Paid in full!

The print is small enough on this that it is probably illegible to the naked eye; it is a 5 year promissory note, in which details the terms and conditions that I will pay back the bank for the moneys they loaned me in order for me to buy my business, nearly 5 years ago. We paid it off yesterday. Yay.  Double-Yay.

It really is quite exciting to me; the fun of it just seems muted because of sitting down this morning and reading through emails of several people that I care deeply about going through very serious health problems; some of them terminal; and some of them will likely read this very blog.  

This is a difficult part of life for me; people.  As a Christian, you are involved with people you have to care about, its not that its required, you just don't really get the choice, you are family.  I've told Wifey occasionally after church that I just feel so exhausted from all the emotions floating around the meeting. There are my own emotions (some) during a good meeting or worship, or other's hardship prayer request, or even praises.  It all presses upon me, and sometimes gets quite overwhelming.  The thing I tell Wifey is that people are SOoo expensive.  Expensive in time (a precious commodity in my house) and expensive in emotions.  That is why I'm so impressed with people who truly commit their lives to others, people that pour out of their own life and into those people who can't really give back, and don't "get it."  People who don't "get" how to succeed at life in general, people who don't "get" how to turn their life over to Christ, needy people.  In other words, the people who Christ would have been ministering to on a daily basis.  

Its hard enough for me to really open up to people that I understand, with whom I identify with.  I recognize that in developing a relationship with someone, anyone, I am inviting pain upon myself because when know someone, and truly love them, you hurt when they hurt.   And people hurt.  

My oldest boy (8) feels it too.  During our prayer request time at church last week, he whispered to Herself to pray for our Dear Aunt, who has stage 4 cancer.  By the time She whispered to me it was too late, and the Prayer had already started.  I looked over at him, clearly upset that our Dear Aunt was not getting prayed for, choking back tears, frustrated with himself, and frustrated with me not moving fast enough.  I did bring it up as a prayer request after the prayer time, but when I asked him about it later, he said "well,  if everybody wasn't going to pray for her, I just decided that I would pray for her my own self."  He is obviously invested in her life, just as she has obviously invested in his.  She called yesterday, to speak to him on the phone, and it was so touching seeing them talk, I think it was good for him to speak to her, even though very painful and difficult for both of them.  I bet, if in 70+ years he gets cancer, he will remember that call clearly, and maybe invest in some young person's life as well.  My clueless youngest finally noticed all the teary eyes around and kept asking what was wrong.  When I told him how ill our Dear Aunt was, he burst into tears and was in stunned disbelief for some time.

I don't really know where this blog is going, or why I'm blogging it.  I'm certainly not trying to get anyone to  feel sorry for me because I'm sad that other people have cancer; that would seem horribly small and selfish.  And I"m certainly not complaining about the burden of my own hurt because of these suffering people who have poured rewards into my life for years.  I guess that I maybe I'm just recognizing the emotional heavy work that comes with a relationship.  I ache deeply for these people.  I feel so bad for them, for their families.  And I'm fighting off the insular inclinations that are following, the impulse that I need to wall up other relationships before they get too important to ignore.  I feel like flipping the old sign around in the storefront:  Sorry, we are emotionally closed!  I am struggling with an even stronger compulsion to withdrawn into my own little inner circle and not reach out, yet I think of what Christ did for all of us losers, who were lost and didn't seem much of a prize to anyone, and yet were pulled up from the pit and redeemed.  Here is a  stanza from one of my favorite hymns:

Oh, Jesus, Lord, who loved me like to Thee?
Fruit of Thy work, with Thee, too, there to see
Thy glory, Lord, while endless ages roll,
Myself the prize and travail of Thy Soul.

That last seems unlikely, but I guess I believe it.  Christ didn't stop until he had similar paperwork like the one above; 
Paid in Full.

In which I Detail The Emotional Rollercoaster of Tending to my Garden...

Presented to you below is a cycle of emotions I've noticed in my gardening experience over the course of my gardening career; I'm curious if anyone can relate.  Here is the sequence:

1) End of winter: "OH, boy, oh, boy; I'm a farmer, I'm a gardener! Can't wait to get my garden in!"

2) Spring: "Planting is really fun, I'm a gardener!"

3) Mid Spring: "Weeding sucks! I don't know about this gardening stuff"

4) Late Spring: "Watering and forever weeding really sucks!  I kinda don't think this gardening stuff is worth it!"

5) Early Summer: "Perpetually watering and forever weeding REALLY sucks; those 3 okra I've brought in so far are sooo not worth it.  I am NOT doing this again next year.  I've got so many better things to do with my time."

6) Mid Summer (the first time I have to use both hands to bring in the produce): "OH, boy, oh, boy; I'm a farmer, I'm a gardener! Can't wait to get my garden in next year!"  For me, that was yesterday.  I love to have a bountiful harvest; too much ain't enough.

