One thing I like and hate about gardening is that it reveals to my husband and myself all of my character defects. As he likes to tell people, "Farming is merciless". For example, plants don't care that you have charisma, good looks or humor. That won't make up for the fact that you are inconsistent and unobservant. Your strengths won't compensate for your weaknesses. The plants will expose your ignorance and character defects.
Same goes for parenting. One parenting book says,
"Children have trials just as hard to bear, just as grievous in character, as those of older persons. Parents themselves do not feel the same at all times. Their minds are often perplexed. They labor under mistaken views, and feelings. Satan buffets them, and they yield to his temptations. They speak irritably and in a manner to excite wrath in their children, and are sometimes exacting and fretful. The poor children partake of the same spirit, and the parents are not prepared to help them, for they were the cause of the trouble. Sometimes everything seems to go wrong. There is fretfulness all around, and all have a miserable, unhappy time. The parents lay the blame upon their poor children and think them very disobedient and unruly, the worst children in the world, when the cause of the disturbance is in themselves." (Child Guidance 206)
In fewer words,
Often it is our own attitude, the atmosphere that surrounds ourselves, which determines what will be revealed to us in another. {Adventist Home 105}
I'll admit, I've never felt so dumb as when we moved here and gardening became a major responsibility in my life. One of my daily chores is to keep the seedlings watered. Last year we originally had this seedling table on the north side of our house.
Translation = shade most of the day. It got super windy and we decided to move it to another side of the house (the east). Translation = gets sunny as soon as the sun rises. I had been in the habit of taking the cover off after breakfast and getting the kids dressed for the day (I thrive on routines). The morning after we moved the table I went out there around 9:00 ish and everything inside had wilted because of the heat. The sun came up at like 5:30. They were non-revive-able. And it was too late in the season to start over. The plants didn't care that I had faithfully watered them EVERY day (several times a day, for up to a month!). For our winter seedlings I even have to cover the table with moving blankets and turn the heater on inside and then uncover it in the morning. But, despite all that consistency, if ONE day you become too busy, or forget for whatever reason and it gets neglected....ONE DAY, it drys out or gets too hot in there, they all die. (Sometimes they can dry out and then if you water them they can be revived but too many times of that will mess up their roots and they will never be healthy plants.) Your whole season of growing including all of the potential produce is LOST. Money that could have been saved because you grew it yourself is an unrecoverable opportunity.
This year I've really purposed in my heart to be faithful in the small things. I've tried to be super zealous and attentive, keeping it as a high priority in my day. But alas, new challenges have arose. We ordered some raspberry and blackberry plants and had to keep them under the table because they were too heavy and the stem too high to put inside. Since we have chickens and guinea hens I put a mesh screen to protect them. But, I wasn't attentive enough to keep a rock to hold down the corners of it and when the wind would blow, the corners would flap open just enough to tempt the chickens to squeeze their way in and find a green tasty treat. They would eat the leaves and I'd feel bad but rejoice because leaves would grow back - "no permanent damage" I thought. I was careful for a while, but then mysteriously it would happen again. And again.
It finally warmed up enough to get them planted in our garden and after a couple of weeks I told David, "Looks like the blackberries are doing okay but the raspberries aren't leafing out." I should have known what was coming. "Yeah" he said, "It's because you didn't protect them well enough from the chickens. They can only take so much." He was as gentle as could be in his rebuke but I still felt the sting of failure. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend" (Proverbs 27:6).
Raspberry Plant Blackberry Plant
When the plants mirror my character defects and I begin to get discouraged and think "When will I ever learn!" I remind myself of the objective of gardening. Not only is it to grow produce, but it's also to grow character, and character often grows just like plants. Slowly.
"The constant contact with the mystery of life and the loveliness of nature, as well as the tenderness called forth in ministering to these beautiful objects of God's creation, tends to quicken the mind and refine and elevate the character." {Adventist Home 142}
I'm ashamed to admit that the same issue came up with our mesquite trees. At first we only put the white plastic thing around them but David noticed that it would cast a shadow in the day and they needed more sunlight. So we decided to put the fencing around them. He told me to take the white thing off in the day and put it back on at night. I did....but I forgot to put them back on ONE night. In the morning I found that about 5 of the 17 trees had been chewed, probably by a kangaroo rat.
Thankfully, mesquite trees are very tough, stubborn and adaptable. They will still grow, but not perfectly. What's interesting is that when a mesquite is chewed on while it's young it will grow more like a shrub than a tree, which doesn't look as appealing. It's development is forever changed.
Tree vs. Shrub
This got me thinking about the importance of CONSISTENT protection. It only takes one night for a kangaroo rat to chew on mesquite leaves. It only takes one day of having the raspberries vulnerable to chicken cravings. ONE.
