Running from the Onions and the Tears

Yesterday I picked up a box of marked down vegetables at a farmer's market, because who can say no to a box of veges for just $2?

I saved out the better ones for salads, but I like to find a use

for even the less-than-the-best.

I've always had a heart for the down-and-out, even when it comes to cucumbers. 

Onions are a different story.

They make my eyes sting.

 But as I was getting the veges ready to make pickles, I remembered what Joy Albertson said a few weeks ago when I was helping her make pickles.

Helping her that evening, I cut up four big onions, and that was all I could manage.

She cut up about 12 without stopping.

And she cried most of the time she was doing it.

 "I just learned to go on crying," she explained matter-of-factly, 

like it was no big deal.

"Now my sister runs off as soon as she starts crying," she added.

And at first I didn't know what to say, because--

well--

you guessed it. 

I run off, too.

 At least I used to. Till tonight.

After hearing that it was possible to keep cutting onions through your tears, I decided to try it.

I thought it was easier to run away from the stings,

like the cat runs away from the dogs.

 

 It's easier to run away from the onions and go wash your eyes and take a break and do something else and declare you can't take any more onions. 

And it's easy to run away from our problems as soon as they start stinging or hurting

or causing us tears, and declare we can't take anymore. 

So we sit there like a cat up a tree, 

nursing our wounds and flicking our tail while our problems just sit there waiting for us 

to come face them again.

 You may as well face it. 

Sooner or later, you are going to have to face those dogs again. 

Even if a sympathetic little miss or mister rescues you from the pine tree.

 And tonight, I cut onions until my eyes stung and I cried,

and my sight was so blurry I could hardly see.

 I was afraid I might cut myself, but I didn't.

And soon my eyes cleared, and I just kept cutting onions,

and kept crying, but it wasn't too bad actually.

Sometimes you just don't realize that you can actually do this till somebody else does it and lets you know you can do it. 

You'd rather cut cucumbers, of course.

 Or apples.

They don't sting your eyes.

 All on this same evening, while half the family was up in the mountains hunting,

Danny and Hannah and I were doing up some more apples into apple snitzes

in our dehydrator that Jonathan had picked up with some other stuff a lady was getting rid of from her garage.

 Apples are sweet and yummy, 

and they don't make your eyes sting or cry.

 Yes, we'd take apples any day over onions.

But you have to admit that those Bread-and-Butter pickles of Grandma's variety

just wouldn't be the same without onions.

And God knew that life wouldn't be as good without a healthy dose of tears. 

So we have to accept that from time to time there are just plain

going to be salty tears dropping into our pillow some nights, or into the sudsy dishwater,

or down our cheeks

in that humble little trysting place where it's just God and you.

Maybe from the cold shoulders that tend to dog your pathway at times.

Or the icy stares.

Or your own icy fears.

Maybe lots of other worse things.

 But remember that "weeping may endure for a night, 

but joy comes in the morning!"

Those salty tears are not forever, and you can get through this.

Keep cutting those onions.

Don't run away from every problem as soon as something starts stinging.

Get past the first big stinging blow.

Keep going through the blur of tears.  

You'll have a nice batch of Bread-and-Butter pickles to share with friends if you keep at it.

And you'll have some bread to break and wisdom to share and love to spread and partake of

if you are faithful to keep going through the tears.

"We Are All Failures--At Least the Best of Us Are"

"We are all failures--at least the best of us are," I read today in an email forwarded from a college academic dean.

"Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success."

You can't always reach every goal you set for yourself,

anymore than this buck we saw in town yesterday can leap every size fence.

The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface," writes John Maxwell in his book, Failing Forward: How to Make the Most of Your Mistakes.

Not everyone in college makes an A grade on their first assignments in English Comp I, 

especially not when they have been sick with colds and flu and they didn't have a computer to start the semester,

and when they did get one, the program wouldn't work right,

and then the printer wouldn't work at first either,

and papers that would otherwise have had a good grade had to be turned in late.   

It's easy to feel like a failure when a poor grade is staring you in the face,--or when people around you are deciding you didn't make the grade in other areas of your life.

