Summer So Far

Wow what a summer it has been, and its not even July yet. It feels like we just got done with planting, but really, we did. We wanted to hold off planting with the colder weather earlier this spring and then that just turned into rain and rain and rain. Which is great coming off of two years of drought, but makes navigating the fields a little sticky. After finally getting done planting the second week of June, the rain kept on coming. This has put spraying behind and just squished everything on the to-do list into one time period. I don’t know how the guys do it. They have such a big workload on a “normal” season, let alone trying to do everything at once and with not enough people.

But the events of last week have really gotten things into perspective for me. Most of our surrounding communities have been devastated by the flooding here in Northwest Iowa. It’s amazing and humbling to see the damage done and the raw power that is in nature. It’s also a very strange feeling of guilt that we are not affected. Sure, some things are just slightly different and we had a little water in our basement (old farmhouse so it’s not that uncommon). But wow. God has blessed us and given us an enormous gift of letting our lives continue like they usually do. I also want to add that I don’t think God hasn’t blessed those towns because he has blessed them, just in a different way. Other communities have pulled together to donate items and help with cleanup and cooking meals, etc. Volunteers have been pouring in and I hope they are able to stick around for a while. A lot of the hard work will come later, when the news reporters are gone and the rest of the world forgets. But we won’t.

All this to say that we are all incredibly blessed by God and praise is due to Him no matter our situation. Either we get to live our regular lives or we go through a natural disaster and come out with nothing but our lives. God uses all the circumstances in our blip of a life to refine us and make us more like Himself. And if we are missing that opportunity, then we are wasting a blessing.