Choking

The first question Dean's nurse had for him today was "Have you been chewing your food?" Then I remembered last week that Dean almost choked on a piece of meat from his "Meals on Wheels" while she was here. We both heard him say that his meat was too tough to cut, but we kept on with our conversation till he stood up suddenly with a scared expression on his face and we knew instantly that he was choking.

Even though Carla, the nurse, is a good foot shorter than my tall husband, I'm sure she'd have stood on a chair to give him the Heimlich any second if she had to. But he instinctively pounded his own chest and up came a gigantic piece of meat. It was a miracle it came up. And we were all shaken and thankful that the emergency was averted.

One of the first things that Dean said after it was over was that now he knows how I feel when I have breathing episodes and we've had to call paramedics. I said yes, that's exactly how it feels. It's pretty traumatic when you can't get air.

God breathed into us the breath of life. Our breath can't be underrated. Each one is a gift of God. I feel sorry for those individuals who feel they have to supplement their air with tobacco smoke. They are poisoning the air that God gave them to breathe. I know it's a hard addiction to break, but it's also worth every effort. Recognizing the true source of help in quitting should be easy though. If God gave us our breath in the first place, He must have an interest in restoring it to us. As a woman on oxygen myself and seeing my dad die of lung cancer and emphysema, I encourage everyone to keep trying as many times as it takes to quit the habit.

Paying the Price

Our garden has been a rabbit playground all summer. Next year we've just got to have a better fence to keep them out, but for now I try to think of them as our little gleaners, and let them have what I can't get to first.

The other day though, it was rather a shock to see a dead rabbit between the cucumbers and peppers. I could afford a slight feeling of sadness, since I wouldn't be the one to dispose of the carcass, but I couldn't help but wonder how and why our garden happened to end up as the morgue. Even rabbits must have stories to tell.

Bottom line though, when you let rabbits run (or bad habits persist), you better have a shovel handy to bury the end result. Someone pays a price.

How Not to Grow

Weeds have a habit of choking the life out of our most-loved plants. When the unwanted roots wrap around our "babies", we aren't as conscious of the damage. But when weed vines above ground start wrapping around the plant itself, we must take action and rid them of their attacker.

One of our pepper plants succumbed today, not to a weed vine, but to a "fellow" vegetable cucumber in the next row. We waited too long to rescue it from the choking tendrils, and I fear with the above-normal hot temperatures today it may not survive or will be severely stunted in growth.

As gardeners of our souls, we must be constantly on the lookout for weeds. Those nasty habits and character traits that don't belong in our life. But we also have to be aware of the good and wholesome things that identify us. We can become so absorbed in them that they cause us to be unbalanced and stunted in our spiritual growth too.

As a gardener, we're learning to pull the weeds and to train the vines. Neglect of either can have the same result. Limited growth.