Protecting kids are no different. I've worked enough with teenagers to know the horrendous damage that happens in their soul from being sexually abused as children. It is believed that 1 in 3 girls is sexually abused, and a general consensus of 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 boys is sexually abused, and this is only based on the cases that are reported. It is Satan's plan to destroy their faith, hope, love and peace. Doesn't that pretty much encompass everything good? For the rest of their life, if they do not deal with it appropriately, they battle with trusting God and others (faith) "why didn't they protect me?", they struggle with hopelessness or depression (hope) "why bother, why try, why dream, why want, why feel?" (there is a sense of powerlessness from being a victim), they have a hard time loving themselves and others because they feel used and abused (love) "I'm a piece of junk", and they feel tremendous amounts of shame because they've been robbed of their innocence and peace. All of these can build in their heart thoughts of suicide, panic, eating disorders, contempt for themselves, feeling rejected, blamed, alienated, and threatened, just to name a few.
One counselor, trying to help an abuser understand the gravity of their sin says this:
How can I frame words to express the enormity of this awful sin? How can I present it in such a manner that you will no longer look upon it, as you have done, as no great wrong? I have granddaughters, the children of my son, W. C. White. If I were forced to choose whether these children should be exposed to these temptations, educated in these evil practices, or be cut down by death, I would say, Let them die in their innocency. Let them not be corrupted by eating the apples of Sodom. . . . {Testimonies on Sexual Behavior 127}
I know some people who would have rather died an early death than to live the rest of their life with the baggage that comes from sexual abuse. It's not pleasant to deal with. But praise God he can heal and restore faith, hope, love and peace. I admire survivors who press on and are determined to let God's grace cover their disgrace.
In the Biblical account of Amnon raping his sister Tamar it says she fled to her brother Absalom's house and lived there a desolate woman. (2 Samuel 13:20) She was a beautiful girl who had a lot going for her. She was the daughter of King David so she could have done or been anything she wanted to! Not only that, she had a very virtuous character. She had the heart of a servant, innocently serving her family, and even tried to stop Amnon by reminding him of HIS reputation "thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel." This girl was thinking about him! But in one afternoon, everything beautiful in her soul was ransacked and stolen. She was left desolate.
I know someone whose son was molested at church while she was chatting with other adults and not keeping a close enough eye on her four year old son. This disturbed me greatly. I began reading to find out how I can better protect my children. I read a book that I would HIGHLY recommend to all parents or people who work with children or teens, even those who have been abused themselves. It's called "Serpents Among Us". Here's a little canvass on the book found on Amazon.
"The author, who is a police investigator and has worked in a major
crimes-special victims unit for nearly 20 years, shares his personal
perspective to parents and guardians on how to protect their children
from sexual predators. It will educate parents about
- How to recognize
when a child predator is in their midst
- How to protect their child
from that predator;
- How to recognize if their child has already been
offended by a predator; and
- What to do if their child discloses that
they have been offended by a predator.
For the adult reader who was
sexually molested as a child, it is the author's hope that this resource
may assist you making some sense out of what happened to you, and help
you understand that it wasn't your fault. First, the book will lay the
frame work to help parents understand the common tactics that predators
use to gain access to, seduce, and maintain control of a child. The book
then discusses specific defensive counter measures against these
tactics. The author offers a dozen specific cases that will allow the
reader to apply the principles they learned to real-life scenarios that
unfold every day all around them."
Some of these stories might make you want to vomit but it's also the type of book you can't put down. Very well written and informative.
Another resource I found was to share with your children. It's written with rhythm and repetition and is not too graphic but specific enough to be practical. You can go to amazon and read reviews to be canvassed on it. I read them with my children and then gave them to a family I thought could use them.
Children are like little vulnerable plants and it only takes a short time for a predator to nibble their leaves which stunt or warp or kill their growth. I consider it a very important responsibility to protect them. Here are some practical things I'm doing to keep them safe:
- Keep communication open: Ask them daily or weekly what made them happy and sad. Make it habitual for them to tell me how they feel and what happened to them during the day.
- Teach them what is appropriate and inappropriate for touching on their body. Yell and Tell if someone asks them to do something or see something inappropriate.
- Keep them with me or in my line of sight. They don't need to play in another room while adults visit. They stay with me.
- Only trust certain people to watch them. I'm VERY selective.
- Pray for angels to shield them from the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Peter 1:4)
When my children are grown up, it won't matter that I was a good cook, that I home schooled them and had a great marriage that provided stability in their life. If I am distracted and loose in my government of them, exposing them to the deceptive creeps in this world who want to rob them of their innocence, all the other stuff I've done to build in them a love for God, a sense of worth and confidence will be undermined. I am learning through the mistakes I make in gardening the defects in my character that need to be reformed. Thank you mesquite and raspberries for teaching me better attentiveness and consistency!
A perfect overcast day, we did not have to sweat and wilt as we walked. We even got to go into an underground cave! Here is David wearing bat ears to experience what good hearing they have. 
