My favorite authors can paint a picture with words. The ability to write realistic dialouge is important, but more so is the ability to make me feel the wind, smell the smoke, feel the chill in the air just by stringing words together in such a fashion that I become a part of the experience.

You have captured that here:

“The swirling wind blew across the field making the wheat roll like the sea. The endless waves stretched out as far as the eye could see and then suddenly disappeared over the hill, while right behind it was another crest and still another. To stand and absorb this field of gold is to catch a glimpse of what awaits me in heaven.”

I can see the waves of wheat and feel the wind. Of course I have personally experienced standing in a wheat filed in the wind, but I think that even had I never seen a field of wheat, that I would have been able to visualize what you were trying to evoke.

Don’t give up being an engineer, but focusing more on writing would be a positive thing.