Barnyard Lessons of a Farm Kid

1. Leave gates how you found them. For actual gates...you don't want to accidentally let the neighbors bull out, or cut the herd off from their water source.  When opening and closing doors (no matter what kind of doors you encounter in your life) it is important to leave things how you found them. Don't leave a disaster where you passed through.Or, rather, don't leave a door open to allow some other disaster to come through.
We encounter doors or gates in our lives. When we walk through one called "Marriage," for example (disclaimer: I have very limited personal experience with marriage), it is vital that you shut the Marriage door behind you and your spouse. Leaving it open would just welcome an affair (aka a disaster) to walk through.
Another thing that comes to mind when talking about doors is closure. It's important, emotionally and mentally,to gain closure after seasons of life have ended. It's one reason we have graduation ceremonies. Closure enable us to move from one situation and transition into another with a certain amount of smoothness.

2. Do what the more experienced farmer suggests. His practice and experience far outweighs a youth's energy and abilities, but TOGETHER, the two can accomplish a ton! We all have people in our lives who know more a specific things than we do. Listen to them. It will save a lot of pain and toil in the long run.If you're young and energetic or can find extra time,consider yourself a candidate for action under the guidance of someone who has learned from more mistakes than you have, just because they have lived longer.

3.  Even a weed wont grow without dirt and water. Whatever is growing in your life is getting fed. If sin is growing in your life, you are somehow feeding your own sin. For healthy growth to occur, you have to feed and water the seeds, so it CAN grow.
So sin growth happens so quickly,and healthy growth seems to take SO long! A losing battle? Gosh I hope not. Please consider this seriously, though. If the sin in your life is outgrowing the healthy growth, that's a big signal that something in your life is feeding the weeds.

4. Everything comes back to water. Water this, water that. The cows need water, the chickens need water, the plants need water. Water. Water. Water. Spiritually, it is the same. It always comes back to needing the Living Water in our lives.Water is said to be the source of life. Frankly, it is quite important. Much more important than people like me who live in a very bless-by-rain and rivers part of the world don't often consider. Like I said, spiritually, life is similar. Do you want to be alive? Then let the Holy Spirit shake your spirit out of its stupor.

5. Your garden shows when you do or don't care for/about it. There is evidence displayed in our lives about what we care about. What you do, how your arrange your life, the words you use, etc, all display what you care about and what matters most to you.Other people see it laid out before you better than you do. Taking a critical eye to your garden can be helpful. Pull a weed here and there, get your rows straight, and for heavens sake, don't put the watermelon plants next to the beans if you want to be able to walk through the rows to pick the beans.

6. Sometimes the hay gets rained on...Well poop. However, chances are good that rain will help there be a second cutting, or maybe even a third cutting of hay, off the field. "Good" and "bad" stuff happens. Rain is just as necessary as sunshine, and all of it molds who and what we are.
Dark moments in our life throw us back to our knees (aka where we belong). After dark times and storms pass through our lives, there is damage...and even if it is crippling, there is still opportunity for God to make good out of it.

7. Use things how they were intended to be used.  A screw driver makes a horrible hammer.No, really. It does. It's awful. Don't ever try it.
But in other words, your stomach was made for food to be put in it. -cough- HEALTHY food to be but in it. There are consequences for binge-eating chips and oreos (oh, how I wish it were not the case. Alas!). Your veins were made to pump blood backed with oxygen throughout your body. NOT to be injected with doses of heroin to get high. Use what you have been given, whether it be your time, money, or body, the way it was intended to be used.

8. The grass is always greener somewhere else...unless you water your own yard! Take care of what you have.This one is similar to number 7 in some ways. But I still wanted to make it a separate one. You see, you have your little patch of pasture, garden, or yard, but if you don't take care of what you have, I promise it will wither and fade away. Worse yet, it may never come back. I have classes and homework to do throughout every single semester. Some of my other fellow students have super easy schedules, and sometimes (even though I relish the challenge of academia) their schedules look attractive. I have two options: to give up on my own and fail courses because that would be easier and I could spend more time with friends and family, or accept that they have a different life than I do and buckle down and get stuff done!

9. The best thing for us isn't necessarily what we want at the time. But go for it anyway, despite the pain, because better is the enemy of the best.
Sometimes help hurts. I have personally held a massive syringe and pierced the hide of a calf. Occasionally,the calf cries out in momentary discomfort. It's quite obvious that I hurt him, but he doesn't realize I did it so his infection would stop. Or shoving feeding tubes down a calf's throat so he doesn't dehydrate even though he's feeling sick. None of it is fun, and I've cried more than once having to perform those actions...for the calf's own good.
Similarly, sometimes the painful things we humans go through inoculate us against infections in our future or hydrate us somehow so we can live to see another day.

10. If you don't treat a wound, it will get worse. While I'm talking about infections and such...might as well mention that wounds happen, physically or emotionally or any way they come. Ignoring them will only allow them to fester. To keep it short, bitterness is a festering wound. Nuf said, so watch out. It ain't pretty, a person can smell it from far away,and it welcomes the wild dogs to come in for an easy kill.

11. There's nasty stuff out there, but if you're not willing to get crap on your hands, you won't get anything done.So crap is fertilizer. Yay...getting through it, though, enriches your life and enhances your field's produce. Unpleasant occurrences in your life can prepare your life for multiplied growth.

12.Let the chicks hatch on their own when they are ready.Let the flowers unfold in the sun when it is their time. Patience. Sure you want to see what is going to be the final product, but if you hurry a process, it won't turn out right! In your life, I'm willing to bet that there are things you wish would just hurry up. I have a few of those. Something I have learned is to let the timing just come. Sometimes a chick needs an extra day in the shell, and just maybe you did your math wrong when you counted up the number of days until hatching day.

13. Don't eat anything that you can get into your mouth.You are not a goat.By eating, I don't necessarily mean physical eating. You can consume things through your eyes and ears that is junk. However, since you're NOT a goat, it's a good idea to be careful about what you allow inside of yourself.

14. Last but not least for this post,I love geese.


So, there are a lot of things I have learned from growing up on a farm. I don't doubt that there are many lessons like this that city kids could teach me, but I for myself, I would never trade my upbringing for anything different. Thank you, Lord, for lessons in life through the things that surround us, even if they seems so ordinary.