SEEDS: 24 hrs to Zero

A Docent's Stash of Arboretum Finds - - and a stowaway walnut

So, in 24 hours AmZyg must emerge a fresh, wailing bundle of midlife energy, awaiting the LORD of Life to garnish the mysteries of biologic gestation with two simple ingredients from His arsenal of parental responsibilities: time and nourishment. His TLC and prayerful NURTURE* are what bring forth life from the womb, and what carries a life from the dirty inadequacies of an imperfect world into the possibilities of becoming MORE than a "selfish eater."

To be mature at midlife means to finally forsake living just to fill my selfish needs.

The day I started this blog I was frustrated that I am not one of those blessed ones who get the message, the grace, the skilled nurture from human parents to become less than selfish waaaaay back at the outset. At infancy, at toddlerhood, at elementary age...at  puberty.  No, for whatever reason, I was SEED INTERRUPTED.

Yet hope abides.  The Careful Parent, Christ, whose whole purpose is to witness our betterment, lives to see us enter our full purpose, adding grace upon grace where our fallen experience could not.  In Him, our possibilities are pre-determined: we get to become living, breathing fruit of His Spirit.  What a dream world to imagine. All of us patient, loving, serving, joyful, peaceful, good, kind and full of self-control. Well, it could happen... In a New Jerusalem, anyway.

The only impediment to this dream life is my willfulness; as the Bible Club ladies say so well in public classrooms full of Southern CA 2nd-6th graders, it's "our want-to" that gets in the way of the Savior having His way with us. Like a seed whose little sprout decides to travel south instead of upward to sunlight. Or, maybe a seed who, instead of reaching a pre-determined end as an oak or willow, gives in to the neighborhood and instead aspires to be a mere weed.

I expect becoming fifty will require, then, a commitment to a new identity as WEED INTERRUPTED.

As birthday cards roll in, I love to recall fond moments from early life when one sister provided a little island of hope amidst a sea of confusion. Mart was my model for everything cool and careful, tender and encouraging.  Her nickname for me was Tige, from 'Tigger,' borne of a time before WinnieThePooh was a Disney windfall. Her Christopher Robbin books, I'm pretty sure, were brought back from England after Dad's two year transfer there.  Well, I felt loved. So much more-so than when a high school friend renamed me Hot Chocolate. Nicknames have such power.

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It breaks my heart to know that, in the sterile world of the AMA, children are still disposed of legally as late as the ninth month with the full approval and encouragement of the entire medical profession. So, as I approach the end of my nine month term of expectant waiting-for-midlife, I cry at the thought of children brutally tortured to death by practitioners of elective abortion who take money to kill, bringing full circle a mindset opposed to "selfish eaters," but for a whole different set of Godless reasons. Eugenic mercy and similar drivel.  And I cry for the countless women who are lied to about the procedure, and for the ones who go into it knowing full well what it means. AmericanZygotes of heart and mind. Infantile, uninformed, in denial and in limbo. On behalf of all of them, I repent as if their fault were mine. Like Nehemiah, beseeching God for the deliverance of his people, I confess the sins of abortion minded women and beg God's mercy, healing, restoration.

LORD have mercy on the United States of America. Bring her many seeds to full sun. Oaks of righteousness, every one.



*Christ, the Creator and Architect of this universe, is said to "intercede on our behalf."