The Grass is Always Greener...well, Maybe Not

It's easy to look at someone else's "problems" and wish you had them...because yours don't look so grand. For right now, in some ways, it seems like my life is going backward. Although as I think on that, it's more like I'm peddling the bicycle of my life backward but still going forward thanks to momentum. It didn't help when the social worker at work (who's a friend) told me this week of how fast forward her personal life seems to be headed. Yes, I envied her.

Of course, it's not like her forward peddling is all peachy keen. She was telling me of some of her speed bumps, but all I could think was, "Really? You're concerned about that? That wouldn't trouble me at all." And isn't that why her grass looks greener? Because her problems wouldn't bother me while they are very serious to her? Exactly.

So I stand in my not-so-green field, looking out over her much greener field (for the sun is shining at the right angle on her grass - at least, from my perspective) and turn around to look at someone else's field. For isn't that the way it is? We're always looking over our respective fences, comparing what the other garden is growing? And on the other side...well, that field may be green but is so dark you can't tell.

Linda, our home health office manager, got word this week that her son-in-law (who is like a son to them) is being shipped to Afghanistan. And not just Afghanistan in general but to the border of Pakistan where the fighting is fierce and because some American GI lost it on account of the stress of his job the powers-to-be have decided that our soldiers there can no longer have artillery backup. They get the gun in their hand - and that's it. He leaves in just a few weeks for training, and aside from a ceremony in July when he can see his family, will not return until August 2013. And that is, of course, if he returns at all. He's young - not quite my age - and leaves behind his even younger wife, twin 4-year-olds and a 1-year-old. Their grass seems very brown indeed.

At the end of the day, my grass is rather green. Maybe it just needs a little water. And as a kid, I always found it great fun to be able to peddle backwards but still go forward...even if it was a little slow. For the rain will surely come, and I will soon be peddling forward again - probably uphill. Meanwhile, I need to learn to be content...and pray for those in fields around me.