On Planting and Sowing

A garden has two kinds of growth.  The first is the kind I like: plant a seed in spring, reap a harvest in summer, and the plant dies in the fall.  This happens with herbs, with vegetables, with tomatoes.  Sometimes a plant springs up the following year (my friend calls these "volunteers") when a seed from the previous year has fallen on fertile earth and creates something new.  I like it because you put in a little work, you get a pretty quick yield.  In only a matter of weeks, you have plump tomatoes and zesty herbs ripe for the picking, and you get to cook for a few months off this fresh produce from your own yard.

The second kind is harder for me, not because it's more work, but because it requires patience.  See, the second kind, generally fruits and flowers and trees, takes years to produce.  You drop a seed in the ground (or an indoor container) and the first year you watch it sprout and grow up.  I did this with strawberries.  The next spring, you have a plant, and that summer you might be lucky to get some produce.  Maybe 3 strawberries.  After the first year, I pulled the strawberry plants out the same as I did for the tomatoes, thinking I'd had a bust year.  Then my farmer grandpa told me I needed to leave them in the garden.  To let winter come and wait.  Now the following spring, the third, or even fourth year that you have been tending this plant, you start to get some good yield.  You get pints of strawberries, you get bushels of peaches.  And with a little work, some pruning, some watering, you will continue to reap from this plant that took so much more time to grow.

I went out in the yard and picked 25 strawberries today.  That's in addition to the 20 or so I picked yesterday, the 15 I picked the day before that.  And there are still more growing on the plants.  I don't like to wait, to tend something that isn't immediately producing.  Yet I am reaping the benefits of long-term gardening this summer.  This analogy fits more areas of my life than I care to admit.  The visible, short term results are the ones I like.  The steady praise of a paycheck and a job with a definite start and end...so much more preferable than the daily work of raising children and developing a marriage, which pays nothing and only shows results after years of hard labor.  The work I can do on my own, whose gain is mine alone, I would choose over the efforts of a group, helping the ones who are straggling.  The thing I already know I can do, rather than the new thing that I will fail at before I get better.  What is safe instead of what requires risk.

There is a passage of Galatians which is very popular to teach to children about the Fruit of the Spirit.  Sunday school teachers use construction paper images of fruit and write them out: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.  No matter what your religion, we can all agree that these are admirable traits.  But note that they are called "fruit", implying that these are things which do not grow overnight, but must be cultivated year after year in order to be present in our lives?

I set a goal for myself this year, to develop better habits.  Most of it boils down to this quick turnaround, the easy out, the candy bar instead an apple, the evening spent in front of the computer rather than face to face with another person.  And yet my pastor keeps repeating this verse from Isaiah-- "Behold I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland."  God is all about breaking old patterns and making things new again.  So I need to be as well.  There's been lots planted in my life, gifts and privilege and accessibility.  I need to look for long term fruit, for the berries that don't come quickly and easily.  I need to tend the plants that take many seasons to produce.

Scabs, Wounds, and Healing

Michael fell a few weeks ago.  He was running barefoot at the pool (insert lifeguard whistle) and tripped on a little ledge and went sprawling.  I hurried over, knowing he would need me even before the cries began.  I held him and patted his back, I inspected his knees and hands, I kissed his and head and "I got ya, it's going to be okay".  He kept crying, which was strange, because I didn't see any blood.  It seemed like too much for just a bump.  Then I shifted his body and I saw it: a giant bloody toe.  I had looked in all the expected places for an injury, but it was his toe that had been scraped of skin and was bright red.  I took him to the lifeguard station and we did the usual, antiseptic wipe, pressure to slow the bleeding, a band aid.  I kept holding him for several more minutes, then he was ready to get back down and play with his friends.  We changed the band aid when we got home, applied some Neosporin, covered the foot with a sock so he wouldn't mess with it.

About a week later, he came to sit beside me.  His feet were bare again, and he was looking intently at his injured toe.  He touched it gently, and I noticed that a huge scab had formed over the cut.  "Does it still hurt?" I asked him.  He nodded, still looking at the toe.  "That's called a scab," I explained.  "The scab grows over your cut like a natural band aid and it stays there while the skin heals underneath.  Then, when it's ready, your scab falls off."  I was about to say, "And it'll be like it never happened," but I stopped myself.  That's not accurate, I thought.  I mean, he still remembers the fall and the pain a week later, and while he might forget about it over the course of his life, it's not going to go away.  It was a big enough cut that he'll probably have a scar , a silvery patch of new skin to remind him of the fall.  So instead I said, "When it's ready, your scab falls off and you'll have a little scar where you got hurt.  But once it's healed, it won't hurt you anymore."  He looked at me then.  "It won't hurt no more?"  Nope, it won't hurt no more.

I thought some more about wounds and hurts.  I thought of James, who hits his bruises, hoping it will make them go away.  I thought of my sister, who would pick her scabs too soon and bleed, who would pour nail polish remover over her cuts.  Thankfully she learned better wound care in med school, and when she performs surgery, she stitches and glues and pieces her patients back together.  But it's not just our physical wounds that we mistreat, that we run dirt into or pretend they don't exist. We do this in our wounded hearts, we use crude, ineffective means to cover and hide and our hearts just get mangled in the process.  There is only one way to wholeness, one course of treatment in our bodies AND our hearts to fully heal.  We have to flush our wounds, treat with antiseptic, cover with clean bandages, and we have to let our bodies do the hard work of rebuilding.  We need new skin, new nerves, new connections to grow under our scabs.  And we have to wait, to allow the healing process to complete itself.  Only then can our scabs fall off, our bandages be removed, our bodies and hearts be free to live fully.  Not as pristine as the original, but whole as our scars entwine us and help us to move again.

http://desertstream.org/living-waters/

Five Minute Friday: NEW

A comfy, well-worn shoe

Well that's a scary word.  NEW?  I am someone who likes old.  I like worn-in.  No change.  New makes me think of tight shoes on the first day of school.

Or, speaking of the first day of school, how about who will I sit by?  Who is in my class?  Will I be able to get from my locker to class on time?  Who are my teachers?  Will they like me?  Will I understand what they are teaching?

Or new jobs.  How do I do this?  How will I know if I'm doing it right, or getting it all horribly, horribly wrong?  What are the guidelines?

New is like uncharted territory.  New is taking a machete to a jungle wall of trees and vines and making a path.  New is unknown obstacles and never-before-faced foes.

New is uncomfortable.  New is saying NO to how it's always been done.  New is potentially life-changing.  But it's scary.  How do we ever come up with the courage to try new?  Is it like that saying, we only try something new when it becomes unbearable to remain the same?  Who's with me?

My brave son on the first day of school (in his new shoes!)