A breath of fresh air

10/6/10 Wednesday
Yesterday was pretty rough. The slowdown lasted till late evening. I’m still not up to speed this morning but am doing better. There was a time when every day was like this and I am so grateful it’s not that way now, grateful my brain and body have healed as miraculously as they have. It’s hard to look on the positive side when all looks bleak, takes a concerted effort of will to do so. I’m not good at being positive as it is but understand the power of a positive confession so try to look on the bright side.

Every day I miss Ben and Gretchen and every day I must deal with the anger that runs so deep regarding whoever shot them. To forgive someone you don’t know when you don’t even know why they did it is hard. The idea that you can simply announce “I forgive you” and it all goes away is a load of crap ignorant people spout in their attempt to impress you with their “spirituality”. Forgiving takes conscious effort and prayer, and being able to talk it out helps a lot too. Shallow people with a shallow faith have no depth in their soul and are easily subject to deception, often deceiving themselves and impressed with who they are. Being impressed with yourself is a dangerous thing and its root is pride, quite the opposite of the humility our Lord requires of us. Such people are easily blown about by every wind of doctrine (Ephesians 4:14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.)

So I work every moment to forgive, to suppress the anger and pain that rises up every time I see a place Ben loved to lay in or any of the hundreds of other reminders of the joy and love we shared with those dogs that are all around. Then there are the reminders of the people we had been friends with, who’s hearts turned and revealed what they truly thought inside. I reach out but it’s evident that we, or their relationship with us, is not important to them. I guess what’s also revealed is the depth of their religion, which seems easily put aside when it’s not convenient. My desire is for reconciliation, for that is the desire of Jesus and what is pleasing to God. All of this is a constant internal battle as I struggle to combat and control the emotions involved. Some of it comes out in my writing and that’s a problem with being honest about what you feel. I don't mean to offend, but I don't put on airs or false fronts. There is no deception about me. What you see is what you get.

There’s work to do. Wally just called and will come out to visit this afternoon. He’s a friend from the Midland church we attended for a couple of years, and someone who practices what he believes. What a breath of fresh air it is to know real Christians.
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Break time. Took my second pain pill at 4:00, that’s pretty good cause usually I take the second around noon, four to six hours after the first. Wally came by close to 11:30. I was hoeing weeds around the Christmas corn when he got here. We talked as I showed him around the farm then went to the Stanton drug store where he treated me to one of their great hamburgers. Wally asked lots of questions about the farm and plans we have for it, really interested in understanding our dreams and goals for the place. Part of his motivation was to be able and identify how he can help us achieve these goals.

One of the things Wally said was that everyone from the Simon Department Sunday school class really desired to see us succeed with the farm, and that was quite encouraging. Wally asked what I specifically planned to do for next year. I told him that we, providing we get our CRP check and it wasn’t seized by the VA, planned on buying plants already started from local nurseries for I’ve learned that planting seeds doesn’t work well because of how bad the well water is. Then I would weed, fertilize, and nurture them till we got a sellable crop. If the CRP check is seized we are in a world of hurt as that pays our taxes and so many other major needs. Cherie lost a cap off her tooth and that will cost a ton of money to fix. It cost her over a thousand dollars to have it made a decade or so ago.

Talking about this stuff with Wally just brings back to the surface how much our “friends” greed hurt us. They were going to negotiate an oil well getting drilled on our land. Part of that involved purchasing my brothers mineral rights for us in order to have more clout putting the deal together, but they told us that because they had children and we didn’t, we had no legacy but they did (This is exactly how it was said) so they would take 75% of the royalties and out of the goodness of their heart give us 25%. When I expressed my distaste for that whole deal and let them know how deeply it hurt Cherie to be hit with the “we don’t have children” thing, they cut off all contact, dropped us like a hot potato. Of course that means Steve stopped working on getting a well drilled because now there’s nothing in it for him. So we struggle to build a farm and struggle to pay bills and can’t get dental work done and our wealthy “good Christian” “friends”, who held in their hands the ability to get us the help we need, stop. It’s hard not to get angry and hard not to tell all the details, reveal the letters and emails written, especially when I see my wife suffer. It’s hard to forgive when they run and hide from us, but I must.