When We Fail
Well, the summer is almost over, and, as far as gardening is concerned, I don’t feel as if I have had a summer. For most of the growing season, all of the veggies have been spindly, with no blooms and obviously no fruit. I have never experienced such a gardening failure.
The sad tale began about the middle of June when I decided to follow a Youtube gardener’s advice and buy a 40 per cent shade cloth to protect my plants from the broiling Mississippi sun. I was tired of seeing my plants burn up in the summer no matter how much I watered. After a fair amount of research, I invested the money to cover the entire garden.
As the men put it up, a small, niggling voice whispered, “Isn’t that a little dark in there for those peas, corn and beans, not to mention the tomatoes?” I ignored it, especially when I realized how much cooler working in the garden had become. But after a few weeks I could not deny that my plants were not prospering. All that work gone to waste! Finally a couple of weeks ago I pulled almost everything up, admitting defeat. How sad!
Yet, I did notice the peppers and okra and even one lone cucumber were making a comeback, responding to the light and producing, even though not as healthy as they should be. Filled with hope, I replanted the green beans and several rows of purple hull peas, banking on a harvest before frost in November. Actually I endorsed myself for such positive thinking; in the past, I would have been mercilessly berating myself for such a poor decision.
A little thought would have helped me see that plants need the sun, and some need the blazing hot summer sun. Belatedly I asked my friend and well-known horticulturist Felder Rushing what he thought about shade cloths. He said, ”You don’t need them. Millions of southern gardeners have been planting without shade cloths for hundreds of years and reaped wonderful harvests.” True. Why didn’t I ask him BEFORE this disastrous and expensive experiment? I won’t make that mistake again!
In life we sometimes make the same poor decisions even though our intentions are good. And at times those decisions fly in the face of good sense. We forge ahead independently without there wise counsel of family and friends. We fail in jobs, projects, relationships. The temptation is to give up, wallowing in the swamp of self criticism. But living in the chrysalis demands that we let this ego trap that begs for perfection dissolve and take on the mind of Christ. He accepts us as we are, with all our failings, and gives us the power to start over, begin again, learn from mistakes, and, perhaps, accomplish more than we did before. We are looking toward complete transformation, as the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, Let's salute new beginnings!
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)