People are training for success when they should be training for failure. Failure is far more common than success; poverty is more prevalent than wealth; and disappointment more normal than arrival. —J.WALLACE HAMILTON”

 

More from Maxwell--

Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward.

Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience.

“Failure isn't so bad if it doesn't attack the heart. Success is all right if it doesn't go to the head.”  

We saw this pumpkin head at the farmer's market where we stopped to check for marked down vegetables.

The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside.

Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?
Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.

 Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new.

The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure — and actually fail — the greater your chances of success.

The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.

While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior. —HENRY C . L I NK”  

Success comes in taking many small steps. If you stumble in a small step, it rarely matters. Don't gift wrap the garbage. Let little failures go.”

“If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.”

“The first important step in weathering failure is learning not to personalize it.” 

[Below is a flock of sandhill cranes flying noisily over our house.]

 “Helen Keller, author, speaker, and advocate for disabled persons, asserted,"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

 If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve.

" “Novelist Victor Hugo believed, "He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life . . . But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign.” 

“When it comes to taking risks, I believe there are two kinds of people: those who don't dare try new things, and those who don't dare miss them.” 

 “Great minds have purposes; others have wishes."

The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it.”  

“If at First You Do Succeed, Try Something Harder”

“Every successful person is someone who failed, yet never regarded himself as a failure.”

“If you tend to focus on the particular events in your life, try to put things into perspective. When you do, you'll be able to share the philosophy of someone such as the apostle Paul, who was able to say, "I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content."3 And that was saying a lot, considering that Paul had been shipwrecked, whipped, beaten, stoned, and imprisoned. Throughout everything, his faith enabled him to maintain perspective. He realized that as long as he was doing what he was supposed to do, his being labeled success or failure by others really didn't matter.” 

 "Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.”

-John C. Maxwell

  

Jonathan Got His First Buck!

My handsome hunter sent me this snapshot of the beautiful autumn leaves near where he and the crew is camping while hunting in the mountains.

He was so proud to send me a photo of his first buck after he had a chance to take a picture, 

which was after Sam and Rose had taken a 4-wheeler up to tote the deer back to camp.

So Jonathan and hunting crew hung and skinned it.

He said they had venison cutlets for dinner next day!

Timmy and Rose got small game licenses, and Timmy got a squirrel (which Rose thought necessary to add that it was after eight tries! But hey, he got it, and that is the whole point. 

You gotta keep trying.

This was the fifth year for Jonathan to go elk hunting, and he never had a deer license before.

So having a deer license this year made the difference this time.

The very first morning of hunting season, he and Timmy were up early, watching by a couple meadows, and Jonathan turned around and saw two bucks looking at him.

He started to slowly turn, and Timmy jerked around then, too, and spooked the bucks.

The bucks started running, and Jonathan figured it was his only chance, so he "let 'er rip," he said.

And he got the biggest buck!

Wow! That made all our day!

I am so proud of my handsome hunter hubby!
Meanwhile, at home we were so tickled to get to watch Timmy's eggs begin to hatch that he'd been keeping in a borrowed incubator.

Those chicks hatching and peeping have kept Danny and Hannah and their big sister Carrie and Mom
very fascinated.

 They are just plain darling!

Don't Call it an Ugly Egg

When we arrived home Sunday after church, Hannah headed to Timmy's incubator

and gasped,

"Oh, look at that ugly egg!"

And don't we too often make the same mistake when we see something we were not expecting

or do not understand.

"Oh, what an ugly egg!" we say, when we do not realize it is just a tiny, wet chick

just hatched!

We do not realize we are putting down something that needs nurturing and gentle handling.

Maybe it is a child's hope, or a young adult's dream, or an older person's anxieties, or a middle-aged person's motivations.

And all we see is an ugly egg.

Ugly eggs that remind us of--

Bugs in the tree.

Zap them with neem oil spray!

Squish them with gloved hands!

It's true there are some things that need zapped and squished and nipped in the bud. 

And in these days of permissiveness there is far too little of nipping wrong behavior in the bud

before it becomes a habit. 

I spent a couple hours yesterday spraying the thousands of bugs sucking away at our poor austree.

