Have you ever started something with great excitement, such as a new business, a house project, a garden, or a craft and found yourself discouraged or struggling to persevere through the trials? My husband and I aren’t scared to do much, so we take on a lot of projects. I’m thankful we do, but it always carries those unanticipated struggles.

Read more: Persevering Through Trials

For the last few weeks, we have been finding ourselves really seeking strength from the Lord as we try to persevere through all the work. For example, I hired Asher, Abigail, and Lillian to help pick potato bugs with me. We expect everyone to help with a certain amount of time (depending on age) without pay, and then we pay our kids generously when they do extra. These younger kids helped me for a few days, and we captured hundreds of potato bugs each day. We were all very excited and talked about perseverance, trials, and how glad we were that potato bugs don’t fly and how slow they were. We also observed lady bugs eating potato bug eggs off leaves and stink bugs stabbing them. We were excited! Then the rain came, (which was such a blessing!) and it turned the potato patch into a sloppy mess and mosquitos came out with a vengeance for my blood.

I told the little ones that I didn’t want them out there with me, so instead they watched Zachariah for me. I knew my time was limited that first day without them, so I hustled like never before in my light snow pants, coat, and hat (so I wouldn’t be eaten alive). There was no air, and it was hot and humid! There were more potato bugs than I had ever seen. I was bending over constantly while swatting mosquitoes away from my face. I fell in the mud a couple times with all my baggy garb. By the time I reached the last row of that massive potato garden, I was crying out to God to please help me and please give me rest in this.  I wanted to quit so bad. My back was aching, and I was covered in mud and mosquitoes.

I knew if I didn’t finish, I probably wouldn’t get back for the rest of the day, and those bugs would just reproduce exponentially. I would have more to kill over the next several days. I felt humbled as I crawled (because my back was hurting so badly) through the mud of the last row and finished, and what a great feeling that was when it was done. That was the worst day of the potato bugs and after that they got better. Praise the Lord! There are great rewards when you stick with hard things. The Lord provided even more lace wings, lady bugs, and stink bugs to eat the potato bugs over the next several days, and I’m picking off less than 25 per day now. The mosquitoes are getting better, and the plants look great, but that wasn’t the end.

There were still weeds, and with the rain, it made it hard to weed. I timed my weeding at 20 minutes per row before the rain, and it increased to about 2 to 4 hours per row after. This was another great lesson about how we need to do things in the right time. The work is often easier and will take less time.

Since the weeding still needed to be done, several of us were working in the potato patch last week, trying to get a handle on the weeds, and having a great time. There was a lot of good conversation and fun happening when all of a sudden, a large sprayer started pulling into the neighboring field. I thought, “What are they doing?” The wind was blowing at 20 to 30 miles per hour right toward our alfalfa, pasture, potatoes, and sweet corn.

I felt like someone knocked the wind out of me as I thought of all the time we had spent in recent weeks digging up and pulling hundreds of thistles and wild mustard plants in our pasture and alfalfa. We faithfully killed those potato bugs that were threatening to destroy our harvest and spent days weeding in the mud. This arduous work could all be lost by one foolish decision.

I started crying out to God and called my husband who happened to be working very close, by God’s providence. He was able to stop the sprayer after a short time and no damage was done. Sadly, the sprayer didn’t believe that he had any wind restrictions when spraying RoundUp (which will destroy every green plant and tree that is not genetically modified). While there are no specific laws on RoundUp, the label on all chemicals is the law. Sprayers must follow the label, but even if they don’t and our land is harmed, there would be no compensation to us. Even if there was, we can’t find the quality of hay, pasture, or vegetables that we grow here on our beyond organic farm, so no amount of paper money seems adequate.

I reached out to several friends and asked for prayers.  One friend responded that she had just heard of a family on You Tube called Three Rivers Homestead that had their farm heavily sprayed with 2 4D. They were devastated. Another friend said my message was very timely because she was feeling very discouraged. She wrote, “Every year our tomatoes and peppers have terrible chemical damage. You obviously know how much work and anticipation goes into those plants. I started peppers in February. They looked amazing when I planted them and now they look terrible, as do our tomatoes. I’m attaching a picture of a jalapeño pepper plant as an example. At first I thought surely, I let them get root bound or something, but I know now by looking at the pattern from other plants and from pictures online…it’s chemical damage. It changes the plant’s growth.”

Other people have shared in the past how they lost garden plants and fruit trees to chemical drift. They were really discouraged and most of them never said anything to the sprayer, because they didn’t believe it would do any good. As Edmund Burke says, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Our first step in this battle is to start communicating kindly with the sprayers and bring awareness to this problem. I don’t believe anyone wants to deliberately harm their neighbors, but if they don’t care, we need to fight this battle through prayer (most importantly) and action. I pray daily that we would find better solutions to protect the health and land of our nation, and that those solutions would help farmers to be more profitable.

Too many times, we want to quit something after putting in a lot of hard work, and it’s often right before it’s going to get easier or finally succeed. Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. I encourage you and myself to seek to the Lord in all things, keep preserving through the trials, and keep on keeping on.

What are some struggles you are persevering through right now? We love to hear from you!

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