Falling in Public and Other Summer Fun

Yes I am having fun, can't you tell?

Lets just say this has been one of the most interesting few weeks I have had in a very long time.  First off I have been trying for weeks to write but was taking a medicine for chronic pain that left me feeling mentally dead and unable to write or even come up with things to write about.  That was like losing my soul so when it stopped working for the pain I was happy to stop taking it.  I have always thought that stuff was brain poison anyway and you should have seen the doc's face when I called it that.  Let's just say he didn't find funny but oh well.

Anyhow, the day after my last dose of the brain poison I decided to go to the local farmer's market and while stepping up on to the curb, I caught my toe and fell in front of EVERYONE full force onto my right hand. (Uhg...why is this kind of thing always in front of a crowd?)  As I layed there unable to get up I looked at my poor hand.  Yup...this was not good.  There was what looked like a bone out of joint or something sticking up on the right side of my hand above the wrist joint and I could not turn or bend it.  I waiting wondering if anyone was coming to help and felt like people had just evacuated the sidewalk when I fell...that was a really weird feeling.

It took onlookers what seemed like forever to figure out I could not get up on my own and those who helped were so sweet. I was laying there on my back and they were all trying to help me up not knowing I could not get up from a sitting position.  It was a circus of kindness but they finally got me on my feet. (Thank you to all of you who helped...whoever you are.)

I was in shock for about 15 minutes and given a comfortable chair and some ice for my wrist and then I drove myself back home and wrapped it up and tried to not use it.  That was interesting.  Try not using your favorite hand for an evening and see how you do.

The boat cast the doc first put on my hand that lasted 24 hours

By Monday I was at the Urgent Care clinic, x-rays showed it was indeed broken and my paw was set in a boat cast (a type of splint that is made up of the lower half of a fiberglass cast).  I got to stand along side the doc and read the book on how to treat this type of injury.  I now know the names of th bones in my hand...well some of them and in my arm too. (I'm a nerdy girl and eat this stuff up).  My doc was not very up on how to treat my injury and I knew it but gave her the benefit of the doubt.

By Tuesday morning I was ready tear the boat cast off my hand and throw it through our front window after a night of constant readjustments and rewrapping the darn thing.  It just wasn't staying where it needed too and the nerve pain it was causing was ridiculous.  The first thing I called the doc who told me I definitely didn't need a cast (yippee I think) and I could use a store bought splint but it needed to be a firm one and that I needed to be able to move my fingers "a lot".  I am a notoriously bad patient when it comes to not using my hand as I have discovered too.

So here I am...it will be 2 to 4 weeks stuck in a splint before I am back to being able to using my hand freely again and typing with a single finger is honestly a drag.  No gardening, no crafting, I can sort of cook but can't chop veggies so what fun is that?  I should get a video of me trying to dish up food...that is laugh.

At this point I am painfully aware of every curb or step I cross and am getting board out of my mind.  So how's your summer going?  I hope you are all staying safe, remember to pick up those feet when you step up on curbs and thanks for listening.  If you have a funny story you wanna share here, feel free.  I could always use another reason to laugh.

It's Not Bad Just Different

What do to, what to do?  The past 18 years I have given myself to learning about, practicing and teaching gardening and now it seems that God is taking me in a completely different direction. I'm sure to others it may even seem that I am throwing away something I should hold on to.  My answer to them is that they don't live in my life, hear what God has spoken to me, nor traveled all the paths God has taken me down to get me to let go of my life completely and surrender my future to Him without reserve.  This is not at all a sudden change either but has been quite gradual, taking years of Him working on my heart and mind, teaching me to trust Him with my now and future and to be able to lay down the past so I can head into that future with Him.  And that is exactly what I intend to do.

I think the condition of my garden today says a lot of what my own human efforts to "make" my life have rendered.  There has been some beauty and benefit, but it has not been sustainable and as I look out over the garden, though it still bears some resemblance to the once beautifully kept garden of a decade ago, it demonstrates how helpless I am to really control things after all.  The flowers still bloom, the birds and bees still flutter around happily and the cats still lounge in areas that used to be chamomile paths though the chamomile has long since died out and been replaced by other ground covers and weeds.

So the garden is in full decline now and the chaos of nature has taken over where a gardener's guiding hand once fostered order.  I no longer have the strength to dig, weed and mulch and am finding the desire to do so eclipsed by something bigger that I cannot even explain except to say that it is something I can feel deep within my soul that won't let me go.  I want to make a difference in people's lives for Jesus and to fully surrender to whatever that looks like by God's definition and not mine this time.

The fence surrounding my garden is rotting away and was pulled apart by some errant youth who thought it fun to yank at the pickets leaving a wound next to the welcoming gate and a sad spot in my heart as I remember how cheerful it looked in its beginning.  How many plans in my life have also rotted away or been pulled apart by life's circumstances.


