Lessons from the Vines

Two days ago we finished all the staking and taping of the vines.  That was no small feat.  Not that anyone cares, but I am sure I have the most muscular back now.  We should be cultivating between the rows, but it is so wet out there from days of rain earlier that we our tractor got stuck and has made some unsightly new trenches where no trenches are supposed to be.  So the weeds between the rows will grow some more I guess. 

Now that the vineyard looks more like a vineyard we will often hear from our kids, "Oh!  So that's what it's supposed to look like!"  Our kids are learning faith through this vineyard.  Not just faith in God, but faith in their parents.  They have truly had to trust us all along that we aren't crazy, though we may appear that way sometimes. 

Even I have had to have a certain amount of faith, not just in God, but in my husband.  I'm sure, to the world around us we may have looked a little crazy as we started out this latest venture.  I found out when I delivered grapes to every neighbour on the street that they've all been watching.  Every single neighbour commented on what they'd seen us start on.  We are 100% being watched.

I have had to trust that my husband knows what he's doing and believe in him and his unique vision for our family and our future.  I read a letter from a woman in a homeschooling magazine recently who sounded like she is married to a husband similar to mine.  She wasn't complaining, but she was wondering how to support a husband who has lots of dreams, ideas, and plans and wasn't sure what to do when they didn't always work out like she had hoped.  The letter she received in response was just great because it was written by a man who was also like my husband and her's.  He said, "Have faith in your husband.  Think of him as an inventor, failing 999 times in preparation for the great success he will eventually achieve."  He then went on about all the crazy things he has done in his own life.  He wrote, "I have tried many endeavors which proved to be great only in my imagination.  We have been poor to the bone and down to our last potato many times because I was devoting our money and all my energies and time to a new idea that was 'wonderful'."  But then he adds, "I had fun every step of the way.  Failure didn't discourage me.  Like Thomas Edison, I knew I had just discovered one more way that did not work.  I had grown."

Fortunately he adds, "Eventually I had great successes..."  There's hope!  He said, "My wife had to endure criticism from family and well-meaning friends, but it just brought us closer together....We became a team, experiencing life together, having more fun than a whole playground full of kids!"

He quoted a verse from Eccesliastes 11:1 that says, "Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days."  It seems to be speaking about what we do now will have a reward later...if we stick with it.  This can be a spiritual principle as well as even a financial one, I think.  This can apply to our work in training our children now as well as the work we're doing in the vineyard.  And, of course, back to believing in my husband's vision - what seems a little nuts now, will eventually pay off.....if I stick with it and stick with him.  The thing about his vision is that it wasn't a flippant decision.  He had done years of research on vines and growing grapes.  I had listened to him all those years never really thinking it would happen!  But then it did!  Here we are with 5 acres of grapes, planted, staked and taped, ready for the next step of trellising. 

The irony is of all the weeks to be reading John 15, it was this week - when I had just finished the taping the last vine to the stake.  "I am the vine; you are the branches.  Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart form me you can do nothing." 

Couldn't believe it.  Verses like this now jump off the page as I regularly hold vines in my hand all the time.  I can't look at them the same way anymore.  We regularly take off branches and even some grapes to prep the vines for more fruit later.  We actually make life harder on the vines to get the roots to grow deeper into the ground.  How it parallels my life is incredible.  Truly, apart from Christ I can do nothing.  I long to bear much fruit, but cannot do it on my own.

But again, back to being a supportive wife - there is a chance we could lose this crop to some disease or bad weather or something unforeseen (hopefully not!).  Will that mean it was all a waste?  No, it has actually been the most amazing thing for my husband and me.  We have been in the vineyard so much together, always working together, talking together, weeding together, staking or taping together....in addition to being alongside our kids, it has been the most amazing, dare I say, fun, thing we've done lately.  Was it more fun than a whole playground full of kids?  I'm not sure about that, but it was certainly so rewarding as we always compared our blisters on our hands, or we argued about who had sorer muscles or more dirt under their nails.  It has been an adventure that we've shared together.  I think our kids have noticed and observed and will one day reflect on how they saw us work as a team on this latest crazy thing we've done.  I can agree with the letter the author wrote back when he said of his wife, "Now my wife shares my hair-brained ideas and we are a finely tuned team..."  That would be me!  I'm starting to share his "hair-brained ideas", too!  I think I'm becoming as crazy as him!  Ha! 

In the end, of course I am hoping for the best.  I truly hope my husband gets rewarded somehow for all that he has done and that by God's grace he will get back "his bread" that he "cast on the waters".  It was a lot of emotional, physical and financial effort he has put into this vineyard.  But, even in the event things go south and we end up "potato broke" as the author put it, it has been fun!