, really hope that my children, that I can tell my children the same thing when it’s my time to go. Yeah. That we’ve taken care of those roots and we allow a God to be fruitful in our lives.

Marlin Miller:
I don’t know how. There’s many, many things. People experience tons of different things.

Jerry Miller:
Yes. We all have a story. We do. Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. We all have a story. And the older I get and the more I think, the more I realize that it doesn’t matter what that story is, there’s always more to it than what you can see.

Jerry Miller:
There always is.

Marlin Miller:
There’s so much more to it than you can see. Yes. And I am so quick. I am so quick to just make a snap judgment on someone. Oh, well, I’m not going to give them the time of day. And it’s embarrassing to admit it, but it’s the truth.

Jerry Miller:
That’s right.

Marlin Miller:
If I don’t have the time or I don’t want to make the time, I will justify that decision in a million different ways. And I wonder how many friendships I’ve missed out on and how many conversations I’ve missed out on that I was supposed to have.

Jerry Miller:
Yeah. A perfect example, Marlon. Two years ago, I was in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho at the homesteading conference. I was one of the presenters there. And when I got up to speak, I noticed in the front row, there was a lady that had tattoos on her arms. She had spiked purple hair. She had a nose ring and rings all over the place. And I immediately judged her. I was immediately like, “Man, man, what she’s looking for. ” After I was done and I took some questions, her hand was the first one in the air and I was like bracing myself. I was like, “What is happening here?” And you know what she asked me? Her question was this. It was a two part question. She said, “As a Christian, what can I do just to be nice to my neighbors? And if I do it, how can I make sure that I do it in real

Marlin Miller:
Humility?” That’s a great question. Totally unexpected.

Jerry Miller:
And totally unexpected.

Marlin Miller:
You didn’t see that coming

Jerry Miller:
A

Marlin Miller:
Million miles away.

Jerry Miller:
No. From my perspective or my worldview, I had placed her completely on the left hand side as, “Well, I hope I don’t have to associate with her if I can speak that frankly.”

Marlin Miller:
Yeah.

Jerry Miller:
I’m not a racist. I’m not a bigot, but it’s the way I was taught and it’s just- It’s

Marlin Miller:
Just how you saw it.

Jerry Miller:
It’s how I saw it. Yeah. It’s how I saw it. And I knew immediately that I had saw things wrong.

Marlin Miller:
Yep. I

Jerry Miller:
Don’t know where she came from. I don’t know her story.

Marlin Miller:
Oh my. How many times do we-

Jerry Miller:
How many times do we do that?

Marlin Miller:
All the time. Oh my

Jerry Miller:
Goodness. All the time.

Marlin Miller:
It is amazing to me how we as people have somehow come to a point where we cannot have a conversation and disagree about something and then walk away and still shake hands and still be friends and still be civil to each other.

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
And a good friend of mine told me a couple years ago, he said, “Marlon, when is the last time that you changed your mind by being yelled at?” Or when have you changed somebody’s mind by yelling at him about something?

Jerry Miller:
Or belittling him.

Marlin Miller:
It never happens. You don’t change your mind being yelled at.

Jerry Miller:
No. As Christians, I think we’ve sometimes lost sight of the fact that we think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
Amen on that. I know. We think we have all the answers and I know it’s- Yeah.

Jerry Miller:
And a lot of these issues that people face, especially the city folks face their cultural, their society, it’s not so simple as just go plant a tomato plant because there’s a lot of factors that go into that.

Marlin Miller:
Yep. And then you and I can sit here and judge them

Jerry Miller:
Because

Marlin Miller:
They don’t

Jerry Miller:
Have a garden

Marlin Miller:
And they don’t.

Jerry Miller:
Yes.

Marlin Miller:
And it isn’t fair.

Jerry Miller:
It’s not fair.

Marlin Miller:
It’s not fair at all.

Jerry Miller:
It’s not fair. But life never was fair.

Marlin Miller:
Oh, man.

Jerry Miller:
If life would have been fair, Jesus would have never been crucified. If it would have been fair, I’d have no opportunity at salvation.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Yeah. We would all …

Jerry Miller:
We’d all be dead.

Marlin Miller:
Yeah. Completely hopeless. Jerry, thank you.

Jerry Miller:
You’re

Marlin Miller:
Welcome. Is there anything else that you want to add?

Jerry Miller:
No, thanks for the opportunity, Marlon. I know I rambled and I went through some bunny trails, but-

Marlin Miller:
No, this is great.

Jerry Miller:
But yeah, it’s who I am. And I would welcome phone calls. If people listen to this and they’re inspired by the story, give God the honor. If you want to talk to me personally, well, feel free to give me a phone call. And my phone number is 330-600-7481. Thank you.

Marlin Miller:
Thanks a ton, Jerry.

Jerry Miller:
You bet.

Marlin Miller:
This episode of the Plain Values Podcast is being brought to you by my friends at Kentucky Lumber. Derek and I were talking this morning and he shared a story about how they like to do business and they like to do business with people that are like them and they like to be treated in a way that they treat their own customers. He told me about a customer of theirs that he had to fire and this was not going the way that it typically does. And this guy was not being happy with anything that they did and nothing was good enough. And finally, Derek said, “You know what? You’ve disrespected my team enough and I think we’re done. And so you can go find your lumber someplace else.” And the attitude and the heart behind the way that Derek sees the world is exactly the way that I see the world and I have a hunch you might as well.
If you call Kentucky Lumber, just know that they might fire you if you treat them poorly. I’m kidding, of course. But they will treat you with the utmost respect because it’s how they want to be treated. And I think there’s a golden rule thing in there somewhere, but if you need anything at all to do with any lumber, wood flooring, wood siding, any type of wood product that has character just baked into it and a great team to match, call my friends at Kentucky Lumber. You can find them at drywallhaters.com. So hold
My hair. In his book, Ray Embrant is in the wind. Russ Ramsey says that the Bible is the story of the God of the universe telling his people to care for the sojourner, the poor, the orphan, and the widow. And it’s the story of his people struggling to find the humility to carry out that holy calling. Guys, that is what Plain Values is all about. If you got anything out of this podcast, you will probably love Plain Values in print. You can go to plainvalues.com to learn more and check it out. Please like, subscribe and leave us a review. Guys, love you all. Thanks so much.