The weeds have taken to covering the unprotected soil that I used to mulch religiously so to smother errant weed seeds, disallowing them opportunity to ruin what I had worked so hard to create. My precious plants are now fighting among themselves for the right to survive in this ground.  I have no control anymore.  I look with some regret as the lesser desirables swallow a favorite plant eventually killing it out...and such is life.  Human efforts never last.  This is a hard lesson to learn when one no longer can tend to a garden loved or maintain some favorite work or effort that brought joy and satisfaction or maybe identity to their life.  I know this is not just my story but the story of many of us.

Chaos is not a beautiful thing but savage in my garden.  My eyes long for restful views with clean paths and mulched beds and plants that are kept within their bounds.  But that is life...and life must go on...so I look to my Savior to find rest for my soul and I pray my garden will one day be renovated or even erased so I won't hear its pleading cries as I peer into the chaos that reigns there today.  Renovated even as God has renovated my heart and life, pulling out the things that I had put in place of Him and what He wants for me so that I am a blank slate ready for my Master's hand. 

If you think me crazy or foolish because I don't walk the common path of human understanding and hold fast to what I have invested all that time in to gain the knowledge I have about plants then I guess I'm right where I need to be, looking the fool for Christ.  You see it isn't about what I know at all, it's about what He knows!  And only God knows what comes next.

Whatever "next" is for me is clearly going to be different than what was.  That does not mean it will be bad, just different.  When I begin to explain to people that I am laying down this "thing" I have been doing that everyone thinks is so grand, they all blanch and moan like its bad, giving me that "look" and trying to explain to me that they think its going to come back around or that I'm somehow mistaken.  But I don't care if I ever pick it back up again.  I'm done trying to do my own thing.  I usurped the gifts God had given me of exhortation and teaching into this thing called gardening because it was there, not because I prayed about it and was following God's will.  I did it to draw attention to myself, to be known as an expert and looked up to, to be found worthy and accepted and I'm quite honestly wanting to throw up right now at the distaste of this knowledge.  How thankful I am that God loves me enough to get in my face and show me the truth of my attitudes when they stink so I can turn away from them and be restored to what He has for me.  The beautiful woman of God, gifted and pleasing in His sight.

If you know me you may not have seen all of these things in me but they were definitely there and it was ugly. Me all puffed up in my knowledge and anxiously struggling.  Thankfully God would not let me continue on and finally broke me like that imperfect pot in the potter's hands that has to be broken and then softened so it can be reshaped.  I've suffered the breaking, the pouring of the water and the reshaping and the firing...but do not yet see for what purpose I am to be used.  It may and will probably be better than anything I have ever imagined which is what I expect as God is in the business of doing things bigger and better than anything we could ever ask or even imagine.

So go ahead God, knock my socks off!  Blow me away!  Take my breath away in amazement and make me dance with the gleeful delight of a child at the site of what You do! I'm all Yours...and I can't wait to see what You have for me next.

Copyright © 2010 by Patty Hicks

All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All reviews must include author's name and a link back to this blog.

Curve Balls

Just when you think...
...you can move indoor plants outdoors, it hails
...you finally have your drip system figured out when it springs a leak leaving dry your seed beds.
...you will finally beat the old habit of letting your seedbeds go too dry, you discover its going to be 100 degrees over the weekend and you have plans to be out of town.  Oh well.

Life is always throwing us curve balls.  We never see them coming.  We hope we won't suffer the results of being hit by one, but inside we know that's not realistic. Life is full of unknown futures...be those that affect our garden or those affecting other areas of our lives.  So what are we to do?  How are we to respond when that curve ball slams into our lives with all its disruptive force.  Will we sit discouraged, singing the blue, moaning to our friends and family about our dreams lost and complaining about how hard it all is.  Or will we take a completely different track by examining our situation, letting go of things as we need to, either in part or completely, and start moving forward again.

Letting go...that's a very uncomfortable and often frightening thing to do.  We have to shift our whole mind set onto an unfamiliar path.  We have to get out of our "comfort zone", that place of our original dreams or life as we know it or life as we wanted it and live in a whole new place.  But letting go does something amazing!  In the act of letting go we are brought to a place of being able to see whole new vistas of opportunity, the new direction beyond the original trajectory of our original hopes, dreams and plans.  A change of course that gives a person the ability to see more clearly the next step needed to move forward, instead of letting what seems like misfortune ruin the whole of future plans.  Do I hear a question? "Casting off of what is not really needed...but needed by whom?  Not me, I needed that!"  Oh really?  Are you absolutely sure?  Will you shrivel up and die if you don't have your way?  I seriously doubt it.  Let me ask you a question.  Are you absolutely sure your way was the best way?  I used to think I did.  In fact I was stubbornly convinced of it at times.  My how things have changed.