The Old Guy (as we call him; my dad, a real farmer, and old and wise to boot) told me during this year's wheat harvest that often, the most important thing to most farmers is "production" and they can easily lose track of "profits".  I didn't ask; I only thought about it in retrospect, but took that to mean that the answer to "did you have a good year" usually lies in how much was produced, regardless of how much money was made or how much was spent on fuel and fertilizer.  In other words, sometimes you can lose track of why you are doing what you are doing. 

I see this in myself, but it is so much less painful to use my kids as an example. I tasked my younger daughter to clean off the concrete slab with the water hose.  After watching her aimlessly spray for a while, I asked her what it was she was doing.  Her response was "you told me to spray this concrete."  I then clarified to her that she was supposed to be cleaning the concrete; spraying it was only a tool in order to achieve the end result.  

"Oh...

Yeah... 

That is different."

Of course the implications are enormous in my own life; it got me to thinking about how much I do just because its "what I do" or its "how I do it," or even more unfortunate, the reason for doing things pivots on how I was feeling at the moment.

As we sow, so shall we reap.  True enough, but in most gardens, it involves so much more than sowing in order to reap; sowing is the fun part, the flashy part, but its by far the least of it.  Its the tending that really matters in the gardens I am hoping to enjoy the fruits of; the ones growing inside my house.  Right now it seems we have a lot of watering and weeding going on in our little gardens.

My desire then, is to be more focused on the end goal, the reward, less on my immediate circumstances. In doing so, I'm hoping that the perpetual watering and the forever weeding can become less of a burden, and more of a tool we have available to us in order to achieve our harvest. As a gardener, yes.  But more as a believer and follower of God, as a Parent, yes, and last but not least, as the Privileged, Exclusive and Rightful Lover of "Herself".

O, Wasp! Where is Thy Sting?

Yesterday was an auspicious day, a very momentous day; one that required a trip to town by Herself and I in order to commemorate it in indelible ink upon the very souls of our young offspring by way of etching memories using the medium of Ice Cream and Cones, and Peanut Butter Chocolate Syrup.

But I can see that this will require some background; so I warm to my task.  I will start with a confession; I am an envious person. Worse, even,  I envy my own offspring!  "How so?" you may ask; I will tell you.  You may not believe this, but until yesterday I have never been stung by a wasp! EVER!

For some reason, wasps have never particularly enjoyed my company.  I don't know if it is due to pheromones, bad attitude, my alpha nature, or just my bad Body Oder, but it just doesn't happen.  All my children get stung around our little farmlet,; every summer it seems that nearly all of them get stung.  Not me; I'm the odd man out.  I've lived in the country nearly my whole life, and nobody spends more time outside than I do; but No Dice.  So I started expressing my disappointment to my kids for the last several years, and being the adoring children that they are, and knowing my deep longing to be stung, they always come and tell me the likely spots with the largest nests.  It seems we have an inordinate amount of wasp nests around our little farm for some reason; like I say, the kids are always coming up stung, but anyway, I'll follow the kids over to the garden shed, picnic table, garden fence, etc and grab a short stick on the way and just knock down any old wasp nest I see.

It quite infuriates the Wasps; they dive bomb my head and buzz me angrily as the kids watch from a safe distance, rooting for the Wasps.  But there is never any consummation of that gleeful intercourse between man and insect that seemingly everyone has enjoyed but me, until yesterday that is.

I was in the pasture picking up square bale twine from bales the newly pastured pigs had torn up when I noticed (being a naturally observant sort of chap) several bumble bees flying in and out of an old bale laying on the ground.  I'm no rocket scientist (like my father-in-law) but I could put two and two together! I knew there was only one thing to do.  I kicked that old straw square bale apart!  It turns out that Bumble Bees are kind of aggressive!  An entire phalanx of angry Bees swarmed out. One big dude buzzed me several times and when I didn't leave, he finally zapped me right on the shoulder.  That was great and all, but he acted like he might kind of like to continue to do it some more.  I was completely unarmed at the time, so I ended up whipping my shirt off and knocking him to the ground and stomping on him.  

Ahhh!  How sweet it is!  I finally get to join that exclusive, elusive "People Who Have Been Stung by Things With Stingers Club."  So, as I said, after we ate supper, I called the neighbors, invited them over for my celebration and me and Herself jumped in the truck and tore off to town to get the celebratory Ice Cream and Cones.  It was something of a hurried and raucous celebration, but you know, any excuse to eat ice cream is a good one...

I will say, that the kids pointed out a couple of things, though.  Firstly, they said that technically, the Bumble Bee isn't really a wasp, but since it has a reputation of being worse than a wasp, they were generous enough to call it good enough.  And secondly, even though nobody audibly doubted my story, everyone was wholly unimpressed with my welt that I had.  One comment I heard was "I've got chigger bites worse than that!!!" And I lost my chance now, I already killed all the rest of the Bumblebees; Oh, well, its hard to impress kids these days... 

But at least I no longer need envy them!