Reaping and Sowing
Blogger's Note: This post was written on 3/8/06, at around 2 pm, but Blogger was hosed when I went to publish. Also, they used to let me change the post date, but that's gone, too. Seems like Blogger is headed in the wrong direction.

One thing I really like about God, even though I'm still pissed off at Him, is that anytime I throw down the gauntlet, He's got a little something for me to chew on. I rarely like the taste, but at least He makes it impossible for me to sit here and bitch and moan about being ignored. Which, when you think about it, is pretty cool. After all, who am I to be busting the Almighty's chops the way I do on a regular basis?

Several things have happened in the past 24 hours or so to lighten my mood, although working with the IBM outsourced, offshored crowd has me in a major snit right now. But that's another issue altogether.

First, a guy from my church's 12-step ministry calls me out of the blue on Monday night, just because he had been thinking about me and wondering where I've been. Taking it as a sign, I invited him over to catch up last night. This poor guy's really been through the wringer. He works for USAirways, whose troubles have forced him to work 3-4 days a week away from his family in Philly, or be unemployed. His wife is addicted to prescription medication and relapses more frequently and severely than I do, going so far as to steal pain meds from her mother after surgery -- and her son's meds. Then there's the son, who is fifteen and has been involved in cutting and has flipped out to the point where hospitalization has been required. Yet my friend has stuck out the program, taking the whole weight of his family's strife on his shoulders, trusting God, staying the course, and keeping it together, where I probably would have killed them all. So....

humbling? yeah.

Then yesterday I get an email from V, asking me to drop off the boy's insurance card and other vital documentation because he has a couple of appointments to go to on Friday. On the way home, I called him just to make sure everything was OK, because it sorta struck me as odd that he'd be having two doctor's appts on the same day. Well, he freaked out and jumped to a conclusion that I'm actually surprised hadn't occurred to me. He's afraid she's going to get him drug-tested, a fear that I'm sure is largely fueled by the fact that he took the first opportunity he had to get high at his mother's house. I'm not so sure, though. It will be less than two weeks since he left my house, so most testing available wouldn't be able to differentiate the residuals from last weekend with those from three weekends ago.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if she is sandbagging him, and I'm guessing that the second appointment is with a counselor of some ilk. How has this contributed to my improved mood, you ask? I think it's funny how ridiculously clueless she is in dealing with this boy. What kind of message does she think she's sending when she let him out of the house the first weekend after 'rescuing' him from his unfit father? It just gives me the giggles.

Plus, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the inevitable collision that these two are heading for.

Lastly, this morning I heard a challenging message from James McDonald of the Walk In The Word radio show. He preached about the law of reaping and sowing. Two things challenged me. First, there is this whole concept of me having the ability to "respond" differently to my situation than I have. I'm not sure I totally buy it, and McDonald sometimes rubs me the wrong way with his chop busting. I still am convinced that I need something more to get me on the right path, other than my own will power. The other thing that got into my head is the whole sowing and reaping metaphor.

I've been doing quite a bit with houseplants and seedlings since the beginning of the year, and I saw the relevance of how you have to develop a longer-term perspective when dealing with plants. You put some seeds into starter pots, wait a week or two for them to sprout, then wait many more weeks for them to develop to the point where they add beauty, fragance, tranquility and cleaner air to your home. In the meantime, you have to tend them, but with the realization that trying to rush the process can end up killing the whole project.

I don't know if this is quite getting the picture painted, but it makes sense to me. If you put tender seedlings into blazing sunlight, they die. If you neglect to give them the right amount of water, soil, warmth, light, or humidity, they will suffer and die. If you try to force the issue and circumvent the natural patterns of growth, you risk ruining what you are trying to create. But if you exercise patience and pay attention to the signs they provide that tell you what they need, you will get the satisfaction of enjoying their gifts -- often for years to come.

Maybe I'm like that. It occurs to me that I can't just try and rip out all of my problems and try to 'be' something that I'm not. I can't rush the healing, or the growing season. But I also can't withdraw myself from the light, the quenching, root-strengthening water and soil I need to rid myself of the blighted infestation that has diseased my soul.

It'll do, pig, it'll do.
- posted by The Drake @ 7:19 AM