GRACE

We raised our hands at one point, wondering where our help was. It felt like attack after attack. War in the garden. We often say when you start moving for the Kingdom, expect the other side to take notice. But we didn’t *feel* assisted in any of it. Until last night.

With the amount of squash bugs and borer beetles we’ve had, there should be no squash. But we’ve put a basketful in a food pantry and have more growing. With the number of caterpillars, no cabbage or kale should have made it. But it went on to feed people. By the number of hornworms, the cherry tomato plant should have been decimated. But a cardinal pointed us to them, and the plant is saved. The potatoes continue to remain green, making more potatoes underneath, and they should have been done already. The chef tomatoes were struck with leaf footed bugs, and not a single tomato should have made it out, and the plant should have had life sucked out of it. Yet, 95% of those tomatoes made it to food pantries and those plants are now growing new stems and leaves. The aphids on the apple tree should have overtaken, but they didn’t. Our ladybug friends saved the day. The tree remains.

It’s easy to look at the fight, to get tired, and forget the wins. The joy. Someone said recently, we are battling the curse of the ground, and we felt that truth deep. It’s easy to count the troubles. But we take the only steps we know how to take - one foot in front of the other. And it’s not like we haven’t had losses, but we can count those plants on one hand. We know it could all be gone, but for some reason, it still stands. We call it learning. Every bug. Every fungus. Every caterpillar. Everything preparing us for where we are going. Like life. If we stop keeping score, continue to focus on the light, there’s so much joy in the journey.

It didn’t seem so at the time, but looking back...we truly feel like the One who called us to it, has been helping us through it. And it feels a bit like Grace.