About Priscilla Williams

Visionary, Painter, Teacher, Author

Priscilla and Kathleen

Summer Days on the Farm
Kathleen, (left) Priscilla’s older sister, age 14 and Priscilla (right), age 10

Born in May of 1946 in Carlisle, PA I was the middle child of five. I grew up on a 100-acre dairy and chicken farm. Hard work was part of the family interlacing.

In addition to being a dairy farmer, my dad was an agricultural teacher in the local high school, and he was a community development leader.

We had to travel 9 miles to connect with our school and church communities, so we could not get too involved in extra activities of those communities. This caused both a sense of living on the periphery and an opportunity to discover more of the creative simplicity of life.

Our family’s relationship and sense of dependence on God was fairly straight forward and simple.

In September of 1958, when I was 12 years old, our family’s faith in God was severely tested. All the neighboring farmers helped each other at harvest time. My dad was helping our neighbor when the tractor he was on hit a rock and flipped pinning him to the ground. The other farmers came running and supernaturally lifted the tractor off him as he crawled out from under it. Unfortunately, his injuries were so severe, he did not survive.

We children were at school when it happened. We came home to find that life on the farm and inside our soul had changed forever.

Even though my mother was a spiritual giant and did all she could to help us through, my father’s death sparked a prolonged spiritual conflict for me that kept escalating until I was twenty-six years old.

At its essence, it was a struggle over surrender and trust. I wanted to fully give my life to God, but I had trouble putting my serious doubts about His trustworthiness to rest.