Allergic to the Shovel

Saturday: It was a biodynamic fruit day, and I woke up with the intent to plant my large box of seeds with fruit/seed plants (tomatoes, peppers, corn, melons, pumpkins, squash). I did get a little bed of sweet corn planted, with Isaiah’s help, in the lasagna garden.

Phil had graciously scythed down a section of pasture where neither sheep nor cows will graze. But as I looked at it, I thought about all the digging required to get the seeds in the ground.

And then I thought about all the water-hauling, all the maintenance and weeding, all the hours spent on small crops that won’t be spent with the boys or Phil or the trees.

Though I didn’t (quite) start to cry, it was suddenly too much.

Add to that the "lovely" lecture I had begun while doing the dishes, in which the speaker said, “I’ve never come across a woman who didn’t have some stage of adrenal failure.” Which leads to many health and psychiatric issues.

Ah, the stress that comes from a little warning to avoid stress so as to keep your health. Gak.

I didn't plant anything else. I've grown allergic to the shovel.

I remember when my parents started Sonlight (twenty years ago tomorrow!). As a child, I remember only two disagreements between them, but after they started Sonlight, as they had to figure out so many new tasks, from marketing to customer relations, they had, in my memory, almost daily disagreements. Different ways of looking at the different facets of business; different strengths to bring to the table.

I suppose that’s encouraging for me. For a month or two now, Phil and I have felt like we’re cogs that aren’t quite meshing correctly. Since we’ve lived in, basically, perfect agreement for the first nine and a half years of marriage, we feel bewildered and sad by all the miscommunications.

On Saturday afternoon, I fumed, “I have no little pleasures in my life! I eat no chocolate! I read no books for fun! I do nothing just for me!”

So I made brownies for Sunday breakfast and felt a lot better. And then had the almost hysterically convicting passage during Sunday’s sermon: “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psalm 16:11)

What was I saying about “no pleasures”? When I am saved by the blood of the Lamb?

Touché.