There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
Mark Twain
Like taking away a garment in winter, or like vinegar on soda is someone who sings songs to a heavy heart.
Proverbs 25:20
We moved, which is why I’ve been so absent from writing here. I would tell you how wonderful it has been, except for the above sayings (one a true proverb, the other a loose Twainian translation). After being sealed in Denver for over a year–apparently the safest and best-educated, but also loneliest and most isolating, surrounded by unhappy, judgmental, politically-driven elitists–we have busted out and into our country life.
Back to Missouri. We’ve brought our four native Colorado kids back to the homeland, where salt cured ham is for breakfast and Show-Me is a way of life.
I’m afraid there is still, in mid-July, plenty of flesh on my body for the chiggers and ticks and mosquitos to consume.
There’s still bountiful opportunity to holler at kids to “shut the door, you’re letting flies in!” as an hourly call to action.
The bugs and critters we avoided by living in high desert mountains with drought and wildfire conditions are paying us back heartily for moving back into their territory.
I’ve often wondered why invasive, dreadful things like poison ivy haven’t taken over the whole world by now. I think they would, except God Himself holds them back. Just like He told the seas, “you can come here and no farther” (Job 38:11), perhaps He told poison ivy it could spread as far as Wichita and that’s it. One might come to the conclusion, then, that it is Colorado who is blessed with majestic views and a temperate, lovely, pest-less, poison ivy-less climate.
But there was never a summer free of the fear of mountain lions and bears or a roaring wildfire followed by spring mudslides. And I reckon some blessings, like rain, are being stripped from that land. We popped many a bicycle tire on goat heads there, and my withering, sandy garden was regularly demolished by hungry mule deer.
So maybe here in Missouri the nasty buggars that crawl up my neck and legs when I pick blackberries are doing exactly what the Lord designed them to do. It’s up to me to apply the DEET or stay out of the woods in summer.
I suspect God hid his best blessing in the hardship of casting Adam and Eve out of the garden and sentenced them to a life of toil by working the land to yield its fruit. The gratification in studying, experimenting, planting, protecting, and producing is astounding. It’s a human marvel that wards off diseases of the body and mind. It tires out the flesh so there is less room for dispute and ill-will. Those folks a hundred years ago and before fell into bed too exhausted to Netflix and chill, too worn out to post a rant on Facebook. Their greatest temptation was rest, and if they rested too much, they starved.
Yes, “only God makes things grow” (1 Cor. 3:6) but having a part in the sowing and watering–for it to be your life sentence, your daily bread–it isn’t such a bad partnership. We water, He gives the increase, and we still get to eat the watermelon.
Maybe the pesky parts just keep us humble, keep us working hard. Keep us buying bug spray and calamine. And maybe it makes the vinegar on soda not quite as fizzy, if I’m inclined to talk about how happy it makes me.
I’ll just be too busy itching to bubble over.
Check out On Honey Creek if you’d like to read about our move.
