Spoiler alert: This MBOB crosses from the past to the present.

My brother wrote this about the two decades between the two world wars:

Economic conditions were worsening by 1927. In the early twenties crops were good, producing 25-35 bushels of wheat per acre, which sold for as high as $1.52 a bushel in 1925. In 1926 it was down a bit and continued on down to a low of 36 cents a bushel in 1936.

During the early thirties only 6-12 bushels per acre of wheat was harvested, but the worst was yet to come. In 1936 and 1937 there was no harvest. There was very little rain and lots of wind, producing blinding dust storms. There was rust (a fungus) in 1937. There were also hordes of grasshoppers infesting the fields. They ate everything.

In the late 1960s, my husband and I and our two little boys were living in southern California. We drove to Santa Barbara one day to go to the beach and while we were there, I walked into a little book store specializing in used books. It was one of those little spots-along-the-street that is nothing more than a doorway and a window display.

I poked around the dusty shelves a bit and then saw a table in a back room stacked high with random volumes. As I glanced over the pile I saw this title on the top layer: Next Year Will Be Better. My heart flipped a beat and I felt like I had been called back home.

Who on earth wrote a book titled Next Year Will Be Better? It had to be someone from back home.

A quick read of the back cover confirmed that – yes – it was written by a now-grown farm boy reared on a South Dakota farm in the ’30s and ’40s. The phrase was as common in his family as it was in ours – his home also headed by the stoic Scandinavian Dad and the ever-multi-tasking Scandinavian Mom. Together they had faced the uncertain crops. The certain winters. The destruction of the crop by a summer afternoon’s storm. The death tolls of an unexpected October blizzard that decimated their cattle herd. And he had heard them say, “Next year will be better.”

After the summer storm destroyed the wheat, “Next year will be better.”

After the cattle were buried, “Next year will be better.”

After the barn burned down because a lantern tipped over, “Next year will be better.”

So when he decided to write his story, it was a natural choice for the title.

The documents and memories in my family present the same theme. When there was no crop in 1936 they still believed so they said, Next Year Will Be Better.

Again in 1937, there was no crop. There may have been tear tracks down a dust-covered face but the heart still said, Next Year Will Be Better.

Over the years these folks had started laughing at themselves a bit for persisting in their confidence that Next Year Will Be Better.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, it was talked about quietly: Next Year Will Be Better.

Early on in ’32 and ’33, someone said it: Next Year Will Be Better.

They might laugh at themselves for bravely hammering the frail piton into the overhanging rock of their future but no one else should.

They lived through darkness and despair choosing to believe that next year would be better. And fought for it to be.

What were their reasons for that choice? I’m not sure I know, exactly. I could project some words to try to say, but as I think about what those reasons might have been, I find myself being far more sure of what those reasons were not.

• They did not say “Next year will be better” because they were sure it would be.
• They did not say “Next year will be better” with the unspoken thought “….because we can’t deal with another year like the last three. We just can’t.”
• They did not say “Next year will be better” because they thought they deserved it.
• They did not say “Next year will be better” because they thought it was important to be cheerful and not dwell on the most recent crop failure.

Saying next year will be better was the alternative to despair. Despair is deadly both in its seed and in its fruit, and saying next year will be better was their announcement to the unknown future that, as far as they were concerned, they were going to give it everything they had. They weren’t going to change their minds about what they knew or about who they were.

Despair essentially says that God is not enough and neither are we, so we will now sit down in the middle of the road and refuse to get up again. An alternative is needed. Believing that next year will be better is an alternative.

Saying next year will be better reflects determination, faithfulness, willingness to do what I can do, acceptance of the limits of what I cannot do, and readiness to get up and push on. That’s not resignation. That’s courage.

It’s practical. It’s necessary. Maybe it’s because I knew them and I saw them – maybe it’s because I saw the look when the crop was hailed out. Maybe it’s because I saw that same one say next year will be better….

….whatever the reason,

~ I knew then and I know now it was not a throw away line ~

~ It was a line for people who had nothing left to lose ~

MBOBs are not about sentimental nostalgia (hat tip/Spar Harmon).

The stuff they did and the reasons they did it can run through our veins in 2014. Seems to me that something in us had better take hold of something that was in them, thank God for it, drag it into the present, and live it again.

If we grab on to what they used to build this country, it just might be what saves it.

Honesty. Effort. Standing. Continuing. Believing.

Knowing. Trusting. Working. Praying.

MBOBs are about reality. MBOBs are about Be-ing.

Next Year Will Be Better

Happy New Year!

N e x t  Y e a r W i l l  B e  B e t t e r