Peas

This morning I was picking peas and thinking about life.  I thought about how I used to hate picking peas, mostly because my parents made us get up around 6 or 7 am during the summer to pick them.  It was time we wished we could spend sleeping, or eating breakfast (that's right, breakfast came later), or anything other that being in the garden.  I swear our garden was the largest garden in our whole neighborhood.  It seemed to take forever.  We spent a fair amount of that time arguing and complaining.  Since my parents were usually both at work, it was just us kids out there, fighting away.  Our neighbors later told us that their kids begged them to put in a garden because it always looked like we were having so much fun out there.  If only they knew....  However, I don't really mind it anymore.  There is always something rewarding about working hard, but for some reason working hard outside seems to bring a greater reward.  Maybe it's just that working outside is it's own reward.  When I work outside, especially in the garden, I feel like I understand, in some very tiny bit, what it's like to be God.  I'm creating life.  Planting seeds, and nourishing plants.  The joy I feel doing it, I can only compare to being a parent.  Being a parent is a bit more meaningful, of course.  The costs are much higher, the rewards a bit greater, and the risk even more so, but it's a good comparison.  Now, I wish I could say working in the yard always gives me such pleasure as it did today, but that is just untrue.  Any parent could say that children are the same.  Sometimes we complain about them, sometimes we argue with them.  They have a way of bringing out our very worst selves, but also our very best selves.  And the rewards are great.  If it takes a little sweat, a little failure, patience, and a few dozen sunburns, I know that both my daughter and my plants with be worth it in the end, and that brings me great joy.