And when I was afraid the spray wasn't working well enough, I squished bugs with my gloved hands

all up and down the branches.

My gloves, my pink sweater, and myself looked a sight when I was done.

My love for the one and only leafy austree on our property overcame my hatred of bugs.

 Bugs were in my hair and on my clothes and had fallen down inside my clothes, too.

But I loved that tree enough to spend two hours spraying and spraying 

and squashing and squashing bugs.

I used two tablespoons of a neem oil concentrate which I made into a gallon of spray.

This is especially for roses, but the garden center clerk thought it should work for my tree, too.

And my love for my children will give me the courage to go after the bugs--the little bad habits.

If we want the tree to grow healthy and strong,

and if we want our children to grow healthy and strong,

we better conquer the bugs.

And so yes, there are those times you go after the ugly bad bugs,

and all the dust bunnies on your dresser.

But be gentle with the weak and the small,

the handicapped and the hesitant,

and the newly hatched chick on the block.

Allow them to be who they are instead of calling them an ugly egg. 

Instead of calling them "strange" just because they are different than you are

and just because you don't understand them.

Give them space to grow.

And allow them to grow.

When Danny asked if he could help the next chick that was pecking its way out,

we told him no.

It's necessary for new chicks to peck their own way into the world.

If you "help" them, it stunts them. 

It is necessary for chicks to get strong by having to peck their own way out.

You don't pull the shell away 

and pick away the film.

I don't know exactly what it is, but you don't help a chick out of its shell 

anymore than you open a rosebud before it opens by itself.

If you want a strong person,

you have to stop rescuing them from the efforts they need to make on their own.

They will not grow as straight or as tall or as strong if you constantly save them 

from consequences of their own actions,

or do every little thing for them

instead of teaching them to do for themselves what they will need to do

when you are gone. 

So be gentle with the new chicks,

and the ugly ducklings.

Allow them to be who they are and let them grow.

A swan may surprise you someday!

Dear God, I Need Another Set of Hands!

Jonathan knew how I was missing trees and autumn leaves, 

even though I try very, very hard to be content

by taking pictures of the flowers blooming around our mailbox.

:)    :)

So he invited me to go up to a little job with him late one afternoon after I had taken Carrie to a violin lesson, so I could see some trees.

 Well, we didn't really see that many trees, but Jonathan was glad I came along,

because he got stalled in the repair job he was doing.

He was replacing the window cranks at two windows, 

and the new cranks did not have all the parts needed.
He had to salvage old parts from the old gismo, and one part could only be retrieved by taking apart

a little tiny connector that had a spring O-ring.

With one hand, he was holding the gismo, and with the other, he was trying to release the teeny, tiny O-ring.

And he couldn't do it because the O-ring kept sliding around every time he tried to pick at it.

He tried, and tried, and finally I caught on what he was doing.

"Do you need another hand?" I wondered, squatting down to help.

I poked a little tool into place to keep the O-ring from swiveling, and he was finally able to 

get it out and free the part he needed.

The rest could be done on his own, with his little

needle-nosed pliers.

And we can try and try and try 

to do things on our own, 

when really we just need another set of Hands to help us.

Those Hands are right there, willing and ready, if we would only ask.

After, that Jonathan readily asked for help.

"I dropped four screws out the window onto the gravel by the side of the house," he told me.

So I accompanied him to where he'd been working on the window

and I found two screws and he found one.

And sometimes, it's another pair of Eyes that we need--

the Eyes that wander to and fro over the face of the earth

looking to see how they can look upon and help the righteous. 

Sometimes, we just have to let go entirely--

it seems that our own hands just get in God's way.

He's the One Who knows how to handle situations,

how to repair broken things.

Sometimes, it takes going to your prayer closet

or trysting place in the field

or perhaps even the haymow like where I landed last Sunday afternoon,

sitting there in the prickly hay,

turning one burden after another over to the Lord.

Another Pair of Hands.

Another set of Eyes.

Another Heart that throbs with the Love that only He can impart.

And when your little daughter comes in and discovers you there,

and decides to try climbing up, too,

you can face her with a smile

because your problems and the problems of those you love

have been turned over into 

Bigger Hands Than Yours.