Recently I began to wonder if I was morning the loss of dreams more than taking a good look at what was really in front of me.  I have spent years working with and studying plants and gardening.  My goal...to make a career out of it, to own my own herb growing business in this romantic country setting, complete with a rustic but cozy space to teach and where I wouldn't have to play the gypsy teacher who is always having to schlep my wares from group to group.  A peaceful and satisfying life.  Due to circumstance beyond my control that has never happened.  As a matter of fact it seems things are going in nearly the opposite direction for the most part.  I have had to come to grips with the realization that it may very well never happen.  And come to the understanding that its not a bad thing at all really.  Its just different than what my original plans were.  Oh and in case you're wondering, that dream still lives on in me though it is tempered by the force of more than one curve ball and having to pick myself out of the dust several times.

Curve balls are teachers and mine have taught me I needed to take a good look at my responses to my circumstance, good or bad and the people in them as well.  This picture of me in front of that little strip of grass...one of those "good ideas" that turned real ugly and one that totally changed my life's direction to one more in tuned with what God's will is for my life.

Also important in this exercise are examining the words I say and my thoughts and attitudes about things I'd like to do or have always wanted to do.  The picture I get of this is that its a lot like picking bones out of a good brook trout.  Anyone who fishes knows what I'm talking about here. You spend your time and strength hoping to catch a fish and when you do, your next goal is to enjoy eating that fish.  But there are lots of little bones hidden in the prize meat of this fish.  My poor or wrong attitudes are a lot like those fish bones and can ruin the pleasure of my catch.  The fish is life...my life...my eating the fish, my enjoyment of this life.  So I'd rather be careful and pick out the bones and put them away from my plate so I can enjoy the meal.  I've digressed quite a ways from the garden but then this is important stuff.  Life is full of bones, those things that stall us out and cause us to choke on the disappointments.  Just another facet of the lesson.

So many things I've tried in my life have not turned out the way I dreamed, actually almost everything.  Does this mean I have failed.  No.  I keep moving forward.  I keep dreaming.  I keep hoping.  And I keep growing.  The result is that I look at things much differently than I used to.  Some things were never meant to be no matter how much I desire them to be otherwise.  Some dreams never meant to be realized.  This is what life is like.  That does not make it bad...its just different...different than I had planned.

King Solomon recognized this truth as he wrote in Proverbs 16:9  "The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps."  He understood it was God who was working all things together for a purpose.  He knew that no matter how hard we try, sometimes things just won't work out.  That it is not for man to determine his path, his success is not ensured by taking every precaution, every correct step, but that it is God who determines the future.  He knew that his God had purposes of His own He was ensuring would get accomplished.  He knew that fighting against God's will only brought more hardship.

I have come to understand that these times are what God has intended from the beginning.  Oh yes, I know that may sound to some of you like fatalism but it's not.  I am not at all saying why bother doing anything when God can just swoop in and take charge and ruin everything.  Somehow I've never really felt like that, though I have been tempted to do so and sometimes have wondered why He has brought my life to the place it is today.  We all wonder why when we are hit with curve balls.

The thing I do understand with great clarity is that whatever I lose or face, the successes and challenges are all  intended to forge the character God desires in me according to the things He planned before this place I walk on was even set on its foundations. God is not as interested in my seeming success as He is seeing that His own purposes and plans are worked out in and through me. So does that mean He does not desire me to prosper?  No, it is more likely that His definition of prospering is in conflict with what I have defined as prosperity.  Yes...it is different.  God is interested in using me and He's interested in using you too.  Now doesn't that blow your mind and all the world's definition of who is worthy of being used.  In the world's eyes I know I certainly do not appear as a success...but that doesn't matter to God.  He still wants to use me...this person who nothing has really gone the way she had planned.  Do you have any idea why?  I do.  He is more glorified in the miracle of using an imperfect person (which we all are by the way).  It confounds the wisdom of the world that He would even consider it!  And I am glad!

Having His plans worked out in me and through me "is" my success and now my goal.  With all these curve balls that are sent into my life He was not looking to cast me into eternal frustration and despair at all, but looking out for my, good both here and in eternity...to cause all things to work together for my good and for His glory...now that's somethin'!  And this makes no sense to the mind set on earthly success.  The Bible calls that mindset foolish.

So how then am I to even want to step forward, to dream or to will to do anything at all.  Its simple.  Because I know God has plans for my future.  I may not understand them.  They may even be painful.  But the fruit of what comes out of my future, if I am yielded to His will, His plans, will have the sweetest most satisfying taste my soul has ever experienced.  God is good and nothing is ever wasted in His economy.  Bring it on!  With God I can do anything.  With God all things are possible.

So the next time you are hit with a curve ball...just take a second look.  It may have opened a window to a whole new vista and be exposing your future life and pathway.

Copyright © 2010 by Patty Hicks

All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All reviews must include author's name and a link back to this blog.